Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

The other day, I was thinking about how awesome flipclock (the current version) is. I was thinking, jolouis should make a gas/mileage tracking application. Instead of boring keyboard entry, we can have awesome scroll wheels to enter mileage. Just something to consider :)

In a side note, I was wondering. Why do the scroll wheels on flipclock move only until 9? Is this by design? imho, it may be better (if you see a point in implementing this) to make the wheels go to 9, but another scroll in the same direction makes them go to 0 again. It would save the (slight) trouble of having to go back in the other direction if a different alarm time was needed.

Good luck with the new version of flipclock! I hope to see it soon! :)

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

The scroll wheels and awesome graphics of Flip are all thanks to the mighty Ciroip, so praise should be directed to him for the artwork and concepts; I just do the coding behind the scenes ;-) (However I will let this slip about the new version... if you liked the "scrolling digits" before, you're going to LOVE the scrolling digits now ;-) ). As for a gas milage/tracking app, I think that's kind of what Carman is aimed at no? If you can describe the app and what it would do/how it would stand out from something like Carman I could probably put some thought into working on it once I get flip taken care of a bit more... (Hey Ciro maybe we should start our own "Maemo development team"! ;-) )

Each digit scroller has it's own limits based on the time value it's representing; i.e. the first digit scroller will only go between 0-1 in AM/PM mode, and 0-2 in 24 hour mode. The first minutes digit goes from 0-5, etc. It's like that by design so that you don't accidentally select a time that doesn't exist. As for the minutes I could probably make it roll over from 9 back down to 0, but it would require some fininking with the graphics and code that might just end up being more confusing for people (i.e. if you go up from 9 to 0 again, does the "tens minutes" also go up by one? or does it stay the same and it's just the digit that you're on? Then what about the other digits, does it go from 5 back to 0 again if you go up? See the confusion starting to set in?). Just my thought on it though, if you guys think it makes sense then share your thoughts and maybe we can justify it after all...

Thanks! Hope everyone's going to enjoy it when it's ready! (and maybe chip in a beer for Ciro and I ;-) )

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

I suck at coding which is to say I don't code, and I suck at graphics which is to say I would never get paid for graphics, but you guys seem to have it well under control. I loved the flip-clock the minute I saw it. Nice job! I wish the new version you are talking about works in N900 too :)

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Sure, and we should just take over the world in our spare time...
Just checking in to say that this week Im a bit more busy at work than I thought and give public apologize to J because I could not find the energy to work a bit on the project. I promise to try to set a bit my mind and put some time into during this weekend.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Ciro, have you thought of making a square, full screen, analog clock with brushed gold back plate with roman numeral numbers. Then add a "Big Ben" hourly chime!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

I promise: next time Ill decide to fight the dragon c+sdl Ill make that clock because:
1. sound cool
2. you are a long time flipclock follower and deserve it :)

What about a portrait mode?
update: I was waiting for the dinner call and I was looking for a pic for a refer for the dan clock and...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2588/...e7f4bdcd_o.jpg

I found one with the cleaning guys....
This is the work in progress:
how cool will be to have random mantenance and cleaning on the tablet clock? :)

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

I don't know what I did, but now the screen turns off after 2 minutes even at night mode. It used to dim the blue light and I still could see it in the dark. Not anymore now. I uninstalled the program and reinstalled again, but the problem is still there. Any idea? Thanks.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Sounds like you just turned Insomniac mode off... press the "back" button on the tablet (the one that looks like the curly line with an arrow right below the dpad) and a note should pop up saying "Insomniac mode on...". That should get you back to the "dim all night" mode.

Just an update for everyone on the new version of the app... I'm getting damn close here, I've got to get some material over to Ciro and he's gotta have some free time to finish up some graphics work, but as far as the app goes it's pretty close. I've still got to do the clock settings screen, which will allow for a few options to be changed, and figure out how to package up everything so that the autobuilder will compile it and stuff to get it into extras, but that shouldn't be too difficult; the alarm stuff is just about done, I'm putting the finishing touches on basic alarm handling now, but I'll post up with more details once we're close to a beta release!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

It works, thanks a lot.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

When its released as a beta, are we still going to be using the pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-pre release thread?

