Droid related stuff (problems/solutions tips, tricks, apps)

[WrenchHead]

I figured I'd start this thread as a repository of info about the specific Motorola Droid stuff.

My first quibble is that when you use the front screen slider to turn off the ringer there is no option to set it to vibrate. It's either all on or all off. You can use the buttons on the side of the phone when it's unlocked to move it to vibrate only, but that's dumb. I downloaded a widget from market called Rinter Roggle Widget that's a button with three states (ringer on, vibrate only, and all off silent.) It's on my main desktop now, so I can set the phone to vibrate when I'm at work.

I'm going to try an app called Locale after work which lets you program various states you can switch between like "at work" "at home" "at church" which allows you to change your ringer volume and other things. Supposedly Locale can change these things on the fly using your GPS to find your location. It also has a time scheduler I believe to turn the phone sounds on/off based on time of day.

To reboot the phone via keyboard, hit shift + alt + delete at the same time.

[Jobu]

I'm going to try an app called Locale after work which lets you program various states you can switch between like "at work" "at home" "at church" which allows you to change your ringer volume and other things. Supposedly Locale can change these things on the fly using your GPS to find your location. It also has a time scheduler I believe to turn the phone sounds on/off based on time of day.

That would awesome for my blackberry. >>Heads to google...

[daoist]

Wish I could post a screenshot.

Buddy IMed me a link to a youtube video. Right there in the IM it added a thumbnail and description. How awesome is that?

Also, I guess facebook messages get sent to this thing too. Nifty!

[MarcusAurelius]

I'm going to try an app called Locale after work which lets you program various states you can switch between like "at work" "at home" "at church" which allows you to change your ringer volume and other things. Supposedly Locale can change these things on the fly using your GPS to find your location. It also has a time scheduler I believe to turn the phone sounds on/off based on time of day..

oh that sounds fucking awesome. surely there's an iphone app-for-that?

[Lars]

I'm going to try an app called Locale after work which lets you program various states you can switch between like "at work" "at home" "at church" which allows you to change your ringer volume and other things. Supposedly Locale can change these things on the fly using your GPS to find your location. It also has a time scheduler I believe to turn the phone sounds on/off based on time of day..

oh that sounds fucking awesome. surely there's an iphone app-for-that?

This is one beef I've had with the BB OS. I go to the same places every day and use the same profiles every day...why can't I schedule profiles to become active at various times of the day?

[WrenchHead]

It's a simple concept, so it should be pretty easy for someone familiar with the APIs to develop an app for it. You don't need to use GPS, but rather the calendar to schedule the stuff. I'm somewhat tempted to dig into the droid developer info and try to learn how to write code to make some custom apps. I've got a couple of ideas for stuff that I couldn't find in the market.

[Wargazm]

I'm going to try an app called Locale after work which lets you program various states you can switch between like "at work" "at home" "at church" which allows you to change your ringer volume and other things. Supposedly Locale can change these things on the fly using your GPS to find your location. It also has a time scheduler I believe to turn the phone sounds on/off based on time of day..

oh that sounds fucking awesome. surely there's an iphone app-for-that?

Windows mobile has had apps that do this for ages and ages. There's no iPhone App...and I'm guessing Apple's retarded SDK restrictions are to blame. There might be something that does that in the jailbreak side of things, but I haven't looked into it.

[Jobu]

I'm going to try an app called Locale after work which lets you program various states you can switch between like "at work" "at home" "at church" which allows you to change your ringer volume and other things. Supposedly Locale can change these things on the fly using your GPS to find your location. It also has a time scheduler I believe to turn the phone sounds on/off based on time of day..

oh that sounds fucking awesome. surely there's an iphone app-for-that?

This is one beef I've had with the BB OS. I go to the same places every day and use the same profiles every day...why can't I schedule profiles to become active at various times of the day?

I found one, but unfortunately they don't have a version for the BB Tour.

http://www.toysoft.ca/locationprofiler.html

[daoist]

It's a simple concept, so it should be pretty easy for someone familiar with the APIs to develop an app for it. You don't need to use GPS, but rather the calendar to schedule the stuff. I'm somewhat tempted to dig into the droid developer info and try to learn how to write code to make some custom apps. I've got a couple of ideas for stuff that I couldn't find in the market.

It should be, but unfortunately the iPhone OS doesn't let apps run in the background, so it can't be on just to check the time in the background.

So, locale can work in time-only mode? Does it integrate with the calendar at all? I have all of my work scheduled on my calendar, so it'd be ultimately pimp if it knew to put the phone on vibrate during those times.

