My screenshot

I was going to do a post about what Android apps I like, but it's to much work to just sit and describe the features of a bunch of apps. So, I'm going to go for a walk through my homescreen and describe how I use some of my favorite apps:


It looks pretty simple, but there's actually a lot going on thanks to the many cool Android apps available.

The top weather widget is Beautiful Widgets. The text on the right and left is displayed by Minimalistic Text. The actual text is updated every 30 minutes with a shell script controlled by Tasker which passes it to Minimalistic Text.

The text on the left is the date, the time of the last update and the number of visitors to my two blogs (zeroed out so I don't embarrass myself :) ). I mostly keep track of that to watch for spikes if something of mine gets posted somewhere. Not that I mind, but when I had the iphone blog (which still gets a lot of hits) people would post a script of mine with entirely wrong information and I used to have to chase it down and provide the correct information before someone screwed up their phone, so I got into the habit of watching the hits for spikes as a safety measure.


To the right is weather information. Wind direction and speed, visibility and barometer, temp and conditions. This is all gathered and formatted by the same shell script.

The text in these two blocks is aligned to the top of the icon, which is why they appear higher than the button in the middle. I may not keep it that way, but I did that when perfecting the weather information. Some weather conditions are long, like "light precipitation" and screw up the left/right alignment so I started breaking the lines and extending the conditions downward, so this gives me more room when it's "show and ice mix." Once I have examples of more long weather conditions, I'll start shortening them to "snow/ice" and put them back on one line.

Clicking the text on either side opens apps. I currently have the one on the right opening Wordfeud, because I check it often throughout the day, and the one on the left opens the phone.


The middle button starts and stops BeyondPod, the podcast app. It's a Tasker widget that changes from the play symbol to a pause symbol. It's not perfect, if I push play in the app, there's no way for Tasker to detect it, so it still shows the play symbol. But tapping it once straightens it out. I listen to a lot of podcasts that are usually an hour or more long and I usually have to pause them often, so this makes it easy and kinda cool too.

I use Launcher Pro. If you notice, the Tasker/BeyondPod widget is in the center of the screen. This is done by making a regular 1x1 Tasker widget and resizing it to 2x2 with LauncherPro. The icon moves to the center of the 2x2 block when resized.

The empty space below is not empty at all.


It's a 4x2 Minimalistic Text widget that I use to display information from Tasker. I have a profile to detect when the variable %HOMETEXT is set, so I just set it in any tasks I want to flash text and it carries out another task to display whatever is in the variable with Minimalistic Text.


It displays for 10 seconds then changes to a period because you can't set it for blank text and that's the smallest thing available. It actually isn't showing in the pic because I haven't used it to flash anything since the last reboot, but you can hardly see the dot when it's there.

Tapping anywhere on that 4x2 widget locks the phone by executing the app "Screen Off and Lock." Screen Off and Lock is a nice little app that does only one thing. When opened, it turns off the screen. My power button has gone out and I don't want to send it in to be fixed yet, so this is how I lock the phone. There is another app called "Invisible Lock Widget" which gives you an invisible widget that also locks the phone. It's really useful too, but it's a widget and can't be executed by another app. Screen Off and Lock is a standalone app so it can be "opened" by other apps, in this case Minimalistic Text.

Finally, to the dock. I need to find a better looking dock and app drawer icon. I made the text icons myself to fit a thinner dock and I need to remake and recolor those too, so don't knock my dock, it's a work in progress.

You can make the dock twice as useful with LauncherPro. Not only can you tap an icon to open apps or folders, but you can also swipe them to carry out several different actions. In my case, I just use them to open more apps and folders. All folders are created with Folder Organizer. The top word is the name to describe what happens when you tap, the bottom word is for swiping, and here is what mine do:

cam: opens the camera.
comm: opens a "communications" folder which contains the Phone, SMS, gmail, GVoice etc.

all: opens a folder containing 8 more folders that contain all my apps in different categories.
web: opens a folder containing all my web tools; Browser, Market, Tapatalk, Ebay, Amazon, etc.