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

lol Well I think I'll make a new thread as an annoucement and link to it from this one... because there's a lot of valuable information here, but at the same time we're going on 66 pages now and it can be a bit overwhelming for people who haven't been keeping up for the last year or so lol

Don't worry I'll make it nice and obvious for everyone though!

Thanks all!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

OKay guys you've all been very patient with me on this one so after going two rounds of Turkey Dinner for Thanksgiving this weekend I finally managed to sit down and wrap things up to the point where it's at least somewhat ready for a "sneak peak" and some feedback on the new version! So without further adue:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa....0-1_armel.deb

A few notes about installation first:
- Getting this into extras-devel is going to be more of a hassle because it means I have to write configure and proper make files, which I've never done before, so for now I'm just letting you guys have a preview through garage. This however means that dependencies are NOT AUTOMATICALLY PULLED IN, and must be installed manually!!
Make sure you have "Extras" repo enabled, and if you run into any dependency problems while trying to install Flip ensure that you've got the required packages in place already. For reference Flip depends on:
libglib2.0-0,libgconf2-6,libosso1,libalarm0,libgtk2.0-0,libgstreamer0.10-0,libhildonfm2,libsdl1.2, libsdl-image1.2,libsdl-gfx1.2-4,libsdl-ttf2.0-0
- This version WILL CONFLICT with the old Flipclock, so don't expect them to be able to run side by side... I recommend disabling all alarms and uninstalling the old Flip before installing this!

And now for the good stuff... here's the current features
- HUGE stability and speed improvements over old version (thank you C)
- Complete theme support; I'm not talking skins here, but rather complete themes... check out the "night" theme (which is my crude demo... see the "needs your help" notes below). Themes are completely customizable and can independently be packaged to allow others to create new themes and have them available as "Add on" packages.
- AlarmD integration has been vastly improved. All alarmD processing is now handled by a separate DBus process (that means no more "please wait" screens!) which synchronizes all of your alarm settings automatically (you should see a little "AlarmD Sync'd" message pop up from time to time when this happens). This should also help eliminate those old "phantom alarms" that people were running into in the past.
- Flip now automatically turns up your tablet volume when an alarm plays, so you don't have to worry about forgetting anymore!
- "Insomniac mode" has been improved to try to ensure that it won't get "left on" by accident; this really has more to do with the improved stability of the app than anything else though...
- Oh, did I mention the improved visual effects on the alarm settings pages? ;-)
- Lots of other cool stuff?...

Remember this is a Beta/Preview release for you guys who have been so dedicated and enthusiastic about this project (I got tired of working on this without being able to get real feedback from you guys!). As such there are some important things to note here (I need your help with!):
- The graphics are NOT finalized yet... ESPECIALLY the "night mode" which I kind of threw together yesterday in a desperate attempt to get this thing ready for you today. As you can see, I'm a CODER, not a DESIGNER... So hopefully before the first official release Ciro has some time to help get the mess sorted out ;-)
Specifically I think the "switch theme" button is missing on the "night theme"... don't worry, it's in exactly the same place as on the day screen, I just forgot to put the label there for it...
- The file-chooser dialog box for selecting your alarm sound is a bit slow to show up the first time... I only noticed this the other day, but I'll try to get a waiting screen or something going on in the mean time... anyways, if you press "choose file", just wait for the chooser to show up k? It works, it's just slow the first time...
- There's no "clock settings" screen yet... I wanted to get it done, but after the horrible mess I made of the "night theme" alarm screen I just couldn't bring myself to torture you guys any more with my own graphics... so once Ciro gives me a hand with that, it'll be done and expose all the nice options for you (including the Amazing new mood picker!)
- There's no LED flashing code or anything yet. For me that wasn't a hugely important feature since I can't test it on my N800's anyway, but I will try to add it back in later if people want it... also, different alarm playback modes WILL be possible in the future, but probably not in the first release...i.e. FM radio, media player, etc...
- I'm sure there's a few other things to mention, but I've forgotten them in the excitement, so...

