What happened to Plugins?

[Gerardo Hernandez]

Hi.

Sometime ago (2015)  I purchased several plugins:

• ApkBuilder
• BarcodeReader
• ImageGrid
• UI Extras
• BLE. 
• (I dont recall the GifViewer was a purchase options but I recall getting all in order to help Dave back in that day)

Also I used to have the Premium subscription, after the takedown courtesy of Google, we all lost the Premium, but just now its restored. I went directly to get premium again.

But so far the Plugins list only shows the following ones.

• Processing
• SunCalc
• Moment
• CSV
• Xml2Js
• Lodash
• Jim
• MQTT

The others from Droidscript like WiFi jukebox, PuckJs, MicroBit, BusyBox and BLE do not longer appear on the list but appear as an app in the play store.

 

The question is: Did the takedown also removed the other purchasable items? Why it the list not showing the entire plugin list. Even the Lego NXT; goPro and Sphero plugins are gone since long time ago.

I have access to the ApkBuilder as an app in the play  Store, but its not updated since version 2.02 

Until this morning I had almost all plugins, but I decided to try to get the latest from the store, but the new 2.08 was not there yet, and now I am without any plugin that I need or that I payed for.

Also, does the Premium subscription still provides access to all DS sponsored Plugins? I never  saw the UI Kit in the plugins list, but its in the play store, and its pretty much the MUI feature. 

If the plugins are not available in the list, but from the play store, like those from GineersLife and CandleLight, but then some of those features are baked into the DS app and then for others in order to install require a payment , I got really confused and upset. One of the initial selling points of Premium was full access to all listed plugins. 

I totally get that the internal store list some plugins (in addition to the plugins list in the app and the ones that only appear in the playstore) but the search feature is not really good, I was only able to get the Biometric within browser after following the News, it never appeared inside the app internal Store)

It would be a good practice to place the plugins only in one spot or two (one for the DS plugins that the Premium subscription may cover) and other for Third Party plugins, if they have a cost, its ok, but they are no longer merged, if they are free, great!.

But again, where are the Plugins. I can not longer Build my apps!

[Gerardo Hernandez]

it seems that the version of the DroidStore embedded into the DS app is not the same as the one in the browser, as it has more apps listed and the search works as expected in the web version. Probably something to look for.

Gerardo.

[Steve Garman]

Hopefulythe following will get you back up and running

If you are using the 2.08 beta then you can get the corresponding apkbuilder plugin from

http://androidscript.org/beta/DroidScript_208b1/

If you are using a released version of DroidScript then you can get the corresponding apkbuilder plugin from http://androidscript.org/apk/

The following plugins are not currently available for purchase but if you have already purchased them or have a premium subscription you can get them from:

http://www.androidscript.org/Plugins/gifviewer.zip

http://www.androidscript.org/Plugins/barcodereader.zip

http://www.androidscript.org/Plugins/imagegrid.zip

http://www.androidscript.org/Plugins/uiextras.zip

http://www.androidscript.org/Plugins/bluetoothle.zip

--------------------

To install a plugin zip file

Make sure you have a folder  /sdcard/DroidScript/Plugins

If it does not exist you will need to create it.

Place the uiextras.zip file in that Plugins folder.

Restart DroidScript.

The plugin will be installed and the .zip file will be deleted.

[Gerardo Hernandez]

Thanks  Steve, I will give this a try and report either success or any inconvinience.

Gerardo.

[Dave]

Hi Gerardo, Good to see you back again... we missed you :)

We hope to restore most of the plugins to the plugins page very soon (for premium users), however some of those you mention have been retired because either no one was really using them and the maintenance became a waste of our precious time (sphero,gopro) or Google detected security issues in them (ftpclient,barcodereader).  If you would like to resurrect any of these plugins, then I can arrange for the source code to be available to you.

FYI. DS can play animated gifs with the normal image control so you don't need the GIF plugin anymore

We started to move all plugins onto the PlayStore, but unfortunately with the new 'Scoped Storage' in Android10 they cannot install into the DroidScript folder anymore due to access rights issues, so we are moving back to the plugins page and the Store as the main way of installing SPKs and plugins.

As for the UI Kit, yes it's the same thing as the MUI controls... we did a deal with Jumar and got it baked into DS for premium users, because we liked it so much :)

Regards

David

P.S. Since I know dabble in electronics and you may have missed it since you have been away - the DS team (5 people so far) are working on a new project to complement DS but go much further with mult-platform support including ESP3, RaspberryPi and Cloud, but using the same familiar WiFi IDE.  You might like to check it out here - https://enjine.io/. We are nearly ready to start testing the ESP32 Wrover board (with PSRAM) support and I thought you might like to get involved too.

[Gerardo Hernandez]

Hi Dave. 

Thanks for the welcome back?

Its was a shame what Google did to this Dev Platform, but Im really glad its all OK now.

As for the plugins. I was mostly interested in the Barcode plugin. I use it for my apps I made for private companies and are side loaded, I see the plugins listed again. Is there a way we can get a updated status on all DS plugins ( a pinned post should be fine), just to now If its ok to use them im new projects. I used to use DS for prototyping but now whenever Im asked to make an app for low scale operations I use DS, Xamarin is basically dead in favor for .NET 6 MAUI and I have no plans to invest time soon on that for Mobile.

As for the new Platform im looking fordward into that. Just recently I discovered the M5Stack Core 2 (based on ESP32) and I ordered a device. I like it due to the high integration of components but its either Blockly (very cool to get my 8yo into progremming) or MicroPython , and I tend to gravitate to c# and Javascript platforms. I will let you know when it arrives and hopefully it can be integrated somehow  with this new platform once its available at least in beta.

Gerardo