[Announce] Lanterne - an all-purpose flashlight app - Page 5 - maemo.org

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biketool	2013-05-30 , 17:43
Posts: 1,424 \| Thanked: 2,622 times \| Joined on Jan 2011 @ Touring	#41

Originally Posted by sixwheeledbeast

An option to quit or switch off the light on lens cover closed will be handy.
I was using the torch yesterday and automatically closed the lens cover.
An hour or so later I spotted the battery drain and light from the gap in the cover. Oops.(snip)

For me with no lens cover using a Mugen cover for double Scuds it is actually a nice feature, I wish the Flashlight app had this option to ignore the camera on/off switch.

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	Estel	2013-05-30 , 18:39
	Posts: 5,028 \| Thanked: 8,613 times \| Joined on Mar 2011	#42

Originally Posted by sixwheeledbeast

An option to quit or switch off the light on lens cover closed will be handy.
I was using the torch yesterday and automatically closed the lens cover.
An hour or so later I spotted the battery drain and light from the gap in the cover. Oops.

Originally Posted by biketool

For me with no lens cover using a Mugen cover for double Scuds it is actually a nice feature, I wish the Flashlight app had this option to ignore the camera on/off switch.

Same here, even despite fact, that I've, actually, created a camera cover modification to mugen backcover. Please, if implemented, make this configurable.

Originally Posted by Copernicus

Well, there are users, and there are users, right? You I trust, but we've just recently seen that there are some users (<cough>TheoX</cough>) who have rather strange notions of what activities are and are not healthy for an N900 to endure. I'm really nervous about someone grabbing an app like this, cranking up the parameters all the way, and leaving the thing running until something fails.

Let me make one more appeal: I personally keep a little LED flashlight on my keychain for when I really need a portable light. These things provide far brighter light than the N900 can, for a longer period of time, and are disposably cheap. For example:

http://www.amazon.com/Cree-300LM-Min...ref=pd_cp_hi_0

Couldn't something like this work for you? Thanks!

Well, it was the kindest way of telling me to FO with some feature request, that I've ever got

Understood and accepted, you're the boss here. Just FYI, I actually made some DIY high-powered LED flashlights with and without adjustable lenses.

It's just that N900, for many things, is a omni-tool, (funny resemblance to Dr. Who's sonic screwdriver

), not to mention Murphy's law, dictating, that for every useful thing you own (like flashlight), there is infinite number of situations, where you will need it exactly at the moment, when you don't carry it with yourself. For this sole reason, I skipped using compact camera, and rely on N900 for my quick-shoto needs.

I think that settings option to enable persistent strobo flashlight - with pop-up warning about possible damage - would be enough (and equally/more useful than "don't aim it at your eyes" thing). But, as said, not pushing you into anything, all after all, I can move my a**, learn some more coding (based on your nicely documented source code), and prepare some terminal thingie to perform strobo flashlight duties.

Thanks for this (and other) wonderful piece of software, no matter what!

/Estel

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	peterleinchen	2013-05-30 , 19:41
	Posts: 4,118 \| Thanked: 8,901 times \| Joined on Aug 2010 @ Ruhrgebiet, Germany	#43

Just a small comment/warning regarding this feature.
I heard of 'blinded' sensors due to flashlight enabled while cover closed. But this was a Symbian device then.

Estel/Copernicus: any comment?

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	pichlo	2013-05-30 , 20:26
	Posts: 6,447 \| Thanked: 20,981 times \| Joined on Sep 2012 @ UK	#44

Originally Posted by peterleinchen

I heard of 'blinded' sensors due to flashlight enabled while cover closed. But this was a Symbian device then.

Estel/Copernicus: any comment?

Sorry I am neither but I suspect this is an urban myth. If a sensor can be blinded by the light coming out of an LED, then how about a daylight? A midday sun must be a couple of orders of magnitude brighter.

Since we are in the feature request mood now, then how about a timeout? 30 minutes of the LED on with the cover closed ought to be enouh for everybody!

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	Copernicus	2013-05-30 , 22:07
	Posts: 1,986 \| Thanked: 7,698 times \| Joined on Dec 2010 @ Dayton, Ohio	#45

Originally Posted by pichlo

Sorry I am neither but I suspect this is an urban myth. If a sensor can be blinded by the light coming out of an LED, then how about a daylight? A midday sun must be a couple of orders of magnitude brighter.

Actually, I'm fairly certain that you can damage almost any optical sensor (digital, analog, or human) by pointing it directly at the sun long enough.

I've finally discovered what folks are using to detect the status of the camera cover: there's a way to get it by making a DBus call to the "org.freedesktop.Hal.Device" interface. I should be able to get it into the next daily Lanterne update.

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impeham	2013-05-30 , 22:20
Posts: 669 \| Thanked: 433 times \| Joined on May 2010	#46

one usage i see in it for me is while running at night - there are dark roads where cars are driving (the N900 is tied to my wrist) - a flash every few seconds really make you visible (there are flashlights for bikes that does a similar thing). Can you make the configured flashes work without a constant button press?

