Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

I haven't been following this project (AKA work of art) as much as I hoped recently but felt I had to do add a quick post to show to my sincerest appreciation to @ciroip, @jolouis and everyone else chugging away at the code!!

It's really great seeing the ever increasing collaboration too! It reminds me of the spirit of the Internet circa Netscape Navigator 2, before ads, before flash... :rolleyes:

Not demanding users ciroip, but demanding fans!!! ;)

By the way, this thread currently has 14,558+ views!!! :eek:

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

jolouis - yes, still happening while using 0.1.3. Oddly enough, myy flipclock icon used have a 12 on it but has recently reverted to a 10 after a recent reboot. Application manager reports 0.1.3 though.

This s a work of art, and I'm not demanding, just a Dedicated fan. :)

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Im flatering: I would not say 'work of art' but 'work of insomnia'...
dont worry lemmyslender I suppose I am my worste critic and I dream of the 'perfect', application, I also know that this is my 1st python application and there is a lot to learn; there is no reason to make the clock crappier if my time and my skills can make it better (and all the other people who put their time amd skills into).
Now Im better going to sleep: 3.15 am in middle of week dont really help my job hunt :)
buonanotte

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

ciroip- I know the feeling, I designed and use a database (ms access) for runnning a small business. It works very well and gets the job done (for the last 10+ years!), but everyday I lookat it and see things to change and improve. Most other people are fairly impresses with it though.

You've done a great job with flipclock, keep up the good work.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

This is a great project as far as I'm concerned, you did an amazing job getting it as far as you did there on your own Ciro, I'm just glad that I can lend a hand and that everyone is enjoying it so much!
Yea as far as the internet radio thing goes it'll probably end up being either an osso media-player tie in or a gstreamer setup (gstreamer in my research is probably better because supposedly osso media-player is getting toasted in Maemo 5), but in any case one of things that I've got planned (I think I mentioned it in that last post but not sure) was that each alarm could have different "notification modes", so for each alarm you could choose things like:
"play sound"/"play internet radio" AND/OR "flash LED like crazy" AND/OR "have some crazy Ciroip clock animation show up on screen", etc

That way you can make it do as much as you want, or as little as you want depending on user and situation. Also, big point to note here too, once I get the media player/gstreamer thing going, the alarms will actually play over the headphone jack as well, instead of always being stuck with the built in speakers like you get with the native alarm/clock application.

Ciro, by the way great job with the app, the code works, that's what really matters! I hope when I get to the point of passing it back to you you'll be happy too, as I've made some big changes but have also reworked/re-organized some of what you had to make it easier to use... and I've commented the code... even a lot of the existing code, so that it's now quite easy to read the source and see what's happening and why ;o) (sorry though, I don't speak any other languages so the comments are all in english! Sorry!). But once I post it back up to the garage and you take a look at the code, I think you will be happy! :o)

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

This project looks great, although I've only been following it in this forum and not actually tried it yet.

Regarding the interface for setting alarms, I think there is a danger of over-engineering this if you're not careful. Currently with my old-fashioned alarm clock my bedtime routine is to enable it every night, and slightly adjust the alarm time depending on when I need to get up the next day. I think with this app it should be similar - the alarm should not be enabled for the next day unless explicitly picked by the user, and the default alarm time should be the previous alarm time. To make it slightly more useful, there could be a 'history' of other previously selected times to pick from - this list would be automatically populated based on what the user has chosen previously, rather than the user having to explicitly think about setting up a choice list of times.

I think trying to tie specific times to specific days may end up making the user interface too complicated, and might be inflexible for people who don't work normal 7-day weeks.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Installed it today (latest release of flip, N810, Diablo). When it opens, i get "Can't create config", then the clock screen opens. If there are buttons (alarm, date, etc), they are not working, except Night Light.

Any suggestions?

Edit: Stumbled into the alarm settings...and the above message seems to have gone now.

However, i am seeing both AM and Pm on the first flip. I'd like to see a 24 hour time displayed. Haven't been able to figure out how to do this on my 810 since i got it?

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

I don't know how ciroip would design the interface for the features we've been discussing, but I don't think that it would be a needless complication to the alarm setup. The ability to schedule alarms for specific days is a useful feature for anyone with a regular weekly schedule, which to be sure isn't everyone, but I would also venture that it is most everyone. I do think the idea of a history list is a decent one, but relatively unnecessary with the ability to set multiple alarms. In your position, I would set the common alarms I needed and maybe leave one open to set for any random times.

