Tasker - Your Android Automation Application

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Tasker - Your Android Automation Application

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

900ftjesus posted:

Also, if you have a rooted Evo, you can use the secret LED for notifications.

Missed call - Amber LED, overrides purple.
SMS/Google Voice - Purple LED unless Amber is already on.

These are both stopped when the screen is unlocked.

Hold up, what now? I have a purple LED? How do I access this? When I do a test notify with the LED set to purple it just flashes green.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2011 23:30

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 07:42

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

900ftjesus posted:

That's the other LED, the Purple/Yellow one is on the opposite side of the earpiece. It's supposedly the WiMAX LED but is never used for some reason. Yes, there's a secret LED you've never seen before. This requires root, FYI.

Grab the free Locale Execute plugin from the Market.

Details for triggering them in different ways:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=816144

When you first test them, you will wait for like 10-20 seconds and the Superuser permissions will pop up, after that they work perfectly. I have mine clear them on unlock.

I knew about the wimax led, but I thought all it could do was red and green. I'll check out the guide after class tonight. Thanks!

# ¿ Jan 26, 2011 01:59

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

900ftjesus posted:

The left is amber and green, the right is purple (they say turquoise), red, and yellow. I like the yellow flash the most, it's the fade on/fade off style not just blinking.

The only way it does red is solid, so I don't use that one.

Okay, that's totally not purple. Yeah, that's just a harder way of using Wimax Notifier. More flexible, I guess, but definitely more work.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2011 06:04

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

900ftjesus posted:

Ok, turquoise. I just set up a task to blink the lights different colors, then I made a profile for a SMS notifications, missed calls, and Google Voice notifications that trigger the different tasks.

I may play with that a bit. Keep an eye on Wimax Notifier Redux. The original project has been abandoned, but this guy picked it up and is working from scratch (and working hard to get rid of all of the force close issues the original had). Most recent update was 2 days ago, so it's a very active project right now. Not yet as customizable as your tasker profiles, but give it some time. Oh, also doesn't require root.

Joans posted:

Basically, turn wi-fi off when I'm not using it (or can't use it), but turn it back on when I need it.

This is what I do, which works pretty well:

Context: Location
Select "Net", Deselect "GPS", hit Get Fix. It will tell you the accuracy of the fix (1000 meters in my case). I set my Radius to 2km (if I remember right, you want your radius to be larger than the accuracy when using Net).

Task: Home
WiFi - Set: On (WiFi is found under category "Net" when selecting an action)

Next, I add an exit task (if you're looking at the profiles list, you should be able to press on your "Home" task and select "Add Exit Task")

Task: Leave Home
WiFi - Set: Off

I also have a couple of other location contexts where I know there is wifi to join, and I just re-use the "Home" and "Leave Home" tasks for those.

Note: There is a third WiFi setting option, Toggle, which will turn wifi on if it's off and vice versa. I don't like this option as much, since I worry it could cause things to get a little confused. With my method, wifi always turns on when I'm home, and it always turns off when I leave. If I turned it on somewhere else and forgot to turn it off, it would simply stay on when I got home.

Finally, here is some additional information on location in Tasker:
http://tasker.dinglisch.net/userguide/en/loctears.html

# ¿ Jan 26, 2011 15:42

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

Joans posted:

Ok, I have another "Can Tasker do this?" question.

I use my phone as a clock at night (using Kaloer Clock), and as I have a habit of regularly flashing new roms, I like to use Titanium Backup before I do anything too dangerous. I tried scheduling a backup to run overnight, but when it had finished it returned to the launcher, not the clock.

Is there a way for me to say something like "when quitting Titanium Backup, launch Kaloer Clock (except only at night, because I might just be using Titanium Backup for something else)", or even, "launch Titanium Backup at this time, run this batch backup, then launch Kaloer Clock"

I see there's a Run Last App setting, but I'm not sure how to use it.

I'm not sure how to go about launching the clock immediately after Titanium Backup finishes, but I would think you could just create a Time context to launch your Clock app at a specified time (after the backup begins). Heck, you could probably do it a minute after the backup begins, since I doubt Titanium Backup would steal focus if another app was launched over top of it.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2011 17:37

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

Joans posted:

I tried this out today, but whenever I get home and look at my phone, the wifi is off (this is good, because it obviously got turned off while I was out of range), but it doesn't seem to want to turn itself back on. How long does it normally take?
And can I test this without leaving the house as well? If I turn off my wifi, then presumably Tasker should see that I'm in range and turn it back on?