Another suggestion for the morse code - allow it to transmit the message in a continuous loop.

Nice app - thanks

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	Copernicus	2013-05-30 , 23:01
	Posts: 1,986 \| Thanked: 7,698 times \| Joined on Dec 2010 @ Dayton, Ohio	#47

Originally Posted by impeham

Can you make the configured flashes work without a constant button press?

I'm nervous about making the high-powered flashes continuous, but there should be no problem making the torch flash continuously. Let me give that a try...

Another suggestion for the morse code - allow it to transmit the message in a continuous loop.

Not hard, I'll put that in.

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king Ralphred	2013-05-31 , 00:03
Posts: 310 \| Thanked: 202 times \| Joined on Jun 2010 @ Ireland	#48

I've followed this thread since pierogi. Absolutely fascinating.
As a comprimise, would it be possible to put anything out of perameters in a different colour. That would satisfy Estel. And anyone who's found this program knows the score.
Just got my second n900 as well. Does that mean you'll be needing another stand?

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	Copernicus	2013-05-31 , 00:50
	Posts: 1,986 \| Thanked: 7,698 times \| Joined on Dec 2010 @ Dayton, Ohio	#49

Originally Posted by king Ralphred

As a comprimise, would it be possible to put anything out of perameters in a different colour.

Well, there are a couple of things that work against it; one, I'm not really certain myself what the dangerous parameters are. Two (especially after seeing what TheoX did to his N900), I'm not really sure that marking some options as dangerous would necessarily prove a deterrent to some users making choices that damage their device, and only worry about it afterwards...

Just got my second n900 as well. Does that mean you'll be needing another stand?

I've got your stand sitting proudly in my kitchen, and I also managed to snag one of fake's laser-cut stands a while back, which I'm using on my desk. And it's not enough!

I'll often have both n900s on the desk, or in the kitchen, and at least one of them will be on the nightstand when I go to bed too... So yeah, I guess I could use another, if you're up for it.

BTW, to everybody out there, Lanterne 0.4.0 has just started its way up to the extras-devel repository. Lanterne now finally has access to the status of the camera cover, and will avoid turning on the LEDs when the cover is closed. (And it will turn off the LEDs if you close the cover.) And yes, this behavior can be disabled via a setting on the new Preferences panel, available from the drop-down menu.

Also in this update, a "continuous pulse" option for the Torch mode has been added to the main window. This is essentially just like the SOS option; in fact, I simply changed the letters "SOS" to the letter "E" (which is a single dot), so it is also controlled by the dot-duration value on the Morse code window.

And, in the Morse code window, there is now an option to continuously broadcast the chosen text, rather than stop when it reaches the end.

In other news, I finally found something I should have located last week, a link describing the n900's flash LED hardware:

http://wiki.maemo.org/N900_Hardware_Flash_Torch

From this page, you can get to the data sheet for the ADP1653 controller chip. I've been able to determine from this that the Torch is running at 50 mA, and that the Flash brightness levels correspond to a low of 215 mA (at the 12 setting) to a high of 320 mA (at the 19 setting). Unfortunately, I'm really not a hardware guy, so I don't yet have a good understanding of how to translate these values to a potential danger level... But in any case, I should be able to provide more detail in the Lanterne parameter values now.

As always, this code is fresh off the presses, beware bugs!

BTW, a photo of king Ralphred's beautiful stand:

Attached Images

Last edited by Copernicus; 2013-05-31 at 00:57.

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Wikiwide	2013-05-31 , 07:29
Posts: 1,994 \| Thanked: 3,342 times \| Joined on Jun 2010 @ N900: Battery low. N950: torx 4 re-used once and fine; SIM port torn apart	#50

Originally Posted by hycraig

[idea/request]
how about a sound detection mode that makes the led flash with music input from the mic like react to the beats, also have mic sensitivity adjustment for it, or an option to play a music track and to flash in time to the beat would be cool.
thank you for your work

Originally Posted by Copernicus

Hmm, let me take a look at the audio device stuff. I've never played with audio before myself, I'm not entirely sure how you pull beat information out of an audio stream. (Just look for raw volume spikes or something?) I'll do some investigating.

If you need to look only at volume spikes, then install VUmeter and configure it to execute certain commands when volume spikes - and code your LED application to be executable from outside. Then, instead of repeating work done in VUmeter, you will make your application integratable with others.
Otherwise, small Lanterne will become a large and bloated software. Not good, in my humble opinion.
A question: can you add second column of buttons - or an easy switch between white LEDs and red LED - with the same functionality for red LED? I know that it is not as bright, but that's exactly the point. First, red LED can be as fun to play with, and learn Morse code, as white LED, without damaging the eyes. Second, red light doesn't disrupt the night vision like white or green or blue does; when red light is pure enough, even photographic film is not damaged by it.
Best wishes.
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