The point of this release is to give you a basic working copy of the new version of the app so you guys can test, give feedback and enjoy! Let me know what you think, let me know if the thing crashes, heck let me know if you can't get it to install and we'll get things sorted out! But I've been working on this for far too long by myself here and I wanted to get you guys up to speed as that last "Nixie" release we had was just terrible stuff...

(And yes, there will be a Nixie theme, along with another one or two that I have in mind... along with whatever you guys come up with! Documentation will be another big task that I'll ask for help with, especially related to theme development).

(Ooh almost forgot, Flip will be able to run on X86 linux (not just tablets), I just didn't bother making up a test-release for it yet as the tablets are really the target audience here... but should compile and run on Maemo 5 no worries, though I haven't got an N900 to try with... hopefully nice and speedy too!)

Thanks all!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

jolouis-

Looks very nice. I'll play with it a bit more later.

Uninstalled earlier version (after checking for alarms). Went into red-pill to check dependencies. For me, I was only missing libsdl-gfx1.2-4, installed, back to blue pill.

Installed the new flipclock. Loaded fine, like I said looks very nice. More to come.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

I removed my alarms, unnstalled flipclock and installed the version linked in this thread.

First impressions:
- In the night mode the parts of the digits not illuminated to make up the current time are a bit too bright. It would be nice if there was a bigger difference between lit up and dimmed lines.
I dont have the old one to compare with side by side but in general the look of the numbers in the night mode is not as pleasant as the old version. The numbers seem to be too close to eachother (look at how '10' shows for instance) and the previously mentioned dim vs lit up lines in the numbers.

- I noticed that the icon for flipclock was not removed from my Extras section after uninstalling and hence the new version did not create a new entry. The old icon doesn't launch anything so my only way to launch flipclock now is to do it from the xterm's command line. How do I solve this?

- Any chance for having the color picker being its own button instead of on the single/loop button?

Apart from that it looks like this will be a fantastic update and THANKS for continuing working on one of my favorite apps for my tablet.

Nokia should send you an N900 so that 'those boys' can get this app finetuned for them as well since this app is so valuable. Do it Nokia!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Yea I just tweaked the digits yesterday to give it a bit more of that "underlying digit look", but I agree there's not quite enough strength there; general feedback, should I try them down at 10% (right now the "non-lit" digit parts are at about 30%), or just ditch it and go back to the way they used to be?.
Not sure about the positioning, as they're exactly the same as they were on the old clock... if it bugs you though you can tweak the theme file to shift the digits around a bit... if everyone agrees then I'll update the night theme by default to have a bit more space to it...

Hmm that's bizarre... the old icon should actually launch the new version still, so not sure. You can try restarting the tablet to see if that clears it up, otherwise you can manually remove the .desktop file and install the new one, should fix it. Let me know if you need a hand.

Oh bugger! I forgot that was still there, I thought I'd taken that button out! Turns out I only took the "label" out, not the thing that actually triggered the colour picker! Okay I'll do a quick update to take that out as the colour picker is supposed to be on the "yet to be built" clock-settings page!

I'm all for that ;-) Already trying to get my hands on an N900 through the PushN900 program, but we'll see... in the mean time I think one or two people who've already got prototypes have contacted me in the past about this app so I'll see what they say about this new version...

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Thanks, a hard-reset did indeed make the icon launch flipclock again.
I'm all for bringing the un-lit digit parts down..10%... 0% :)

Thanks again!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Didn't have any problems with my icons when installing. Worked just fine from the menu and Personal Launcher.

Alarms work well (or at least I didn't see any problems in my test). Didn't realize the color picker was there until slartibart mentioned it. I like having the whole spectrum to choose from.

