Notices

I mentioned several weeks ago in the Dialcentral thread that I was working on an SMS notifier, and finally there is a first version ready to be tried out . Keep in mind that it is definitely alpha level and requires some setup on the command line.

Also, a big thanks to mrdally204 for his great suggestions, testing, and feedback.

Ok, on to the program. It works as an add-on to Dialcentral. The code borrows heavily from epage's work on Dialcentral, while adding alarmd functionality similar to that of flipclock.
For now it creates an alarmd event which executes the notifier on a recurring basis (e.g. 10 minutes) and plays a sound (thanks gogol!)* and blinks the LED.

*Note: The sound can be customized by swapping the alert.mp3 in /usr/lib/gv-notifier with one of your choosing. The default sound is the new email indicator from Modest.

Dependencies:
python2.5
Dialcentral (only for copying the login cookie, and then for reading/replying to the messages you've been notified of)

*UPDATED 08/11/09
To install:
1) download and install gv-notifier-0.0.3-all.deb

2) edit the configuration file called conf.xml

• to do this, first open xterm and enter 'vi /home/user/.gv-notifier/conf.xml'
• edit the username and password elements with your Google Voice username and password
• change the start-time element to the initial time you would like the alarm to go off. So if you would like the notifier to run every 30 minutes at exactly the top and bottom of the hour, you would set the start time to 05:00 (it's 4PM here for me, so 5 is the next up). Or if you have a few other mail notifiers running and you don't want them all trying to run at the same time you can set it to 05:01.
• change the recurrence-time element to the number of minutes between notifications. In the example above this would be 30 (the default is 10).
• and finally, the urls section controls which Google Voice events you'd like to be notified of. You can find a list of possible urls in this post. By default only SMS and Missed Calls are included (and only SMS is required). Feel free to delete the Missed Calls url.
• save and exit

3) **This only has to be done once, to set the alarm**
in xterm run the command '/usr/bin/python2.5 /usr/lib/gv-notifier/gv_notifier_alarmd.py'

If successful there should be an extra event added to /var/lib/alarmd/alarm_queue.xml, and if there are new messages you should see the LED blinking. To stop the LED (and launch Dialcentral) there is a duplicate Dialcentral icon created in Extras. I use this icon in place of the regular Dialcentral icon, but it could also be changed to launch Google Voice in the browser.

There is also a GV Notifier icon which will run the notifier manually in case you pick a long recurrence time and want to check in between.

To uninstall:
1) /usr/bin/python2.5 /usr/lib/gv-notifier/gv_notifier_alarmd_delete.py
this removes the alarmd entry (I have tried doing this with the .postrm script but no luck as yet)

2) uninstall through application manager

This is great!

Depending on how this evolves, if you want we can merge this into Dialcentral.


Some notes:

Username and password could be pulled from the dialcentral settings file which could ease user hassle a bit.

I'm fully willing to help in understanding my support/builddeb.py script which uses py2deb to generate packages.

How come you copied code rather than having a dependency and import my gv_backend to manager all the GV stuff for you?

So alarmd spawns a program for each alarm event? Have you benchmarked running this to see how much memory/CPU it uses (for how much user interruption and battery drain it causes). Also what about when not connected to a network how should this act and how much should it drain resources?

Is the LED API really that simplistic that you globally turn it on or off rather than giving some kind of token so that on/offs can stack (be kind of weird if led was turned on for emails but launching Dialcentral disables the led).

Hey epage, I actually have a version which imports gv_backend directly. But I was talking to mrdally204 and we wondered if it should be standalone in case someone wanted to use it only with the Google Voice website instead of Dialcentral. But it will work either way if you wanted to integrate it.

As for the alarm benchmarking, I've been using the program for a couple of weeks, with a recurrence time of 10 min, and it seems to be quite good on battery life. I'm very picky about this actually, and I've been happy with it.

I have added settings to the alarm to have it run only when connected to the internet, so when not connected it does nothing, just like the Modest notifier.

I've tested the LED functionality and it doesn't turn off the LED for emails or chats, at least from what I've seen. So I think they are each independent, but I'm no expert so someone can correct me.

Hey addisjon,

I'm not sure if I did something incorrectly or if there was a problem updating over the previous beta I had installed but I'm now in an infinate loop on start up. After I installed the latest one you sent to me in the email, I noticed that the lock, unlock icons at the top of the screen (when you lock the device) were red x's instead of the normal icon. I then restarted the device to see if it was something that could fix it. It will attempt to load, the nokia screen is present and the LED is lit. It goes about 95% across (the blue line at the bottom) the light then goes off and the unit restarts. I'm attempting to reformat the tablet and see what we have left. I'll get back and let you know. I have been trying other software as well so I'm not 100% positive this is the issue, but it was right after I installed the latest update

I would also like to note that integration into dial central can be a great option as well as leaving it as its own stand alone app. That way if you use dial central it gets the added feature people are looking for. If you do not use it, then you still have the option to install it on its own. However if its going to be a stand alone app, you need to figure out a better way to disable the LED because the Dial Central icon would not make sense in that situation.

Have you made any progress in having the notification box pop up like it does for new emails/missed calls? That would be ideal.

Are you still planning on having the option for sound notifications as well as visual?

I've restarted many times without an issue. And just untar'ing the files shouldn't affect anything. It's a very benign program and I can't think of anything that would keep the tablet from starting up. Is it possible that you installed a few programs at one time, with the notifier being last, but only restarted once? That would mean one of the other programs could be the problem.

I guess it is somewhat possible, but it seemed to cause noticeable changes right after doing the instructions. I am going to give it another shot right now. I am doing a back up on my settings just in case. I could not get it to install properly with the original instructions, and I asked Epage if he knew why I was getting the Permission denied error. He thought that running in root would fix it. I ran it in root and afterwords all the items in the menus disappeared except for on my personal menu. And when I tried to run anything from the personal menu it would say loading xterm no matter what I clicked on. Xterm never loaded so I rebooted and bam, looped at the Nokia screen. I do not mind reformatting as all my settings are backed up so I will continue to try and get it going here. I will post back in a few to let you know how it goes.

***EDIT Still getting permission denied when attempting to create the folder usr/lib/gv-notifier Not sure how to proceed

I just want to thank you. I am cheering you on from the side lines. Getting a notification for a SMS would be extremely helpful. Thanks again. Come on Beta!!!

I am getting permission denied too. I'm not running it in root because of the first step in the instructions. I also have not restarted my N810 since I tried this nor have I tried launching gv-notifier yet. I also was not able to edit the conf.xml, although I didn'tg gainroot to do that so I wsas wonderfing if that was tghe issue. That's also why I havedn't tried launching gv-notifier, since I was unable to edit conf.

Do not install in root! That seems to be the cause for the reboot loop. I believe addisjon is looking into what the issue is. Check and see if your apps load as expected. I was having issues with email and contacts when I was falling into the loop. If those are loading up fine I do not think you will have an issue with a restart.