Amby

The problem

For once, I will do my best to make it short. In all honesty, this app wasn’t the struggle that Backlit was. I mean… well. You know.

This app came from a need. A need to show my landlord that after an exhausting three years of renovations in the common space of the building, the newly installed stair lights were turning on and off uncontrollably, lighting right into my bedroom. After telling them just that for months they finally had someone come over, but the situation was not solved even though they insisted all required work had been done.

What was I do to then? Well, when you’re a software developer, every problem is an opportunity to create another problem a solution. I decided I would make a very simple app that uses the iPhone camera to determine some kind of light level, and record the whole night through. No need for a functional app or anything, just basic recordings, export that to CSV on my computer and VOILÀ.

The quick solution months that followed

Since hyperfocus is in my gene and fear of failure perfectionism is in my brain, what was supposed to be a quick and dirty tool, a throwable proof of concept with a single application, ended up becoming a months long project.

Here are some steps, not in order (my brain hasn’t been the same since and recollection doesn’t come easy):

• why export as a CSV when you could also show the results in-app! so let’s build a proper UI
• ooooh I rarely get to design my own apps! so let’s spend days doing intricate details that few people will ever see
• while I’m at it, I refuse to have an app on my devices that doesn’t have a cute icon, let’s do one
• I guess being able to save a recording could be nice, so let’s add some saving and recalling mechanism
• you know what would be amazing? using the iPhone to record, but seeing the results in the iPad! I mean, the viewport on this thing has been talked about so much after all!
• dammit, this recording is too large and doesn’t fit in UserDefaults nor NSUbiquitousKeyValueStore, sync is broken. Let’s take a look at syncing files over iCloud instead!
• kinda seems like a waste not to share this new found knowledge, why not make a Swift package to handle (basic) file sync in other apps! Property wrappers are all the rage, ammarite? Here comes Sush!
• honestly considering Catalyst is a thing, it would be a waste not to have it work on macOS as well
• dammit again, light intensity ranges over a full night and morning are so extreme that I can’t see it properly, let’s add log scales
• wait, measured lux don’t match other apps on the AppStore, let’s dive into physic books for a week
• to be on the AppStore I do need to make some nice screenshots for iOS, iPadOS and macOS, let’s setup fastlane

Hyperfocusing Patience pays off

Jokes aside, I am very proud to have another app on the AppStore. It is quite nice to be able to showcase my weird tools and get reviews from people appreciating them.

Oh! and my stair lights? Here is the recording.

That's some blinky lights!

With the proof in hand I was able to convince my landlord to actually fix the lights this time, and the technician was awesome and we had a long chat about breaking detection-bulbs and app making.