App Drawer: opens the app drawer like normal.
App Drawer (swipe): opens a folder with all my "hacking" tools. Better Terminal Emulator, Tasker, a folder full of GSCript scripts, etc.

rss: opens BeyondPod, which I use as an RSS reader as well as podcatcher.
recent: pops up a list of recent apps, much more friendlier than long pressing the home button.

opt: opens Quick Settings, the app to quickly toggle GPS, Wifi, Tethering, Volume etc.
tasks: opens a folder of shortcuts to all of my Tasker tasks which I may want to run by tapping.

I made the wallpaper with an app named "Simple Wallpaper." It only makes different gradients for use as wallpapers, but if you want a gradient, it is certainly a nice app to use.


That's it, everything is done from that one home screen. I do have LauncherPro set for three home screens. The one to the right is for controlling my X10 home automation modules and is still very much a work in progress. The screen to the left stays empty unless I am testing something.

I hope this has been helpful or given other people some ideas.

Zoom widget designer

Pent, the creator of Tasker, is coming out with a custom widget designer named Zoom. He just released the first beta earlier today. If I can figure it out, I'll try to post something cool later, but the Tasker integration isn't implemented yet, which is what I am most interested in.

Ok, it didn't take me long to find something cool. Although the Tasker integration won't be implemented until the next version of Tasker, you can create a widget with buttons. Name the buttons and for Click Actions, select Broadcast Intent.

Now, in Tasker, select a new event profile (the orange triangle), select UI, then Button Clicked and enter the name of the button and select a task for it to carry out. Using my earlier post about using Tasker with home automation, I made buttons for two X10 modules then linked them to the tasks for toggling those modules. Here is the result:



Sweet!

The buttons can be resized and moved around on the widget for better placement and appearance.

61 minute cron

It seems like everyone who uses cron to schedule jobs in Linux eventually runs into a problem where they need to schedule a command at odd intervals, like 61 minutes. Cron can easily run every hour, but 61 minutes is harder to achieve.

The normal methods include using a sleep command or various rather elaborate methods in the script itself to fire off every 61 minutes.

A much simpler method is using cron's cousin, the at command. The at command will run through a file and run all the commands inside, so you just need to place the commands in a file, one per line, then add this line to the bottom of the file:

at now + 61 minutes < file

The commands can be any type of one-liner you want to use.

Here is an example. Call this file foo and to kick off the execution the first time, you can simply run: sh foo

date >> ~/foo_out
cd ~/tmp && rm *
at now + 61 minutes < ~/foo

That will output the date and time to ~/foo_out then move to a tmp directory and clean out files, then tell the at command to run itself again in 61 minutes which will again run the at command after executing the rest.

Tasker command runner

The Locale Execute Plugin is great for running shell commands or scripts with Tasker, but it can be tedious when you're testing the commands. It takes several steps to edit tasks themselves, and even if you don't need to edit the task, you still have to get to the editing error to change the command in the plugin.

There is a way to make it easier.

Profile/Context : Variable Set. Variable %COMMAND

Task:
1- Write File /sdcard/command %COMMAND
2- Execute: sh /sdcard/command

Or if you'd like to get the output of the command:

Task:
1- Write File /sdcard/output WAIT
2- Write File /sdcard/command %COMMAND
3- Execute: sh /sdcard/command
4- Read Paragraph: /sdcard/output to %OUTPUT
5- Go To 4 if %OUTPUT matches WAIT
6- Flash %OUTPUT if %OUTPUT doesn't match EOF
7- Variable Clear %COMMAND

Just make sure your command sends it's output to that file.

Now you only need to set the variable %COMMAND with the actual command you want to use. When the variable is set, Tasker will write the command into the file and the plugin will execute it.

You could even set the command by popping up a list to choose from, or by using the Variable Query which allows you to type a variable's contents into a box.

Security:

I wouldn't consider it very safe to have a file in which commands can be entered by anyone and ran, possibly with root permissions. But the first step of the task is to overwrite the file, so I suppose a person would have to be able to control Tasker in order to get their code executed, and if they can do that, they already have free reign anyway, so it's probably fairly safe.

