App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

Hey Guys,

I really like how when I picked my iphone up, the screen would come on. Is there an app for the N900 that can do this? I figured this could be done with the acceleromator...

Also, how about when I tap the screen... I hate having to slide the keyboard open to get the screen to come on, is there a better way?


Thanks,

Mike

Re: App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

You can use the slider, and press the power button and then slide the virtuall slider.

Re: App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

I want it to come on just by thinking it.
Need an app for that!

Re: App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

yes, but its much better (usability wise) to just pick up the phone, tap the screen or maybe pickup and shake the phone.

I hate pressing the power button => the button is too small
I feel the slide button will eventually wear out
I should only need to open the keyboard when I want to use the keys

Re: App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

If nobody else has one yet this would probably be a pretty easy app to build; not having an N900 I couldn't test it, but in theory it's easy. The bigger question would be about practicality:
1) Doesn't the screen come on when you press it anyways? Unless you've got it locked? Or is that not the case on the N900 (that's how the old N8x0's worked)
2) Danger would be having the phone in your pant pocket and moving too fast/quickly would cause screen to come on as well which would be bad (the phone doesn't know when you "pick it up", it only knows "when it's been moved with a certain amount of force in a certain direction"...

As I said I don't have one to test with but... thoughts?

Re: App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

The key would be tying the proximity sensor to the accelerometer so that this doesn't happen.

Device moves in pocket, but the proximity sensor senses an object within a certain amt of inches and it won't come on. No sensing but object moves and then it comes on.

Really makes for a simple gesture and works alongside the phone-app activation one if you think about it.

Re: App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

Wouldnt this require something to be constantly running in the background and that could result in the phone never truly entering a idle/sleep state. Could be quite a battery killer.

Re: App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

Running daemons in the background happens all the time on Maemo... it's not a battery concern at all as long as your daemon isn't DOING a lot... i.e. if it's polling an accelerometer value once each second it shouldn't be a big deal... on the other hand, if part of the phone "idle mode" is to power down accellerometer then that might have an effect as the daemon would keep the accellerometer powered up. Won't know until somebody tries it...

Re: App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

maybe a simple gesture should be enough, have an app that waits for a gesture and do an action. shake two times wake up. shake three times open browser, etc....

Re: App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

The only real experience I have with the accelerometer is with shake2control. I do know however that even when not playing music that app will move to the next song if shaken.

I know daemons are running the in background of maemo, but would worry the poll period for this to be beneficial as an app would have to be so short that it would amount to being "always on". I wish I knew more about accessing the accelerometer and writing a daemon so I could contribute something more to this.

Re: App to Wake N900 When Picked up or Tap the Screen
 

Google is helpful though the documentation still is pretty cruddy and without an actual accellerometer to check with I have no idea what the values will end up being:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Accelerometers

My thought was simply to have a daemon that read the accelerometer values once per second, and compared those values with the values from 1 second ago. If any of them have changed by signficant amount and the device is "idle", then wake up.

Tie that in with the proximity sensor, and you're all set. So when promixity sensor + accelleromters change values together while device is "idle", it wakes up. Simplest theory I could come up with... half way through coding very basic test app as we speak...

Hmmm although prox sensor is only on front of the device... so if you had it sitting face up and you picked it up, it wouldn't change... so maybe not so handy... which brings us back to the old "phone wakes up as I walk" problem...