Notices

Flipclock is now up for Preview/Beta testing! There's still quite a bit to be done, but the app should be usuable and desperately in need of your feedback! The original discussion of the old version/basis for this app can be found here:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=25582

Flip is a finger-friendly alarm clock designed specifically for NITs; it gives you the ability to have a nice big clock display, as well as per-day alarms and customized themes. The current release is:
0.9.7 Beta 7
0.9.7-7 is available through Diablo and Fremantle extras-devel repositories for testing! It will be in extras soon enough if we confirmation that people aren't having problems!

You can also get it from the garage page here:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa...rmelDiablo.deb
You can also grab the Fremantle build for testing from the garage page:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa....7-7_armel.deb


Feedback on either (especially Fremantle which I don't have a device for) is greatly appreciated and needed! Help me make Flip into THE clock/alarm clock app for Maemo!


If you install from garage you'll need to manually install the dependencies:
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


Here's a breakdown of where the current release stands:
0.9.7 Beta 7:
- Integrated Spenc3's awesome code improvements to make N900 work and be a great experience
- Fixed up missing button and exit button on night theme
- Improved audio playback code to try to solve problems and make everyone happier

0.9.7 Beta:
- Basic timer interface, though it's a bit out of place
- Alarm "folder playlist" mode
- Improved UI Graphics
- Slider for snooze time
- Minor bugs and tweaks.

See the release post here http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=286

0.9.6 Beta:
- Add slider controls and additional clock settings
- Added Insomniac lock control
- Added main controls to clock settings screen
- Fixed up graphics for mood picker in Flip theme
- Fixed up theme graphics for day theme (again)
- Implemented rendering buffers to improve display speed

0.9.5 Preview 3:
- Completion of Insomniac rebuild
- UI changes and many fixes (still some to go I know!)
- Added automatically terminating alarms (alarm goes off when sound is done playing)
- Improved "Seconds bar" code to make seconds handling more versatile for other themes in the future.

0.9.4 Preview 2B:
- Maintenance updates and bug fixes
- Made some user interface changes
- Major overhaul/rebuild of Insomniac mode

0.9.3 Preview 2:
- Fixes many bugs found in Preview 1
- Provides new "daily" or "weekly" alarm control modes
- Provides new "clock settings" interface for additional controls
- Provides FM radio alarms for N800 devices

Remember PREVIEW is not RELEASE, so there are still minor problems/graphics that need work/buttons that don't do anything yet, etc. Please provide feedback for anything you find/would like to see, but most importantly read previous comments to see if others have reported the problem and if I've responded to them already. Thanks!



0.9.0 Preview 1:
- 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...

Feedback is what it's all about here people, so good, bad, ugly, whatever I want to hear it so we can make this app into 5 star brilliance that everyone can enjoy!

I'm interested in trying to make some themes for flip clock. Since its themes and not skins, I'm guessing it won't be something as simple as replacing the image files. Is there going to be some kind of compiler program to create the theme?

On the topic of theme development... Actually, it's a lot easier than you'd think; no special compilers or anything required. The "theme" consists of your images along with a "themeDef.xml" file that describes the theme layout. You can customize anything, and achieve the "Special functions" such as next alarm time, etc just by specifying different "keys". I'm going to try to sit down and makeup a bit of a walkthrough/howto for theme development but that'll probably happen after I finish the rest of the app (the alarm settings screen) and get a full release out. In the mean time, the current themes are stored in:
/usr/share/flipclockC/themes
Take a look, each theme has a directory, and within that there's the image files along with the "themeDef.xml" file.

Let's say you want to make another theme to play around with/experiment. Just create a copy of one of the existing ones... say "defaultFlip", and place it into the themes directory. So imagine you want to make a new theme called "myAwesomeTheme":

1. Create /usr/share/flipclockC/themes/myAwesomeTheme directory
2. Copy contents of /usr/share/flipclockC/themes/defaultFlip to your new myAwesomeTheme folder
3. Modify/delete/alter any of the images you want; add your own, remove the ones you don't care about
4. Update the themeDef.xml file to reflect the layout and details of your theme.
5. Launch Flip, and press the "next theme" button; it will now cycle between all three themes (Flip, Night, Your theme).

