Notices

The difference between 0.9.3 and all versions after that is that the alarmD stuff got externalized to "flipAlarmSync" app and triggered by DBus calls; if you're saying nothing after 0.9.3 works then it suggests either your tablet has a problem with DBus not working properly, or the flipAlarmSync app is missing/not working properly. Let me spend a bit of time just double checking things in the package to make sure that on a fresh install everything is in the right place and working, and if I can't find any issues I'll let you know how to try troubleshooting on your end.

Thanks qole! I'll check it in the SDK and see, I don't remember actually trying to change themes I was more focused on getting the app to run and the alarms stuff working; I"ll see if I can track down the issue and get an updated Fremantle build out for you to try.

Agreed!

Explanation of Insomiac mode to follow...

From the "I just started but one day it'll be an instruction manual" for Flip:

Insomniac Mode

Flipclock has a special display mode called "Insomniac" designed for times when you want to have the clock running for long periods of time in a darker location, such as on your bedside table at night. This mode is only relavent to NIT platforms. In this mode the default brightness and dimming system settings are ignored, and the brightness controls of the screen are instead controlled by Flip directly.

When Insomniac mode is disabled no changes to default brightness or timeout settings are made. When it is enabled the following occurs:

• The tablet device will remain at the normal, system defined brightness level for the "brightness time" that you've defined on the system itself.
  
• Once that "brightness time" runs out, instead of changing to the default "dim" state of the OS, Flip causes the display to drop to the "Insomniac level" defined on the settings screen. This level is much more precise and flexible than the one provided by the OS, giving you a possible range of 3 (lowest possible brightness) to 255 (maximum brightness). By default this level is set to 3.
  
• The screen will remain at "Insomniac level" until one of the following occurs:
  • You interact with the device by pressing the screen or one of the hardware buttons
    
  • An alarm event occurs
• While at "Insomniac level" brightness, any interaction with the screen or device will cause a return to "Normal" brightness level. The event will not be interpretted by the Flip in any way. This means while at "Insomniac level" you can press any button or touch anywhere on the screen to return to "Normal" brightness without accidentally hitting a button or causing an unexpected action to occur; that is, in Insomniac mode, you can only interact with Flip while at "Normal" brightness.
  
• If an alarm event occurs while at "Insomniac level" brightness, the screen's brightness will gradually increase back to "Normal" level (same time frame as the alarm sound fade in).
  
• If an alarm event is running and the user selects "Snooze", the device will return to "Insomniac level" brightness as soon as the alarm display has been reset to the normal clock screen.
  

--- End Instruction Manual Excerpt ---

Also qole, I tried running Flip on my Fremantle SDK and everything seems to work just fine, I couldn't get the theme change to crash or fail... can you try running it from X-term for me and post up or PM me the shell output for the last few lines before it dies so I can try to see what's going on? Also, apart from that, do the alarms and things actually work??

Thanks!

...so what's the verdict on 0.9.5? my tablet wants to upgrade but i see someone had an issue with it so i dont want to install yet if that version has a problem. otherwise things are working swimmingly at the moment.

cheers all!

It works fine for me!

I found another "bug" although I probably created it myself.

Last night I happened to set an alarm for this morning. I wasn't near my charger, so I just left my N800 unplugged. To save battery, I set the alarm and exited FlipClock.

**I modified one of the files on my N800 to give me the ability to 2x tap the power button and shut off the screen, while leaving network connections up. I need a long press on the power button to wake the screen up.**

When the alarm went off, the screen stayed off, I needed to long press the power button to wake the screen, then hit snooze, left the screen on, set it down. Subsequently, FlipClock worked as expected.

Mostly a "bug" of my own creation, and a pretty unique situation. I don't expect that much if any time should be spent fixing it, but thought I'd pass it along for informational purposes anyway.

Well depends on what coding you used to "shut the screen off"; Flip calls the libosso "osso_display_state_on" method to wake the screen when an alarm occurs; if your code does something to override the screen state (i.e. sets the brightness to 0 for example), then this code will not have any effect (the tablet will "Wake up", but the screen would still be at 0 brightness since that's what you had it set to before). If you let me know what code you used to modify your power button I can try and toss the "Wakeup screen" code into the app if it's easy. The other thing you can try is put Flip into Insomnaic mode, then set your alarm as usual and exit the app. Turn your screen off as you did before, and see if the screen comes back on when Flip's alarm is triggered.
(This might work since Insomniac mode automatically overrides the tablet's brightness level, but might also NOT work if your code has changed some system wide brightness configs).

0.9.5 is stable, I just goofed when I first posted it as I mixed up the Diablo and Fremantle packages. And I still can't get this darn thing to go into Extras-devel for Diablo!... no idea why!

Thanks!

Maybe Qole wants to host it then??

Actually, I just edited mce.ini and enabled the 2x tap option that was already in the file. So I'm not really sure how it all works

I'm already hosting it, but my repository is an ugly hack / workaround. You really want to get it into Extras. I have only recently managed to get my packages to go through the maemo.org autobuilder myself using py2deb, so there's no way I could help anyone else. You could try Jeremiah...

OKay guys another quick update for everyone...

I've been talking to Jeremiah today (thanks for suggesting that Qole!) and will be working with him to try and get this up into extras as soon as possible (I suspect now that it might even be something really silly like I goofed on version numbering or something and confused the autobuilder).

On the Flip side of things (pun intended), I managed to get some good work done in the last few days on the clock settings page and some things that I'd been meaning to get to in a while, so I may try to push out another preview (that hopefully will make it to extras this time) in the next day or two. Key points are:

• Some minor caching to improve performance/rendering. I'd been thinking about this for a while, but finally got around to implementing it and it's well worth it. The alarm settings screen is much more responsive now (no more slight lags while changing between alarm days, etc), and all of the interfaces are just generally smoother running and less processor intensive. Side effect of this caching is that the rendering engine is now a bit more robust and that tacky background blocking the mood colour on the main screen is gone now.
• The clock settings screen is getting closer! I've implemented the max alarm volume and insomniac brightness level controls now, so you can tweak and customize those from the app. The graphics involved here still need a bit of tweaking, but I hope from a usability point of view you guys will be impressed as I did my very best to make everything as finger friendly and cool as possible (sticking with the whole goal of Flip in the first place). I've still got to add the theme browser and about/help buttons, along with that "intro" popup when you first launch..
• Some bug fixes and minor tweaks, along with a few graphic updates.
• Snooze indicator to show you in the alarm area that a snooze is active and how long remains; I may update this a bit to make the "Remaining snooze time" a bit larger/easier to read, but might also leave that for the night theme only, since that's where it's more important in my mind.

Still some work to do but I'm really happy about how things are shaping up now!

Thanks!