It may also be possible to decide which mode you wanted, history list or multiple alarms, but I don't know how complicated that would be to implement, and I think multiple alarms that recur whenever you want them to is just too good of a feature to give up.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

ukjeeper-

up swipe on clock screen to settings. Slide mode button on right side, should set 12/24 hour.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Yup, that did it. Thanks. Still curious as to the AM/PM showing (in 12 hour mode) on the first tab. Why both AM/PM???

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

The 0.1.3 deb still had some AM/PM difficulties and oddities; they've been resolved in the current development build, so just bare with us for the moment until I can get the new version rolled out. One other point: the 0.1.3 deb also won't store your 12/24 hour setting between sessions... you have to set it each time as the default is now 12hr. This too has been resolved in the development build.

As for the alarm scheduling etc, for the currently planned next release I'm just going to re-use the alarm control interface page that Ciro already made, but with alarmd integration instead of internal stuff, so you'll end up with the ability to set one alarm per day, that will automatically occur at that time on that day, each week. You will also have the ability to turn individual alarms on or off. Let's see how that works out and then for the next version we can adjust the interface/etc to give more flexibility, but I think it's going to end up being a quite nice solution this way for the moment...

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

ugh, a lot of new posts: Ill give a deeper read on saturday morning: sorry for delaying a bit but I get some lovely digestion problems (why dont sell Pepto in Italy :(

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Another update for all who have been following this project and wondering what's going on... the updates I was including ended up turning into a partial rebuild of a lot of the underlying stuff as well, so it took a little longer than I'd originally been planning. Anyways, there's still some major cleaning up to do behind the scenes, but features wise/functionality wise to the user it's now up to speed with the original intentions. I'm going to try and squeeze a few more tweaks and features in but am aiming to get a new deb up in the next few days.

Current features in this "0.1.5 version" (it's been quite a bit of work, so we'll just skip 0.1.4...)
-- Full AlarmD integration. The flipclock alarms are now all tied into the native Maemo alarm daemon, so you can set them, close the clock/whatever, and when the time comes the clock will automatically launch if it's not already open and start playing your alarm.
-- 7 day alarms. The alarm interface is now setup to have one alarm per day of the week. So if you want alarms to occur every tuesday and thursday, you just set them accordingly.
-- Ability to disable/enable alarms and maintain settings. As it implies, just turn alarms on or off, and when you want them again, turn 'em back on. Not that fancy but handy
-- Custom alarm sounds. You can now select an Mp3 file that you want to play when you alarm goes off if you don't like the default. This is on a per-alarm basis, so you can have different sounds for different days if you wanted... You can also set whether the sound will loop until you acknowledge the alarm, or whether you just want it to play though once.
-- Lots of bug fixes including updated handling of digit scrolling on the alarm interface, lots of weird issues with the AM/PM vs 24 hour mode have been fixed, etc

There are of course still some things to be worked on/addressed that at this point are not complete:
-- Ciro's "mood stuff" isn't integrated into the updated code yet... it's not that difficult to do, but I felt this was a lower priority than getting everything else working.
-- Snooze button/snooze feature has not been implemented yet. I know how it's going to work, but I just haven't had time to write the code for it yet
-- the "window mode" buttons... might work, might not work quite right, I don't remember... I haven't spent a lot of time on that bit...

And then of course all the features and things others have requested, and an overhaul/addition to interfaces/etc, but that will all be AFTER this version is released. Again, hoping for the next day or two... I'd like to get that snooze bit stuck in, then it'll be a really good release point.

Thanks!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

can't wait to check the mutations :)

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

OKay all, sorry for the long delays but I wanted to get all the basic features in and confirmed to be "day to day usable" before actually releasing.
BEFORE INSTALLING THIS VERSION, MAKE SURE YOU UN-INSTALL THE OLD ONE!!
So go ahead and give it a shot:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.php/5694/FlipClock_0.1.5_armel.deb
BEFORE INSTALLING THIS VERSION, MAKE SURE YOU UN-INSTALL THE OLD ONE!!

There have been a lot of changes, especially in the way the config file was handled, so make sure that you uninstall any previous versions of FC before installing this one so that you don't run into problems. Also note that FC now also depends on python2.5-gstreamer, so if you haven't got it installed make sure you do so before trying to install the above .deb.