There's more to it than that of course, and you have to be careful sometimes if you do something silly/make a mistake in your theme you'll crash Flip, but as I said there'll be more of a writeup as soon as I get the chance. If you want help/further details/etc just let me know and I'll be happy to share what I know!

Looks nice, but some bugs to report.

I'm using an N800, latest Diablo. This is my first time installing FlipClock.

Clicking the menu hardware button closes the app.

Clicking the drop-down menu does nothing.

In the second theme, the Next Theme icon is invisible, although it works.

Insomniac setting seems to show up only in the second theme, and clicking the insomniac icon closes the app.

For installing, I needed only libsdl-gfx1.2-4, which I had to install in Red Pill mode.

Thanks! Looks good despite ...

Yup somebody else mentioned that pressing the + or - key closed the app too... it was a left over from when I first started testing and I needed a way to exit, I just made any key exit if it didn't do something more useful! Anyways, I've fixed that in my current build.

There is no drop-down menu implemented right now.

Yup that's been pointed out previously. If you note I mentioned this in my original post:
The graphics aren't finalized yet so don't worry that'll be fixed, I'll try to add it for the next build at least since several people have mentioned it now...

There actually isn't an on-screen button to enable/disable insomniac mode... it's going to be on the clock-settings screen that doesn't exist yet. The button you're talking about is actually the exit button ;-) In the mean time you can toggle Insomniac mode on/off same as with the old version by pressing the hardware "back/escape" button (looks like a curly arrow right below the dpad).

Yea that's the most common one I figured people would be missing as it's not pulled in by pygame. Sampieter from the other thread also pointed out a good work around:
Thanks for the feedback though, greatly appreciate it!! And I'll get those minor tweaks taken care of, half of them were on the list already! ;-)

Thanks!!

this is great .... but

Last night I set an alarm and woke to see my tablet screen blank but glowing - had to reset the device. Once it rebooted I noticed the volume was at its highest setting.

But I can't get it to do this again - I made some more alarms and they worked perfectly so I don't know what the problem was.

Also - the theme system is an excellent idea. Can you give me a hint how you turn off the seconds display (which I don't need and it must add something to the cpu load) in the theme definition?

Thanks

Why not simply add libsdl-gfx1.2-4 to the package depends? I think this would solve the issue of having to install it manually either by red pill mode or as root.

Sounds like the tablet locked up/crashed... don't know if it happens again do share but I haven't run into that at all... can anyone else confirm/deny this happening for them?

The seconds actually adds almost zero load to the CPU as I made it really efficient in the way it redraws things (and like all else it stops drawing when the tablet is inactive), but if it's bugging you there are two options: you can disable it globally (for all themes that support it) by editing your preferences file:

1. edit /home/user/.flipClockPrefs.xml
2. Under <mainOptions there's a tag that says showSeconds... change the 1 to a 0
3. Save, re-run flipclock. Seconds will no longer be drawn

There will be a preference setting for this on the "clock-settings" screen when I get it made.

The other alternative, if you wanted to disable it for just a given theme, is to delete the "Second ticker" image from the theme path; Flip will detect that it's no longer present and so won't try to draw it. The file for the day theme is:
/usr/share/flipclockC/themes/defaultFlip/secs.png

I mentioned this in the other thread but must have missed it here. The way app manager works is that it will NOT automatically pull dependencies from repositories unless the package you're installing is in Extras or Extras-devel. When I manage to get a package that willbuild with autobuilder and make it into extras, then the manual sdl_gfx stuff won't be needed as the dependencies will be pulled automatically; you guys are just all getting in for the "preview" ahead of time, so you have to do a bit more leg work as a result ;-)

Same problems noted on the n800, latest diablo, rotation enabled (could this have something to do with it ? )

I think I might know what is causing my problems with the new flipclock (see earlier post).

I uninstalled the old flipclock before installing the new one, BUT I did not disable the alarms that were active in the old flipclock.

It appears that the new flipclock is somehow recognizing these alarms but is not behaving properly with them (once locking up the tablet, once just displaying the alarm screen but not playing any sound...).

Is there a way to absolutely wipe out any old alarms? Thanks