Suggestions to improve cameralert to make it even better.

Chocki · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 16, 2004 Posts: 21

Hi, I hope I'm posting this in the correct section.

Here's an excellent idea to make cameralert even better.

Why not make it launch when the car dock is connected and exit when the car dock is disconnected, that way there would be no need to have to start searching through Notifications to find the app, bring it to the foreground, press Menu then Exit to close it, or start looking for it when you get into your car to start it.

Ulysse Speedometer does this and it would be excellent if Cameralert could do the same.

It would also prevent unnecessary battery drain when the app is not in use.

Also, the pop up speed indicator that shows up over other apps, would it be possible to have a user settable value for it's vertical position where it shows, as in some navigation apps it covers crucial information like your current speed, but would not be distracting if it showed up in the sky section of the 3d map view, whilst in 2d view on some apps it is better positioned towards the bottom of the screen.

Thanks

Chocki.

lbendlin · Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 7:00 pm Post subject:

what's a car dock? How many devices have that?
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peterc10 · Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 7:16 pm Post subject:

Some (only a few) phones have car dock and the software on the phone detects when it is connected to the dock (by having a particular resistance between two of the pins on the connector I think). It then launches car dock mode. AFAIK if and how this is done depends entirely upon the phone that is being used.

However what gets launched depends upon the software used by the phone and is not controlled by the App AFAIK. So the OP needs to go into the phone's settings to see if he is able to change what gets launched. It has nothing to do with the App and so CamerAlert cannot change that.

Unless he is using the iphone version, in which case he has posted in the wrong forum.
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Chocki · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 16, 2004 Posts: 21

Errmm, Car or Home dock is a standard feature of the Android system:

With code like this:

action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" /
category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" /
category android:name="android.intent.category.CAR_DOCK" /
category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" /

here's an example:

http://www.androiddevblog.net/android/custom-car-dock-application-in-android

The app has to basically register itself as a car dock enabled app, then as you stated correctly, it can be selected from the system to launch the registered app when the car dock event is triggered, but you cannot set up any app to work like this, the app has to programatically register itself as a car dock enabled app.

The app also monitors the car dock exited event to terminate itself.

peterc10 · Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:12 pm Post subject:

Sorry I stand corrected. But how does it know when it is connected to the dock, as opposed to just charging on mains or sitting on a desk dock? I have an HTC Sensation and use it with a Brodit car mount and Car Dock has never started for me.
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HTC Sensation
Sygic GPS for Europe (No more TT "support"!)
Copilot for USA
Bury CC9060 bluetooth car kit & Brodit mount

AliOnHols · Pocket GPS Verifier Joined: Oct 15, 2008 Posts: 1936

My phone detects the polarity of a small magnet which is present in the dock. A magnet of one polarity sends it to Car Dock mode, a magnet of the opposite polarity sends it into Desk Dock mode.

Cheapskate that I am, I use a couple of "old fashioned" cassette tape boxes, opened up and folded back to create the Docks to set my phone into. My wife is missing a couple of fridge magnets (but don't tell her!) which I have SuperGlued to the boxes.
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Chocki · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 16, 2004 Posts: 21

Car dock mode depends on the phone, some use pins 4 and 5 of the usb lead, some use magnets, you can try car dock mode by downloading the car dock app from the marketplace.
I guess yo could use the built in magnetic field sensors and some magnets to start car dock mode from an app!. (Might have a look at this myself).

lbendlin · Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2011 1:25 pm Post subject:

if we only need to register the intents then we can certainly look into that. It will be a little tough to test it as we don't have a car dock for the Nexus One available. It has three contacts on the bottom. Anyone care to guess how they are used?

In the meantime have a look at this

http://dockawake.com/
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Chocki · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 16, 2004 Posts: 21

You don't need a car dock to test it, you can download a free app from the marketplace called 'Car Mode Control' by 'IG88 Apps'.

This allows you to toggle the car dock event without having a car dock.

https://market.android.com/details?id=net.cwfk.ig88.carmode&hl=en

lbendlin · Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2011 10:52 pm Post subject:

How is that application different from the default "Car Mode" application ? Wasn't the idea to sense the insertion/removal events for the actual dock?
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peterc10 · Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 2:08 am Post subject:

Chocki · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 16, 2004 Posts: 21

Thanks Ibendlin, I will try the dock awake app you mentioned and use this to launch cameralert.

I have read up some more and it's not all plain sailing.

It appears not all android phones support the car dock event and some like most motorolas do it their own way not google's way so cause incompatibilities, it also seems you need to be running Android version 2.3.3 or newer.

It may not be worth your while adding a feature for the few unless it's dead easy (Car dock End event to quit cameralert at least please - Gotta try Smile

).

AliOnHols · Pocket GPS Verifier Joined: Oct 15, 2008 Posts: 1936

I use it the other way round! I manually start the CamerAlert app which in turn automatically starts the Car Dock (or Car Home as it's called on my Motorola), CamerAlert then runs in the background.

Are we back to square one yet?

@peterc10, there are several Car Dock apps in the Market, perhaps if you try a selection of them one shall work for your phone.
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lbendlin · Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2011 3:30 am Post subject:

Ok, the required code changes are minimal. The application can now be either added to the Car Mode as one of the tiles, or it can be entirely controlled by the undock/car dock events.

This feature is now in testing and will likely make it into the next release.
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Chocki · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 16, 2004 Posts: 21

Thank you very much.
Look forward to testing it.

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