An audio book player for the elderly and visually impaired, or for those who just want a very simple way to play audio books.
Go to the project website or watch the video.
Turn a regular Android tablet into a dedicated audio book player that can be easily used, particularly by the visually impaired and the elderly.
- focused on audio book playback, not music,
- controlled with imprecise gestures and subject to accidental touch,
- the user isn't able to make out letters or small UI controls,
- device can (optionally) be dedicated to a single function (runs in kiosk-like mode, no access to other applications).
The main functionality has been implemented and the app is available in the Play Store.
See the website for details on the main features.
I will no longer be making updates or working on Aesop player, but I don't want Aesop to be orphaned if there's someone willing to work on it. If you are willing, please adopt it - take a fork and fix it as needed. (Be sure to look for, and contact the owner of, any forks that already exist.)
The documentation on the website is intended non-expert users for whom the default installation procedures using Play Store are appropriate. Kiosk Mode installation is difficult enough to explain clearly because of the (justifiable, but nevertheless complicating) policies from Google. There are potential users who would prefer not to use Play Store. We'll presume that those users do not need detailed explanations, but provide a quick guide to what's going on and why.
You can install Aesop Player directly from GitHub: we publish apk files (and tarballs) for each release. There's nothing special about those files, they can be installed directly.
If you wish to use QR mode installation,
you can to so by modifying the qr-provisioning.json file to point to the
appropriate version here on GitHub and regenerating the QR image.
(Change the ...DOWNLOAD_LOCATION entry to point to an Aesop .apk file.
The (multi-line) entry ...EXTRAS_BUNDLE isn't needed (and probably
ignored).)
The web page appspot.com is handy for creating the QR code, but any of several others on the Web will do. (Right click and download the image to save the .png.) (Downbox is simple, but not very secure, depending on your content.) (Recently I've noted something that appears to be phishing on the appspot website - there's a redirect that looks highly suspicious.)
Aesop would then be installed as the device owner (exactly as occurs if you use adb to set it as device owner). Note that this will not allow automatic updates: you will be responsible for checking for and installing any new versions, should it matter to you. (Play store will not update an application it did not install itself, even if it's "the same" application.)
The procedure for typical users on the website is technically somewhat different, because Google doesn't (yet?) allow QR mode installations from Play Store. Rather than directly installing Aesop Player, a small intermediate application is installed (from GitHub) as the device owner, and it starts the Play Store application to install Aesop. It also gives Aesop the "Lock Screen" permission, (which is what Aesop really is looking for when it is device owner), and retains device owner itself. That application will sit on the device, unused, after that. (The application is DonnKey/KioskInstaller on GitHub, and you can see from the source what it does, and how it deals with attempts to run it.) This allows automatic updates of Aesop from Play Store.
The original Homer Player by Marcin Simonides is the basis for this application.
Copyright (c) 2015-2017 Marcin Simonides Licensed under the MIT license.
Copyright (c) 2018-2020 Donn Terry Licensed under the MIT license.
A copy of that license may be found in the file LICENSE.
A list of all packages used and their associated licenses may be found at this location.