[Announce] Tethermon: Monitor tethered connections from the status area
 

Hi all,

As we all know, the N900 is a pretty neat device, but one deficiency it has with respect to Nokia's Symbian phones is that it doesn't provide any visual feedback when a tethered data connection is in use.

I noticed this early on, but after Jan Zbytovský commented on the bluetooth-dun page that there was no way to tell if it was in use, I decided to take a look at whether it was possible to write a suitable monitoring applet.

And it turns out that it is possible, by poking at various semi-documented DBus interfaces, and so I've stuck my initial attempt into extras-devel.

It's able to detect that a data connection has been started, stopped or suspended (eg: if you answer a call while using gprs/edge). The mechanism for detecting that a data connection is not tethered (being used by the phone itself) is not perfect but should work for anyone who doesn't have more than one APN.

In this initial version, the plugin always shows an icon (dimmed when no connection is in use) but I think it's preferable to show no icon at all when there's no connection, so I'll probably take it out in the next iteration.

Here's the package page:

http://maemo.org/packages/view/tethermon

Feedback is always welcome.

Enjoy!

Re: [Announce] Tethermon: Monitor tethered connections from the status area
 

Hi Philip,
now I red your article about this problem with tray-icon. I was very pleased that you want solve this. And I'm very happy that SW for Meamo is flexible and developing :D.
IMHO (if it possible) make option to stop/start DUN (?in tray menu?) and show tray icon only when BT is ON.
Sorry if is it stupid suggestion, I don't know exatly the possibilities.
J.

Re: [Announce] Tethermon: Monitor tethered connections from the status area
 

Hey it works fine, but after phone restart, there's no icon anymore...

Re: [Announce] Tethermon: Monitor tethered connections from the status area
 

Indeed. Seems like a bug in the python loader. I guess that until this gets fixed, my plugin isn't going to be much use :-/

Re: [Announce] Tethermon: Monitor tethered connections from the status area
 

So, I do plan to make the icon only appear when tethering is in use. As for controlling bluetooth-dun, it's conceivable, but a bit tricky as only root can start or stop services. I'll need to think about that one.

Re: [Announce] Tethermon: Monitor tethered connections from the status area
 

Why it doesn't start after a reboot:
The applet is evidently starting too early as killall hildon-status-menu works afterwards.

I also second the request for having no icon in the status area when the tablet is not tethering - it wastes valuable title space.

Re: [Announce] Tethermon: Monitor tethered connections from the status area
 

good catch. I'll have to try and cope with that.

Re: [Announce] Tethermon: Monitor tethered connections from the status area
 

Hi Philip,

Have you found any solution to start your application after restart? I'd like to use this, if that would work...