For me, wifi is on and connected when I get out of my car. What sort of range are you using for your location, and how accurate is the fix when you hit the "Get Fix" button?

# ¿ Jan 27, 2011 20:13

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

Rye Bread posted:

I'm having the same exact issue. Fix was accurate to 51 meters and radius set to 1km.

I dunno... here's my config in pretty pictures:

# ¿ Jan 27, 2011 20:49

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

Rye Bread posted:

You're right, it was. However, it says the profile is active but it hasn't activated wifi yet.

If you test the task, does wifi come on?

# ¿ Jan 27, 2011 21:56

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

Brightman posted:

With the "enable wifi on proximity" profile though GPS gets left on and it seems to periodically check to make sure I'm still home. I'm not sure if this really affects battery life that much anyway, but I'm trying to optimize it to an extent.

I'm assuming you're using a location context. If you don't want it polling GPS at a set interval, you can edit your context to determine location by "Net" only (untick "GPS" on the location screen). You will get a less precise fix, but GPS will stop firing up every few minutes. If you do this, however, just make sure to increase the radius for the location. Net gives me a 1km accuracy so I have my radius set to 2km, and that works well for me.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2011 02:21

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

yamdankee posted:

Before Tasker, every time I got in my car I had to turn on Slacker and Bluetooth to have streaming radio. Now I just turn on Slacker and bluetooth turns on automatically. My question is: Is there a way for Tasker to ever just know that I'm in my car? That way I can just leave the phone in my pocket and when I'm driving it'll be playing every time?

Not unless you have a car dock. I know there's a context for that.

You could create a 1x1 widget to do that, but that sounds like it's no better a solution than what you're doing now.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2011 22:55

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

goku chewbacca posted:

Also, ringer and notifications volume are separate unless you change it in Android sounds settings.

This is what really got me. I set the phone to keep ringtone and notification volumes the same and now I just use Tasker to lower the ringtone volume when I'm home and it affects both.

My other favorite volume-related task is that whenever I plug in my headphones, media volume gets set to 1 below maximum and I get a popup allowing me to select between Pandora or the MP3 player (this popup also automatically turns on and unlocks the screen, too, which is pretty cool).

# ¿ Feb 9, 2011 15:34

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

The way I do it is with the "Load App" option within the "App" category. One for each app I want to see when I plug in my headphones.

Edit: oh, you need to hit the little wrench icon in the task screen to get to the task properties and set the task type to "Menu"

brc64 fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Feb 9, 2011

# ¿ Feb 9, 2011 21:23

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

I use Astrid to help remind me about bills, but I've noticed that whenever I update it from the Market, if I don't specifically remember to open it back up again, it kills my reminders until I do. Does anybody know if there's a way to use Tasker to basically make sure Astrid is always running? I guess I could set a task to launch Astrid every 6 hours or something, but I don't necessarily want it in the foreground every time.

I'm thinking something along the lines of having a variable associated with the running status of Astrid, and if the variable is cleared, to pause for a few minutes then start it again (presumably the only time Astrid would close would be during an update, so I wouldn't want to try to start it back up again until after the update finished). Any ideas?

# ¿ Feb 21, 2011 16:10

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

I'm experimenting with some new tasks.

Context: Display Unlocked (Event)
Task: Silent Mode / Vibrate (Audio)

Context: Display Off
Task: Silent Mode / Off

Basically, the idea is that if my phone is on and unlocked, I'm using it, so I don't really need to hear the notification sounds. Setting Silent Mode to vibrate means that even if I'm in the browser or any other app that covers the notification bar I'll know when something has happened. And using Silent Mode doesn't mute media volume, so other stuff still works as expected.

Then when I turn the screen back off, the sound goes back to normal (which changes depending on whether I'm home or somewhere else).

I'm gonna use this for a while and see how well it works.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2011 05:48

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

yamdankee posted:

Wait, the GPS icon only shows up in my tray when I open Maps. It seems like GPS is only being accessed when an application that uses GPS is opened, even without Tasker doing it. I keep GPS on and my phone only uses it when an application that uses GPS is opened, then the icon goes away when I close the app. Is this Tasker operation even necessary?

If GPS is enabled, it will only be used if and when an application requests it. The tasker task is only really useful for effectively whitelisting applications you want to have access to GPS. By keeping GPS off by default and only enabling it when you launch specified apps, you prevent any other application from being able to use GPS.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2011 15:33

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

Jensen posted:

Yes, think of it more like a tinfoil hat setting than a battery saver setting.

