Tuesday 29 November 2011

A bugfix for the previous post

Here's a fixed APK of the previous version. Delayed and repeating events will now behave correctly. Since Llama now only check events that are likely to be affected by a trigger, you may find your delayed or repeating events lingering about for a bit longer. They'll only be checked when their 'delayed until' or 'repeating at' time expires. They still won't run their actions if they shouldn't, but since Llama isn't constantly/needlessly checking them Llama can't remove them earlier.

It also now has the market's BILLING permission included so I can start working on an alternative way to donate. A lot of you want to donate more than 80p, which is very cool :) There's no UI for the donation at the moment, so it's just sitting there in the code not doing anything for now. If you're worried that I might try and ninja-bill you, then rest assured that you have to confirm an in-app purchases through the Android Market. It would be pretty dumb otherwise.

Version 1.2011.11.29.1700

Download

Sunday 27 November 2011

100,000 Llamas

The Android developer console says Llama has been downloaded 100,000 times now, and because it's a nice round number caused by the fact we have 10 digits on our hands we should celebrate! Although I'm not quite sure how to celebrate yet.

In the meantime, there's a bunch of new features to play with.

Version 1.2011.11.27.1700:

  • Audio becoming noisy condition, which may react faster than headset unplug or Bluetooth device disconnected on some phones.
  • Desk dock condition
  • Shutdown phone action.
  • Locale action plugin support
  • Speak action (requires Android Text-To-Speed engine.)
  • Calendar events can now filter by all day and busy/available.
  • Updates Minimalistic text widget when the phone boots, so that it isn't blank.
  • WiMax toggle should now work on more phones.
  • Llama no longer updates the vibrate mode if it hasn't actually changed (to prevent some superfluous vibrates on Samsung phones.)
  • Fixed calendar reading in Ice Cream Sandwich.
  • Speedier event tracking... Llama now only checks those events that are likely to be triggered when testing events, rather than checking all of them. However, this only makes about 200-300ms difference.

As usual, export your data before installing test versions, just in case you have to revert to the market version!

Download Llama - FYI - I've found a bug. Repeating or delayed events may not fire. If you use those, don't install it yet. Expect a fix later today.

Wednesday 23 November 2011

A quick note about ICS and calendars

There's a problem with phones running Ice Cream Sandwich and the Market version of Llama, which is caused by Llama trying to access calendar events. This is because the Calendar API in Android was never officially released, so had to be implemented using unofficial API calls. Now in Ice Cream Sandwich Google have finalised a way of reading calendar events. Unfortunately, it's subtley different to how Android 2.3 worked, so Llama craps itself.

There's a test version that ignores the problem rather than crashing on the blog, but Calendar events aren't working just yet. I'm working on it :)

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zyclotff7kdboy7

As usual, backup your data before installing the test version, just in case you have to uninstall and go back to the market version.

As an annoying note... Android give developers an emulator to test this kind of stuff. However, they don't let the emulator log into a Google Account, so you can't access a calendar! D'oh! If you'd like to lend a hand, get in touch by pressing the Llama-question-mark button in the app and emailing me. Ta!