Example Tasker Home Automation profile

I'm still pretty new to home automation, but have been coming home late the past few days to a dark house, so let's turn on some lights with Tasker. This assumes you're using Heyu/Linux and ssh, as in my previous post.

This may need some tweeks, I just came up with it tonight and haven't tested it. It would probably be more useful with a Tasker location profile, but I don't actually use any location profiles. When I drive into the garage, as long as my phone's screen is on and unlocked, it automatically connects to my home wifi. When I remove it from the car dock, the screen comes on and it connects to wifi, so I'm using wifi as my trigger instead of a location. If you use a location profile, adjust accordingly.

First, there's no reason to turn on a lot of lights at noon, so we need to know if it's dark when you get home.

Set up a new time based profile called Night. Set "From" and "To" to the times when it is dark where you live. Then make the entry task for the Night profile: Set Variable %NIGHT to "yes", and as an exit task: Set Variable %NIGHT to "no".

The variable should change at dusk and dawn every day, although you may need to adjust it every few weeks.

Now it's as simple as having your trigger check the variable and turning on the lights if it is dark. In my case "wifi connected" is the trigger, but maybe location or "cell near" is better for others. Since I used j2 and b1 in my last post as example X10 modules, I'll stick to them here. Under the wifi connected profile, I'd add:

Perform Task: j2 if %NIGHT matches: yes
Perform Task: b1 if %NIGHT matches: yes

And hopefully the lights will come on when I get home... if it's night.

Heyu home automation toggle for Tasker

(To my regular Android visitors, much of this has been posted here before, but I wanted to put it all together for any X10 users who stumble across it. Although it is related to specific home automation software, it might still be interesting to Tasker users too.)

If you're using X10 home automation devices at home, there are a few apps for controlling them on your Android phone, but if you don't mind using ssh and controlling your X10 from the command line, there are ways to make control your home for free. And, if you want to use an Android app called Tasker, it can be even more powerful that anything on the Market.

This will only concentrate on the simple stuff, how to get Tasker to control Heyu and how to make icons to imitate an X10 app. Tasker can perform so many other functions, like turning on your security system or opening your garage door when you reach certain GPS coordinates, that I don't want to touch on them here.

So, let's do the "simple" stuff. It may look crazily hard but it's not once you're familiar with Tasker/Heyu/X10. It took me 15 minutes to do all of this, another 45 to test workarounds to a Tasker bug, and like two hours of off-and-on writing to actually make the stinking post!

The first goal is to get Heyu running on your computer to control your X10 modules. I'll leave that to the reader because it was dead simple for me so my experience consists of "just install and run it". After that, we need to get ssh keys working and place the ssh key on the phone so you can log into the PC from the phone. There are many how-tos for setting up ssh keys so I won't get into that here either, but you may want to check this post for links that may help.

You should test your ssh logins with a terminal app on the phone. It's probably easiest to test the basic ssh command first:

ssh USER@IP -i /PATH/TO/SSH/KEY

Once you login (and exit) successfully with that, try something like this to bounce a command off your PC:

ssh USER@IP -i /PATH/TO/SSH/KEY "COMMAND"

That executes what I usually call a 'semi-login'. It uses the keys to log in, run the command and exit. Any output from the command on the PC will be shown in the terminal on your phone. Once that is working, let's make sure an x10 command works:

ssh USER@IP -i /PATH/TO/SSH/KEY "heyu on a1"

Now, you will probably want to put it in a script so you don't have to type it out all the time. I suggest changing the basic command to this first:

ssh USER@IP -i /PATH/TO/SSH/KEY "heyu $*"

That will log into your computer and run heyu with whatever arguments you give it on the command line. If the two arguments are "on a1" it will tell heyu to turn on a1. If they are "dim b2 10", it will tell heyu to dim b2 by level 10.

There are a couple of ways to use this as a script. If you're rooted, you can put the command in a file, add "#! /system/bin/sh" to the top and place the file in /system/bin. It can now be executed by typing the script name. I prefer doing this because it can be executed system-wide by any app.