A brief summary of changes:
- Power Management - The clock now sleeps (stops updating) when tablet is in idle mode. This saves CPU and battery life, and is generally a good thing all around.
- Alarm Page has been re-organized and updated a lot. The AM/PM switch has moved, the about button has gone away for the moment, etc. Alarms are now one per-day, recurring each week. So if you set an alarm for the Monday slot, it will happen at that time every monday, etc.
- Alarm Sounds - You can now choose your own MP3 to use as an alarm sound; simply press the big "Sound" button, and the file chooser should pop up. Currently ONLY MP3s WORK!! Don't try WAV, don't try .ogg, whatever... I mean, you can try, but don't expect the app to not crash...
- AlarmD - All alarms are now handled by the Maemo AlarmD daemon, which means that they have the ability to auto-launch the FlipClock when an alarm occurs, etc. However this does mean when setting alarms it takes an extra second or two to do the communications with AlarmD, so there's a nice little "wait a sec" thing that comes up to let you know this is happening. Sometimes I've found AlarmD can be a bit slow to respond, so if you see the wait message for a few seconds, don't worry, the clock didn't break, it's just taking a bit longer than usual to get AlarmD going....
- Snooze button now says how long it will snooze for, and again snooze is handled through AlarmD. At the moment snooze is statically set at 10 minutes, but future versions will make this customizable (the code is there, just no interface to control it yet).

A few important shortcommings/notes for this release:
- Mood and About are not working.
- Window mode... well, it's there, but I make no guarantees about anything... the whole mode is going to be reworked I think (maybe just a smaller version of the clock so that you can access task bars/etc but still see the clock?
- Don't look at the source code yet... lol I'm half way through re-jigging Ciro's original stuff, so there's a LOT of redundant and generally out of place coding still... if you want to take a look, go ahead, but it will make more sense by the time the next release comes along... a LOT more sense... trust me...

Anyways, as always, comments suggestions feedback etc. This is probably the first "beta" release (compared to Ciro's pre pre pre pre alphas) in that it's quite functional and stable enough to use every day, but not quite a complete feature set yet.

Thanks!
-Rob

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

let me grab some food and Ill check the beast

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Ciro! Be careful with that food! You're going to... <plop> oh man, too late!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3654/...112e1b02_m.jpg

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Thanks for all the work Rob.

I uninstalled via app manager and removed flipclock directory, then install with sudo dpkg -i <deb file>

When I launch it says can't load user background, ok, then launches "rated D for DBUS" ;) does it's LED colour thing, see a mouse pointer, the clock flipping... then closed.

Terminal output below


Any ideas?

Thanks!!

Faz

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

I thought I had python2.5-gstreamer, but apparently not.
Had to enable red pill mode, installed python2.5-gstreamer-dev, re-installed... same. :(

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Until I stick to pasta and horsemeat no problem... chips and beer really kill me

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Wow the application really changed:
Im impressed: beside the DBus related "One moment" seem everything snappier than before. Ill play with it a bit and begin to take a look of new code :). Everything make sense but the the alarm setting is begin to became a bit confuse: when the actual day alarm is disabled it should show the alarm enabled for next day. I had same issues when I tried the 7+1 alarm solution. I dont want get tricked by an alarm clock :).
Do the setted alarm should show up on the nokia alarms? I have no idea how dbus manage them. I REALLY hate the standard 'Open file' dialog :) I could make a fork using the interface I made for the synesthesia audio player (It also give a way to test the audio level).
I let you optimize the things but it already look great.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Installed it, launched it. Still getting "Can't read user wallpaper" popup. Also getting "Ca't read config", crashes after that and closes. It appears to crash at line 73 in flipclock.py, invalid parameter.

Any ideas?

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Ok. Got it to run. Froze on enabling alarm (1+ min), killed it manually. Runs fine now, alarms enable ok. No more warning about the config file. Still can't read my wallpaper, o well.

Commented the following line in flipclock.py :
ci.device.set_device_state_callback(ci_eventHandle rs.deviceStateChangeEvent, system_inactivity=True, user_data=None)

Don't know what it does, but it crashes if I uncomment it.