The funny thing though is that most of the "SPY ON ME" stuff that is anonymously sent to google doesn't use satellite gps anyway, it just uses network based location.

I do have a question about coarse location as it pertains to Android applications. How accurate is it? I've seen various levels of accuracy with GPS off, the most accurate being pretty drat accurate with a combination of network and wifi locations. Does the coarse location permission give them the most accurate result the phone can get at the time?

# ¿ Jun 27, 2011 18:58

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

Bearnt! posted:

For me Tasker has been pretty lovely handling locations. For my work profile I just changed from location to WiFi SSID instead so if that's an option for you it may be best going that route. You could also try creating a task and adding it as a widget then pressing it every time you want to run it (annoying I know). Perhaps a time/date like 9-5, M-F?

One of the complications I've run into with locations is that if you're just using "Network" location in Tasker (which I do, 'cuz I don't want Tasker polling GPS every couple of minutes), you have to remember that you generally get more accuracy when wifi is enabled as well.

If one of the things you want to do is toggle wifi, I would suggest building your task with wifi disabled and using the less accurate reading for your location. I don't know if I'm explaining this very well, so I'll also give an example. My numbers are completely made up and may be exaggerated:

Let's say you want a task to enable wifi when you're home and disable it when you leave. Let's also say that when you're home, with wifi on, "Net" location gives you an accuracy of 20m. If you disable wifi, Net location gives you an accuracy of 500m.

So, if you want Tasker to enable wifi when you're home and use the 20m accuracy, Tasker will only trigger when you enter that circle. If wifi is off as you're coming home (which it would be, given the nature of the task), it will never trigger the task because with wifi off the most accurate position is 500m, which is going to be outside that 20m circle.

Does that make sense?

# ¿ Jul 6, 2011 15:08

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

Brightman posted:

This gives me an idea. Might not be the best, but you could have GPS turn on once the network location detects that you're near home and then use that for improved accuracy in another profile. My current setup is based on time and my routine which works for me, but this might be a better method.

This is actually a suggested "advanced method" which I've thought about doing, but my issue with that, if I'm following the logic, is that once you're home, GPS is going to continue to poll periodically until you leave, right? Otherwise how do you exit the Home profile?

Profile 1: Are you close to home?
Coarse location, somewhere near the house, when triggered, activates->

Profile 2: Are you home?
GPS location, at home, when triggered, activates->

Profile 3: Home
I guess maybe you could make Home use coarse location, which you should automatically be inside by that point, but then how do you switch back to profile 1 when you leave? Because if you're home and you go back to Profile 1, it would just cycle endlessly through the profiles.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2011 16:25

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

Vykk.Draygo posted:

I need airplane mode so it'll check for SMS too.

This would all be much easier if the dev would implement running task killing but he doesn't seem to think it's a priority from what I found on Google.

I tried to set up a command to stop the task before it turns airplane mode off if it is already off, but I must be doing it wrong because it still wouldn't stop.

My brain is a little fried at the moment, but is this something that could potentially be handled with a variable that tracks whether airplane mode is currently on or off?

Something like:

Widget checks ProfileRunning variable. If variable is true, turn off the profile. If it's false, start it.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2011 05:50

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

One of these days I need to revisit my "mute while on" profile and see if I can get it to work properly for all conditions.

The idea is that, when the screen is on, I'm actively using my phone, so I don't need it to make loud notification sounds in my hand. That in and of itself is fairly easy to do. The problem becomes how to get it to work properly when I have multiple audio profiles (I have volume set lower when I'm at home). I need to figure out how to save the current volume state and restore that when the screen goes off.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2011 01:10

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

nexus6 posted:

I have a tasker profile that sets the ring volume to vibrate when it connects to the wifi at work but recently it's not been working: my phone still makes notification sounds even though the profile is active. Any ideas why this would suddenly change?

I've been having the same problem with my previously working profile since flashing an ICS ROM on my Evo 3D. I think the sound profile just doesn't work, but I'm not sure why.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 17:23

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 07:42

brc64: Mar 21, 2008; I wear my sunglasses at night.

I upgraded to the new Tasker 4.0 and now my location contexts don't work anymore. Has anybody else run into this? Even trying to create a new one, when I try to get my current location, nothing happens at all.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2013 04:08

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Tasker - Your Android Automation Application