If you're not rooted, you can put the command in a text file on the sdcard and run "sh /sdcard/filename"

I use the first method, and I'll call the script "ha" so, if you use the second method, anytime you see me executing "ha" just substitute "ha" with "sh /sdcard/filename"

Now that we have a command that works, let's put it to practical use. Using Tasker and it's free plugin named "Locale Execute Plugin", you can set up your commands to run from Tasker. All you have to do is create a new task, select "plugin", "execute" and type in your command.

Now, there are two approaches you can take, or a mixture of both if you wish. You can create widgets or shortcuts to Tasker tasks, so you can set up an "on" task and an "off" task for each X10 module, then put the shortcuts on the home screen. Or, as I prefer to do when using this approach, you can use Folder Organizer to group them all together in their own Heyu folder.

Another approach is to create on/off toggles for each module with icons to reflect the modules state. You first need a script on the PC to interpret the incoming command and dump a list of the on/off/dim state of all your modules to a file so Tasker can grab that file and update it's icons to reflect the state of the module.

Here's the script for the PC. Call it anything, but I'll name it "toggle" for this example. It performs two functions. First, it toggles the module you want to switch on/off. It checks, and if the module is on, it turns it off, and vice versa.

Secondly, it takes the overall state of the housemap from "heyu show h" and maps all the on/offs to a list of modules you want to keep track of. If you notice the last two lines, I am keeping track of j2 and b1. These would correspond to the Tasker icons that you want to update to reflect the on/off state of the modules. This info is stored in a file named "/etc/heyu/toggle.list"

(edited: Jan  9. Oops, I changed the custom "awkc" command to a
non-custom awk print command that will work for everyone)

#! /bin/sh
# don't knock the code! I prefer "compact" to "proper"

cd /etc/heyu
rm toggle.list
state=$(heyu onstate "$1")
if [[ $state == 1 ]]; then heyu off "$1"
elif [[ $state == 0 ]]; then heyu on "$1"
fi

stat ()
{
house=$(expr substr "$1" 1 1)
unit=$(expr substr "$1" 2 1)
t=$(heyu show h | grep House | awk '{ print $3,$2 }' | tr -d '()')
onoff=$(expr substr $(echo "$t" | grep -i "$house" | awk '{ print $1 }') "$unit" 1)

if [[ $onoff == \* ]]; then echo ${house}${unit} on >> toggle.list
elif [[ $onoff == x ]]; then echo ${house}${unit} dim >> toggle.list
else echo ${house}${unit} off >> toggle.list; fi
}


# List all modules you want to track here in the form of: "stat Hu"
# j2 and b1 are examples

stat j2
stat b1

# end

Now, we need a script on the phone to interact with the script on the computer. Let's call it "atoggle." This will connect to the PC and toggle the module, then copy the toggle.list file to the phone over scp.

#! /system/bin/sh
ssh USER@IP -i /PATH/TO/SSH/KEY "toggle $1"
scp -i /PATH/TO/SSH/KEY COMPUSER@IP:/etc/heyu/toggle.list /sdcard/Tasker/

Using j2 and b1 as examples, with Tasker, you want to create two new tasks to use the execute plugin to execute to following two commands:

atoggle j2
atoggle b1

Back on the home screen, create new widgets for both those tasks and name them by their house/unit code. I suggest picking icons that will not indicate whether the modules are on or off because the icons will be changed to reflect the state later. Here is an example of the icons I picked.



Now, let's set up a Tasker task to update the icons. This started out as an elegant task that tested well but upon real execution the task outran the scp command and ran before the file was transferred. Tasker is really poor at reading files so the first five lines are there just to pause the task until the file transfer is complete. It's completely illogical, but it works and is necessary and, trust me, you will go crazy trying to find an alternative! Just a quick explanation of what's going on in the first five lines: set the variable to tell it which line to read, overwrite the original file with "WAIT", copy it to a separate file because it messes up later reads if you start reading the original, read it and start over if the file still contains "WAIT."