Other than that, looks great, I'll play more with it late.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Thanks, I new there'd be some problems and things... I'm going to play with this on my other tablet (fresh Diablo install) to see if I can reproduce some of the errors. The line most people have had problems with (line 73 in flipclock.py) is what setups the "stop doing anything when the tablet is idle"; it's not 100% critical to operation of the clock, but does help a little with power management/etc. Works fine on my tablet here and obviously Ciro didn't have issues, so maybe it has to do with a bug in the version of Python or OS2008 that you have installed? Would somebody mind trying updating it to read:
ci.device.set_device_state_callback(ci_eventHandle rs.deviceStateChangeEvent, system_inactivity=True)

And see if that makes any difference? Again I'll try here and see if I can reproduce the error...

Ciro:
"Everything make sense but the the alarm setting is begin to became a bit confuse: when the actual day alarm is disabled it should show the alarm enabled for next day" - Yea right now it just looks for the alarm that's set that day; I couldn't think of how to show what day the alarm was set for, so I figured showing for the current day was okay, though it should really go gray out once the time of that alarm has passed... If you can suggest a better way (visually) of showing the next alarm, I can roll it into the code no problemo.

"I REALLY hate the standard 'Open file' dialog" - yea me too, it was a bit of a last minute toss in because I was more focused on getting sounds to play and things than actually how to choose them. I figured this was a good "Temp measure" until we could merge the concepts and stuff you had from your Youamp Media player thing there into the clock.

Still some bugs and lots of room for improvements!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

I saw someone ask about this earlier. I'd love to have the option of dimming or keeping the clock screen up. Pycage has managed to make MediaBox defeat the tablet screen saver so that it does not go dim while playing a song or video. I don't sleep well and look at the clock a lot.

Flipclock is visual eye candy with utility.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

The ability to keep the screen lit is quite easy to include; I was contemplating putting it in there while the alarms were actually going off. For a long term thing though (i.e. overnight) the best option might be to have it only keep the screen illuminated if the charger is attached? I know there's an option in the display settings for this, but it shouldn't be too hard to do from within flipclock... my only fear in doing it without charger all the time would be that the battery on the tablet might get drained quite quickly if the display was set too bright for example, and then the clock would become quite useless ;-)

I'm a little concerned about the people saying that the device state code is failing though, so I want to try and get that resolved first. I did an clean install from the deb on another tablet and could not reproduce the problem at all (it worked just fine, though I have to remember to take that "can't read config" message out since the config file is generated by default when you launch the first time...)

Anyone had any more details/information/luck about the deviceState problem that's been reported?

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

flopclock has wallpaper issue then crashes immediately

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

also got pygame from solarwolf as pygame download from this thread would not load--it all worked with previous version

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Okay everyone please try again, I've updated the deb to include a small work around for anyone who was having osso crashing problems. If you had any other strange issues or unexpected things you need to make sure:
1) You uninstall flipclock (latest version, or any version)
2) You manually remove /home/user/.flipclock.conf
3) RE-install the latest deb by following the link on the garage page:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa....1.5_armel.deb

Lemmy, update to the latest deb following these instructions, then run flipclock from a terminal and let me know what the output is; I've added some extra debugging lines to help try and troubleshoot your wallpaper problem there...

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

flopcock now install-no bugs so far

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

jolouis-

Un-installed, deleted, re-installed. Loaded fine, first try enabling alarm freezes on the "Wait a Moment" screen 2+ minutes. Killed it, restarted, alarm works fine. Still get the wallpaper error.

From xterm as root:

read user config file
trying to load/home/user/MyDocs/7mile%20beach%20grand%20cayman.jpg
Your osso lib has an issue, power management disabled...
python[1028]: GLIB DEBUG ConIc - con_ic_connection_send_event(0x352c10, 4e6f9040-e549-4da6-a3ac-09ce2ab12300, WLAN_INFRA, 0)

Just for giggles, I renamed and reset my background eliminating the spaces in the file name (7mile beach grand cayman.jpg to 7milebeachgrandcayman.jpg) and no more wallpaper error. Output from xterm is the same (with the exception of the filename).

Hope that helps.

