1) Create a stack

2) Set it to by 320px wide and 460px tall

3) Drag out a new field object

4) Set its name to "messages"

5) untick the 'Focusable' or 'traversalOn' setting

We have added two now messages that allow your stacks to be notified when a 'motion' on the device starts and when one stops. Place these two handlers on the card or stack script of your stack.

on motionStart pMotion
	# This handler is called when a 'motion' starts
end motionStart

on motionEnd pMotion
	# This handler is called when a 'motion' ends
end motionEnd

Lets start by making sure that we are getting the messages we expect.

on motionStart pMotion
	put empty into field "messages"
	put "motion start:" && pMotion into line 1 of field "messages"
end motionStart

on motionEnd pMotion
	put "motion end:" && pMotion into line 2 of field "messages"
end motionEnd

The Android simulator does not provide a feature allowing you to test shake motions. To test on Android you will need to test directly on a device, of course the device must have an accelerometer.

Firstly ensure your device is set up and connected as described in the lessons

How do I become an Android Developer on a PC?

How do I become an Android Developer on a Mac?

And that you have set up LiveCode for Android depolyment.

1) Select your Android device from the Development Menu

2) Click Test

The application is deployed to your device and is ready to be tested.

For iOS devices simply click on the Simulate button in the menuBar. Once the simulator has loaded select Shake Gesture from the simulator's Hardware menu.

So we are getting start and end motion messages. Lets expand out to time how long the user shakes their phone for.

Update the card script to the following. It will check if the motion messages are 'shake' and if so record the time of the start and end to get the final result:

# Variable to hold when the shake started
local sStartTime
on motionStart pMotion
	# If the motion is a shake do this
	if pMotion is "shake" then
		put empty into field "messages"
		# Store the moment the shake started
		put the milliseconds into sStartTime
		put "Shake Started" into line 1 of field "messages"
	end if
end motionStart

on motionEnd pMotion
	if pMotion is "shake" then
		put "Shake Ended" into line 2 of field "messages"
		# The total length of the shake is the current time - the start time
		put "Shake Lasted" && the milliseconds - sStartTime && "milliseconds" into line 3 of field "messages"
	end if
end motionEnd

The simulator sends a consistent shake message but you should be able to try out various lengths of shake once you deploy this little app to you phone.