I wanted to play with my Spark Core and Android so I created an Android app that I hope you will like and find beneficial. The app displays a simulated LCD that can be controlled over WiFi by a Spark Core. Further, the app translates touches on the simulated LCD and sends them to the Spark Core for processing. This allows Core developers to create text-based UIs displayed on Android that are dynamic and interactive. So your Spark Core can be easily controlled from Android in a customized way specific to your core.
I call the Android App RLCD for Remote LCD, please check out some videos of RLCD in action here:
The control interface is very simple, straightforward, and great for resource-constrained devices. The gist is the Core creates a TCP connection to the Android app and sends plain text commands to control the simulated LCD. There are just a handful of commands and an app could get away with just using one or two of them. The network connection is direct and there is no cloud connectivity required or used.
Best of all this is an open source project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rlcd
The code is already available here: http://sourceforge.net/p/rlcd/code/ci/master/tree
(I’m new here so my posts are limited. To be continued…)