Qiblah direction: An android application

Abstract

Muslim community facing a difficulty to determine the Qiblah direction whenever they want to perform their prayer when there is no direction is provided at certain places. This is usually happened when they are moving to a new house or travelling to a foreign place. Several alternatives are available but most application requires internet connection or Global Positioning System (GPS) to operate. This project serves the main purpose that is to develop an application that can determine the Qiblah direction without the need of internet connection or GPS. The application will use three main Android APIs which are Android.hardware, Android.graphics and Android.view. The calculation of the Qiblah direction is based on Spherical Trigonometry and the True North sensor in the smart phone will be manipulated. Using the sensor, a code will be written to detect the longitude and latitude of the current location. The detection then will lead to the NORTH direction. Using the manual compass calculation (NORTH and scale of the current location) as the algorithm, the manual checking of compass will be transform to the automated Qiblah direction. The application provides a friendly interface which is easily understandable and does not need much tedious work when finding Qiblah. It has been observed that the application is able to show the right Qiblah direction. © 2014 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.