[APP] Night Stand Clock (626)

[MagNet]

Hi,
I wanted to use my PB 626 with its long battery life and eink display as a simple night stand clock and didn't find anything usable.
There is Clocky available from http://fedorchenko.net/pb.php and the PocketBook free project website. It displays pretty terribly on my 626 though - half cut off.

I've based this on the clock sample code from the SDK 1.1, which did not start on my device due to missing resources in the current FW. I rewrote it to just use system fonts, display well and support all orientations. I intend to improve upon it and make it more modifiable and add an analog clock.

(Currently it will probably work well only with XGA (1024x768) screen devices, others will I believe break the text. I'll make it adjust properly when I get the time.)

So here it is, enjoy.

Installation

• Copy the file NightStandClock.app to the applications folder on your device
• If you want the name of the app to display properly, you'll have to add an entry to your language file located in system/language. If the file is not there, you'll have to create it. The name of the file depends on your current language, for English it's en.txt, Czech cs.txt, French fr.txt, you get the gist.
  Here are the example contents of my language file. The first line has to be the name of the language.
  

  English
  @Nightstandclock=Night Stand Clock

Usage

• Start from the App drawer
• Use the Menu button to change orientation
• Look at it to tell time

Tested on

• PocketBook 626 Touch Lux 3, fw W626.5.5.720

Known issues

• When started the clock is offset by some 70pxs. This gets fixed after the first refresh.
  This is because I put in a negative offset to deal with what seems to be a drawing bug in the SDK that offsets the canvas after the first refresh. Maybe I'll find out what causes it.

Current version 0.1

Next version
Done

• Inverted mode (sexy)
• Frontlight switch by touch (thanks brucelee)

Working on

• Frontlight intensity setting via swiping

[brucelee]

Originally Posted by MagNet

[*]When started the clock is offset by some 70pxs. This gets fixed after the first refresh.

The top panel is about 70px. Try SetPanelType(0) in your app initialization.

Originally Posted by MagNet

[*]Frontlight intensity setting via touch (finding out if this can be done)

Functions are available in inkinternal.h (SDK481). Using them will limit the app to firmware 5.

/*
* Returns frontlight state (0-100 - brightness, negative value if off)
* returns INT_MIN if can't read or not supported
*/
int GetFrontlightState(void);

/*
* Sets frontlight state (0-100 - brightness, negative value if off)
*/
void SetFrontlightState(int flstate);

/*
On/off FrontLight
*/
void SwitchFrontlightState();

[MagNet]

Originally Posted by brucelee

Functions are available in inkinternal.h (SDK481). Using them will limit the app to firmware 5.

Oh, I was using the 1.1 release of the SDK from pocketbook free so these calls were unavailable. I'll just #ifdef around it and release two versions, thanks for the tip.
Seems to work well.

Originally Posted by brucelee

The top panel is about 70px. Try SetPanelType(0) in your app initialization.

The SetPanelType(0) did not help. However, building against the newer SDK seems to have mitigated the problem. Makes me wonder if launching the app under older FWs will reintroduce the issue in some way.

BTW tried it out last night and about 8 hours of acting like a clock (no frontlight) took about 2-3% of the battery, which is quite nice.

[jojowerfer]

I really like the clock, but unfortunately the screen orientation change via menu button does not work for me, it goes straight to the main menu. (Lux 3 FW 626.5.8.275)

Anyway, thanks a lot, I am really excited for the new version!