[daoist]

omfg it does.

[daoist]

holy shit, this is awesome.

[daoist]

The only thing I don't think I can do is this:

I have several appointments where I work at a client's place. I name the event "Jane Smith" or so. This seems to only be able to key off of the name of the event. What I'd like to do is key off of the free/busy status of the event. So if I have something set to "busy", turn the ringer off and vibrate on. As a work around I can title all of my side jobs something else and make a note of the client's name, but dammit I don't want to change.

So far I have it set up so that during calendar events named "work" it's silent and vibrate. And during times between 11:30am-1:00pm it's set to ring as normal during lunch time.

[WrenchHead]

I don't usually have much on my calendar at work other than meetings. I just want it to vibrate from 8-noon and 1-5 on weekdays, otherwise blare the ringer at full volume. Hopefully you can override with the silent option on the front screen right?

[daoist]

Yeah it looks like changing the ringer manually does override the settings.

[daoist]

Holy shit, qik.

You can stream live video from your droid.

http://qik.com/daoist

[Gretyl]

O hai, non-WinMo!

[WrenchHead]

I noticed that twidroid makes the LED on the front face of the phone flash in blue. Meanwhile the email app flashes the same LED as green. I wonder what controls that since there's no changable setting for it.

Tonight after work I'm going to FedEx to pick up my night stand dock to turn this thing into a 200 dollar alarm clock.

[WrenchHead]

I'm unable to get twidroid pro to upload a video. It keeps crashing on me when I try it. Perhaps there's a limit on video size.. I was able to attach a really short video.

[daoist]

Tonight after work I'm going to FedEx to pick up my night stand dock to turn this thing into a 200 dollar alarm clock.

Where'd you get it? I'm waiting for a verizon store since I guess my work discount applies to accessories too.

[WrenchHead]

Last Friday I went to the Verizon store and had them order me one. Shipping was free. I like it because the phone slides onto it easily (less wear on the power jack) and obviously the clock/weather station/photo picture frame thing is cool. The dock came with another 120v->USB plug and USB->micro USB cable, which I was surprised about.

So now I have a spare cable to take to work and hook to my computer.

[WrenchHead]

Force the Droid into dock mode without a dock using this app:

http://mobiletech.knguyentu.com/2009/11 ... -dock.html


about the car dock:

If you cut off the piece of plastic that currently covers the camera in the car dock you can take "COPS" quality video when it's mounted to your windshield. The phone still snaps in correctly and is securely held.

[daoist]

Haha, I was thinking of clipping that piece off too

That + Qik = LIVE police chases!

[WrenchHead]

I set up my voicemail to call into google voice like so:

Menu > Settings > Call Settings > Voicemail Settings: set the number to: 1515XXXXXXX,,,PPPP

where XXXXXXX is your google voice phone number and PPPP is your PIN. Put the three commas in as a pause.

So far it works slick. By changing the settings you bypass your verizon voice mail completely.

[daoist]

I'm not really sure what we've done differently. My voicemail button goes straight to google voice now. I suppose I do have to enter my PIN, but verizon is completely out of the mix.

[daoist]

Is your camera loud when it's trying to autofocus?

[WrenchHead]

I'm not really sure what we've done differently. My voicemail button goes straight to google voice now. I suppose I do have to enter my PIN, but verizon is completely out of the mix.

My old voicemail setting pointed to *86 or something (verizon voicemail I presume?)


The camera noise is generated by the phone, the 'chick chick chick chickity chick'

If the phone is in silent mode, it doesn't make any noise.

[daoist]

I hear a mechanical sound from the camera itself. I'm going to guess yours doesn't do it, then.

Best way to replicate it is to open up the Barcode Scanner app. It constantly focuses at different lengths so i constantly hear the motor.

[daoist]

The android SDK lets the developer set whatever colors they want for the LED light to flash. If the device can't make that color, it uses whatever it has that's closest: http://developer.android.com/guide/topi ... tml#Lights

[daoist]

my voicemail number is still set to *86 in the settings. But when I hit the voicemail button on the dialer, I get gvoice's voicemail. How are you getting to the voicemail?

[WrenchHead]

when I signed up for google voice, they gave me a phone number to call into 1-515-462-xxxx which then requires a PIN. Nothing goes to my Verizon mailbox.. it's been bypassed by Google Voice I think.

On Shop Savvy, I got it to finally work by setting the camera to 'Action' scene mode. I assumed the noise it makes while autofocusing was electronically generated.

I'm gonna make a period calendar app for women and have the LED indicator hit on RGB #CC0033.