I was surprised to see a different alarm setting menu in night mode. Very different, pretty cool though, I like it. Sound picker didn't take too long the first time, couple of seconds, maybe 5 max.

Only thing I saw: When loading, I get a pop-up that says "flipclock started", it covers up part of the screen, so all I see is "Flipclock the Ultimate ............." as the screen doesn't refresh from the started popup. Other than that, looks great.

Excellent work, well worth the wait. Can't wait to see the rest of the updates.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Did some tests. I'm still having problems with some songs playing, but I think it was mentioned before that's more of a system thing than flipclock. I like how the theme changes for the alarm setting screen.

When pressing the + or - buttons on the device, flipclock crashes/exits. I was hoping they would act as volume control. Sometimes when flipclock goes off I don't want to get up, but I want to listen to what's playing. I like how the volume maxes out for the alarm, but I can't really play it without disturbing people. Would it be possible to adjust the volume of the alarm while the alarm is going off?

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Pretty impressive but let me suggest some improvements:
http://imgur.com/IbBpw.jpg
>Nokia should send you an N900
I agree, Nokia shoud invest in people that actually do something.
Since the new version will have a completely different set of "discussions" I propose a brand new thread asap :)

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

The new FlipClock seesms nice - some changes in controls are more intuitive indeed - like changing the themeing and colors.

So here goes my feedback ... change Theme in bright dailight mode shows fine, but in changed night-time mode the button doesn't show - even though if you click on that spot, it does change back to daylight mode.

I set up Alarms for the morning and nothing played back.

I also set a song as an alarm - which played in the older flipclock, but no alarms worked on this new version.

I like the seconds bar at the top with the seconds slider - nice touch - though not needed (as yet).

I will give it a try some more and report back.

Ciroip - as mentioned before - I am still lokking up to you to start a new project and bring your super gooey talents to work on something equally or more useful. Kudos buddy :-)

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

mp3 alarms are working fine here.

I did notice in the night mode, the tens digit continued to show in early AM at least until I tapped the screen to turn off the alarm. ie 3:15AM showed as 13:15AM. I woke up a couple of times and saw this. Although I could have been dreaming/half asleep, but pretty sure. After turning off the alarm, the tens digit was faded out like the rest of the "unlit" areas.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

I can confirm this. I woke up with the clock saying 17:30, when I went the alarm screen and back it had fixed itself.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Please see my note in the original post which stated under "things to be done":
This will be fixed in the first actual release, but in my rush to get a preview to you guys I just missed it...

That's not good... after you set the alarm did you go back to the main clock view? (alarms don't get sync'd until you do this). Also once you'd gone back to the clock view did a little message pop up saying "AlarmD Sync'd" a few seconds after you'd returned to the main view? Can you confirm that you did actually turn the alarm on and that the indicator for that day turned green (at the bottom where the day name is). Did the alarm just not play the sound, or did it not do anything at all? (when an alarm plays giant "turn alarm off " and "snooze" buttons should show up)

This was an extra that Ciro added to his first C-SDL version and I thought it was kind of cool, kept me from going crazy testing alarms... but it's up to the theme designer to decide if they want to have seconds there or not.

Anyways as Ciro suggested I'm going to start a new thread for this now that we've got something tangible so I'll post up the link for that shortly...
and here you go:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=346346

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

OK for those of you who are missing libsdl-gfx.1.2-4, here's how to get it:

- in Xterminal, type:
sudo gainroot apt-get install libsdl-gfx1.2-4

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

speaking of a flipclock...what are the chances that something similar can be made into a desktop clock widget like WinMo and certain HTC android devices (with weather included)


a "Today" widget

i know this is somewhat unrelated but it popped into my head the second i saw the screenshot

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Support for non-latin characters would be greatly appreciated! Unfortunately the font used for date/month window doesn't support cyrillics.
Hourly chimes could make sense as well?