*edit* on screen blank xterm adds:
System Inactivity: 1
System Inactivity: 0

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Glad to hear that it's now at least installing without problems. Lemmy, you have some interesting stuff going on there for sure! ;o)

The background thing I'll try myself here with a background file that contains some spaces and strange characters/etc to try and reproduce the error; thanks for helping troubleshoot that one!
As for the alarm thing locking up the first time you try to set it, and then working properly after that... that's very strange, it sounds like you may have had an old alarm in the AlarmD queue that was messed up or something. In any case I'm glad to hear that it worked after the first attempt, but I'll wait and see if anyone else runs into that odd behaviour as I've now installed on 3 tablets and have not been able to get it to occur myself.
One thing that's really, really unusual though is that you say the terminal output says "Your osso lib has an issue, power management disabled...", (which is the result of that old line 73 failing), but then it later produces "System Inactivity: 1
System Inactivity: 0 " which means that the old line 73 is actually working! Very confusing... lol Anyways again thanks for the help troubleshooting this, I'll try to get that wallpaper one at least fixed up.

Thanks!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Quick update:
Okay got everything figured out, just a few very small things that were causing the problems in the end.
1) Lemmy, in ci_init.py, around line 259 there's this:
userbg = userbg.replace("file://", "")

Just go in after that an add another condition to fix the spaces in your filename:
userbg = userbg.replace("%20", " ")

I've tested it on one of my tablets and confirmed that this resolves the background problem.

2) I finally managed to reproduce the osso.deviceState problem, and have fixed it in the development files here so the next version of the app will not generate any errors related to this. It works in the current version after the update I made last night, but it'll be properly properly fixed as of the next release.

3) The one thing I can't duplicate is the "setting alarm" thing hanging there for a few minutes the first time I run the app, but I'll keep trying at that.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Woohoo!! Latest deb works!!

My tablet froze for a good 5 - 10 seconds, blank screen.... Thought maybe it had shutdown.... Then Flipclock finished loading!

Subsequent launches load speedy.

Thanks!!

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Hi mfortner, I realise that this is off-topic for this thread, but I sometimes suffer from insomnia too. I read somewhere that it was not a good idea, when you can't sleep, to keep checking the clock. Indeed, I found that I sleep better if I turn my clock around (it has luminous arms) so that I can't see it at night. So maybe that will help you too.

Going back on-topic: Have you thought about generalising that fix? Presumably there will be other characters other than spaces that get escaped in filenames.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

jolouis-

Updated ci_init.py per your instructions. I can confirm that it picks up the spaces in the filename properly now.

Thanks for all the hard work keep it up.

Works great using the alarm dbus too! Will launch and play mp3's even if not running. Love the 10 minute snooze button as well.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

I used the new version today and set a time for 05:45 in the morning, but nothing happened. I just went off, at 10:45. Why is the tablet 5 hours late?
I looked for the timezone in the configuration and it is set right to Germany/Berlin.

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Im working on a 'jumping sheeps' version

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Yes, same behaviour with Italian time. Not sure if 12 or 24 or both mode.
I still have to take a look at the J code (I guess on weekend Ill' take a look) but I presume is just a trivial error easily fixable.
When I tried the Dbus road I read somewhere someone complain about time setting (12/24 connected to home config) and Qgil answering that was a low priority and never fixed... Maybe is related to that.
Anyway I would love to see a real integration with the 'nokiaclock' settings (does not seem right to try to duplicate an OS feature), have the small clock on status bar and the list of alarms on the nokia alarm list but im not sure if that is really possible (lack of docs and I think nokia close source fot their cr*p).
Im never been happy with the Dbus alarm thing; it never seem reliable enough: on paper the OS solution is the best possible but I feel there are just too many variable out of control: and launching the HUGE 3mb python just for make the thing hopefully playing is a recipe for disaster.
J is making a great works and probably a lot of this issue will just disappeared with new hardware and new OS, so is probably the right road for the official app. But that dont fit my need :) : Ill keep developing a parallel version where every variable the user see is what is going to happen and try to avoid as much OS traps as I can. The OS infrastructure on the actual tablets are so minimal that TO ME is often just easier replace with custom solutions (windows managments, requests, dialogs, etc). Obviously I just like doing it and is a waste of energy + bring really few contribute to the general maemo scene but is just my itch and I m glad maemo still host my python rantles.
Now is better grab some lunch and prepare for final week days rush

Re: Flip clock pre pre pre pre release
 

Set the Flip alarm for 6:00am this morning (and put it on nightlight), got woken up by her alarm clock at 6:30am. Looked at the NIT, Flip had reverted to daytime (flip) mode, frozen at 6:00am, bottom iconbar was blank. Had to 'task manager' Flip to get it to close.

Any ideas?