[daoist]

If you set the camera to action mode it locks the focus to infinity. That's why there's no noise

[WrenchHead]

You're right. I just turned the camera on and the sound off and looked at the lens. That noise is the motor driving it internally to focus. What a pile of shit. You can watch it catch focus and then immediately go OUT of focus when taking the photo. They really need to update the software. The only reason outdoor photos are sharp is because of ~infinity focus and tight apertures.

I'm half tempted to force myself to learn the APIs so I can write a modification of the Camera application to adjust ISO and focus manually.

Forcing low ISO and being able to focus the camera completely manually would make it a pretty good camera. If only I had some motivation to actually make it happen... I bet people would even pay for that app if they could take control over their phone camera like you can on an expensive digital camera.

[daoist]

One of the items in the december rom update is a fix for the camera. Mine quite frequently can't get a focus lock (red corners instead of green when focusing) and that's supposed to be fixed.

But yeah, being able to do all of the camera stuff manually would be pimp.

[WrenchHead]

Having control over aperture, shutter, and ISO are the three variables that allow you to control a camera's exposure. I can't believe they sent it to market with such a crappy AF program. At least you can fix it at macro or infinity, but it still tries to focus either way. For some reason shop savvy works on Action mode even though you're focusing on stuff close. It needs a lot of light too.. more than you'd have scanning a TV box at Best Buy.

I just hope the ability to code in ISO controls is possible. I'd pay up to 10.00 for an app that let me control the camera in this thing like it was a Canon G11.

[daoist]

well, your idea's boned: http://developer.android.com/reference/ ... eters.html

[Dragmire]

That would be damn cool if it was that programmable though. I might jump ship just to program for the thing.

[daoist]

There's plenty aside from the camera that's programmable. I wouldn't call it a deal killer if you're looking for a platform to dev on.

[daoist]

Whoever wrote the sensors classes has a sense of humor:

http://developer.android.com/reference/ ... nager.html

[WrenchHead]

What would happen if you wrote your own injected methods to control focus or ISO infinitely though?
I'm admittedly javatarded, but I could stumble my way through it. The upper level methods are nice to have all those features available, but can't you poke stuff down into somewhere to gain control of the camera without relying on existing rolled up methods and packages? Or does Android not allow you to run stuff on the device that doesn't specifically use their methods?

Also, they have no controls for ISO, but they waste time coming up with float constants to represent different types of gravity within (or outside of) our universe??

(attached image)

[MarcusAurelius]

ha

[daoist]

When I first set foot on the moon, I expect to be notified by my DROID, dammit.

[WrenchHead]

I really need to learn how to install the SDK and get cracking. I can't believe that this is the first camera I've owned with no controls for the THREE HOLY VARIABLES of photography: ISO, Shutter, Aperture. Manual focusing (even if by throwing plugged in numbers at the hardware) is a must have as well. Meanwhile someone took the time to program in various scene modes. Hopefully as Android takes off they'll fill in the blanks. Obviously in the background the code communicates with the hardware to a great extent ISO, shutter, and aperture are set automagically depending on the amount of light coming in.

It's annoying to know that the camera COULD be fine if we had some sort of manual control over it.

[daoist]

You can dl the os source and see how it does the modes. You may get somewhere that way.

[WrenchHead]

I'll have to look for it tonight. Is that something I'd find on torrent or is it out on the web somewhere?

[daoist]

http://source.android.com/download

Android is open source.

I believe your strategy will be thus:

1. See how the hardware interface actually implements all of those wacky modes and such, it's likely by manipulating the ISO, aperture, shutter, and focus, right?

2. Create a POC to see if an app can diddle the same interfaces

3. Copy the camera app (also open source) and modify it to allow manually doing that.

[daoist]

I'm installing all the dev crap on my linux box at home, when that's done I'll pull the git repo and see what's up. I'm very curious about this too.

[WrenchHead]

I need linux or a mac to do this? Weird. Hmm.. Might have to fix a bad solder joint on my old thinkpad to install ubuntu.. This project keeps getting more annoyingly complex and December 11th looks that much closer

It's a good motivator to get me off my ass and learning how to install the SDK into netbeans or something and actually learning some sort of technical skills. I hate programming, so I never actually DO anything with it if I'm not at work, but the thoughts of releasing an ubernerd camera app onto the scene is tempting. Poking and prodding the hardware to do things it was never intended is a cool daydream. I'd like a sound activated camera that could be used at high speed regardless of digital noise to take time-warpesque videos of speeding bullets or whatever.