1- Variable Set %ONE to 1
2- Write File Tasker/toggle.list. Text: WAIT
3- Copy File Tasker/toggle.list to Tasker/toggle.list2
4- Read Line. File: Tasker/toggle.list2 Line: %ONE to Var %WAIT
5- Go To Action 3 if %WAIT matches WAIT

6- Read Line. File: Tasker/toggle.list to Var %VAR
7- Variable Split. %Var
8- Set Widget Icon. Name: %VAR1 if %VAR2 matches on (pick an "on" icon)
9- Set Widget Icon. Name: %VAR1 if %VAR2 matches off (pick an "off" icon)
10- Set Widget Icon. Name: %VAR1 if %VAR2 matches dim (pick a "dim" icon)
11- GoTo Action: Number 1. If %VAR doesn't match EOF

Those last 6 lines are the real meat of the task and are rather elegant if you understand Tasker. Edit: I forgot to mention, you need to name that task and add it to the "atoggle j2" and "atoggle b1" tasks. So step 1 for each module would be execute the atoggle command and step two would be to perform the task I just mentioned to read the file.

Ok, let's walk through everything we've learned. You have two icons, j2 and b1 which are set to "neutral." In reality, both modules are on. When you click the j2 icon, Tasker executes "atoggle j2." This uses ssh to connect to your computer and run "toggle j2".

The toggle script checks if j2 is on or off and sets it to the opposite, then gets the state of all 256 modules and filters out the ones you are interested in (the ones placed near the bottom of the toggle script on the PC), then puts their state in toggle.list. Tasker uses scp to transfer toggle.list to the phone then reads all the lines, checking the module and changing it's icon to reflect it's state.

If j2 and b1 were both on and I toggled j2, the end result is this:



j2 has been toggled off and both icons have been updated to reflect their state.

If you followed all that, you hopefully understand how it all worked. But you may wonder why I update all modules if you're only toggling one? Well, although tapping the icons only blindly toggles the module, looking at it will tell you if it's on or off. I update all icons because some modules may have been turned on/off through other means. It's always possible that the icon you tap is in the wrong state, but by updating all icons every time any icon is clicked, it lessens the chances that an icon will be "out of date."

You may want to create a task just to update the status of all modules. You can create your own, or you can just run "atoggle" on a dummy module that you don't use. Just leave it out of the end of the "toggle" script on the PC so Tasker won't track it's status.

If you want to add modules that may be in a dimmed state, the script does report them so you only need to select an icon for "dim." In this image, j2 is in a dimmed state.



If you use dimming but only want to report off/on states, just select the same icon for dim as you use for "on."

If you want to create an icon that dims a module instead of simply turning it on and off, you can use the information in this post and my previous post to set up a new task for dimming.

Phwew, I hope this is useful for someone!

Tasker variable select function

I had a task where I wanted to be able to enter a custom number into a variable. Tasker has a "variable Query" action that pops up a box and allows you to type in the variable, but I didn't like it because you have to tap on the box to bring up the keyboard, type out the entry, then save it. But a workaround is simple, as long as you know certain values the variable could be.

Task: VarMenu1
1 Variable Set %VAR to EOF (you could use 'variable clear' but I prefer using EOF since errors will sometimes manifest as EOF)
2 Perform Task VarMenu2
3 Wait Until %VAR doesn't match EOF

Task: VarMenu2
Task Type: Menu
1 Set Variable %VAR to 0
2 Set Variable %VAR to 1
3 Set Variable %VAR to 2
4 Set Variable %VAR to 3
...etc (change numbers to suit your needs)

Used alone, VarMenu1 acts like a function or library, a piece of code that you can leave by itself and call any time you need to perform a certain task, in this case custom setting a variable. Any time you're writing a task that requires you to input a custom value for a variable, just put "Perform Task: VarMenu1" and your task will pause to allow you to select a value from a list.

You can also use variables for task names when using the "Perform Task" action. This would be useful if you want to prepare more than one menu of variables. Instead of 0,1,2,3, maybe you also want to have a menu for 0,5,10,20. Just make a new menu task containing those numbers, let's call it VarMenu3, change the "Perform Task" in VarMenu1 to a variable and set the variable before that step.

1 Variable Set %VAR to EOF
2 Variable Set %VARMENU to VarMenu3
3 Perform Task %VARMENU
4 Wait Until %VAR doesn't match EOF

Voila, flexibility!