I wish I had more nerdfu. Alas, I'm just a middleman with only vague understanding of the code I'm looking at.

[daoist]

You can always install VMware and make an ubuntu VM to add yet another layer of complexity!

Do you have a great preference of netbeans over eclipse? There's a plugin for eclipse that's pretty nice, and the examples all use eclipse (though there's a bunch of CLI tools that will work too), so if you're not 100% married to netbeans I suggest eclipse to get started.

[WrenchHead]

I've got no experience with eclipse.. I hate netbeans. Back in the day when I programmed C, it was vi in unix.
so I usually just prefer notepad or whatever if I can get away with it.

The integrated ones that autocomplete method names are so annoying to me and slow. But then again, they bring in a lot of the code for you and keep everything tied together. I'm from the oldskool of top down procedural programming and object oriented stuff feels just like standing in a crowded elevator where I want to start swinging elbows until everything around me just goes away

How to get over that hurdle?

So can you download the OS into eclipse on a PC? I assume no?

[daoist]

Looks like no. Eclipse for programming apps and such, whatever you want for programming the OS.

edit: well i'm sure there's a git plugin for eclipse that would work, you could download the source and poke around, but you wouldn't be able to build anything.

[daoist]

Still receiving objects :-/

[daoist]

It looks like the camera bits and pieces are calling into an so provided by the maker of the camera, and it's goofy settings all the way down

[WrenchHead]

GPS Speedo app crashed my whole phone Saturday, or I should say it brought it all down to its knees and fucked up most of the funcationality. Power cycles and battery pulls didn't fix the problem. The only solution was to uninstall the application.

The symptom was that I activated the app which tried to turn on the GPS unsuccessfully. It had been working fine prior to that.

Once I uninstalled, the whole phone came back to life. I installed a different app called cgSpeedo that I like better anyway since it turns on/off the GPS only when you enter and as soon as you exit the app.

[WrenchHead]

Tether the droid to a computer without paying Verizon to do so:

http://www.junefabrics.com/android/index.php

[Halt! Hammerzeit.]

I noticed that twidroid makes the LED on the front face of the phone flash in blue. Meanwhile the email app flashes the same LED as green. I wonder what controls that since there's no changable setting for it.

Tonight after work I'm going to FedEx to pick up my night stand dock to turn this thing into a 200 dollar alarm clock.

Settings > Notification Settings > LED Color

[Halt! Hammerzeit.]

Tether the droid to a computer without paying Verizon to do so:

http://www.junefabrics.com/android/index.php

Free with excellent interface, but requires root.

http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/

[Halt! Hammerzeit.]

What would happen if you wrote your own injected methods to control focus or ISO infinitely though?
I'm admittedly javatarded, but I could stumble my way through it. The upper level methods are nice to have all those features available, but can't you poke stuff down into somewhere to gain control of the camera without relying on existing rolled up methods and packages? Or does Android not allow you to run stuff on the device that doesn't specifically use their methods?

Also, they have no controls for ISO, but they waste time coming up with float constants to represent different types of gravity within (or outside of) our universe??

(attached image)

If their library was written in C++, you could easily do it (casting a class pointer into a fundamental data pointer and ignoring private attributes), but Java doesn't typically allow gross hacks like this.

[daoist]

Wrench, try your camera's autofocus out. There's rumors of a silent patch to fix it. So far nobody can tell anything from version numbers or anything, though, except that everyones' cameras seem to work now.

[WrenchHead]

Hells yeah, it works now.





bigger: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2567/411 ... 3735_b.jpg

Video quality might be a bit better due to focus fix as well..

[Dragon]

looks like it's a timestamp bug.

There's a rounding-error bug in the camera driver's autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly on a 24.5-day cycle. That is, it'll work for 24.5 days, then have poor performance for 24.5 days, then work again.

The 17th is the start of a new "works correctly" cycle, so the devices will be fine for a while. A permanent fix is in the works.

[daoist]

I just tried resetting teh date back a few days and yeah, red corners. Very curious. Though the poster who posited the 24.5 day bug never linked anything or justified that in any way.

[WrenchHead]

Now that's some happy ass horse shit

[Gretyl]

Though the poster who posited the 24.5 day bug never linked anything or justified that in any way.

UNSCIENCE!

[WrenchHead]

Set it forward 25 days

This sounds like something that would happen to me in code I wrote.

[daoist]

Yeah, the guy who posted and didn't back anything up is a googler on the android dev team. So I'm gonna believe him. Funny enough, the Dec 11th update will be just in time to fix it for good assuming it's not pushed back.