Timer or Alarm Apps? 6

Posted by JD 05/03/2012 at 19:00

I try to avoid ranting here and post articles when I’ve found a solution, not just a place to complain.

Today I need a timer/alarm app. These are common on Maemo, Android and I suspect other portable devices. I need finer control than a minute, so a calendar or cron entry aren’t viable solutions.

This seems like a very common need for users – get my attention in 2 or 12 or 55.3 minutes. That’s what I need too. It needs to be second accurate and should be built-into the clock app in a dock.

  • cooking timers
  • phone call reminder – suppose you want to be exactly on-time for a job phone interview?
  • switch task reminder

You get the idea.

Attention

The alarm needs to get my attention – sound and/or visual. Making all my app windows disappear and showing the alarm would be ideal for me. THAT would get my attention. I often don’t have any audio devices connected to my desktop, so audio only won’t work for me.

Part of Other Applet

It would be great if it were part of the panel clock app for whatever DE (or not) that I’m using.

Multiple Active Timers

It would also be good if more than one timer could be active at once. Sometimes I’m cooking 3-5 things.

Saved Timers

It would be great if timers could be saved. I can’t think of a reason to limit this number, but just be able to display the list by amount of time OR by alphabetical name.

My Failed Research

A few links (some old):

It can’t be this hard to find and someone else must have already made an app like this.
Other choices?

  1. vers 05/03/2012 at 20:28

    interested in an answer to this

    best i could google was this win/osx app which obviously doesn’t meet your ui-specific reqs but has everything else:

    sonoragraphics.com/timer.html

  2. JD 05/03/2012 at 20:53

    So in my frustration, I clearly left out that I run Ubuntu Server with an LXDE or raw WM on top. Ooops. I’m embarrassed.

    Microsoft-Windows and OSX solutions don’t help me – they are the wrong OS.

    I did find use ‘sanduhr’ today – a slightly interesting timer GUI, but not quite what I want. The Maemo app, eggtimer, is what I have in mind.

  3. Matthew Todd 05/04/2012 at 02:19

    Plug:

    I was in a similar situation about a year ago when I switched to wmii. I ended up writing my own command line timer application in Python. I still have work to do on it (e.g: command line options, config file, documentation), but you may like it. I personally use it for short tasks like laundry.

    https://github.com/matcatc/Timer

    Feel free to contact me at matcatprg AT yahoo DOT com. Let me know if you’d like me to prioritize polishing it up (especially the documentation.)

  4. Thanasis 05/04/2012 at 08:24

    While it’s not optimal, I schedule a ‘speaker-test -c 5’ using at but since you don’t use an audio device all the time it will not be useful to you.

    There are gnome-shell and XFCE applets, can you use the XFCE one with LXDE? I am not sure.

  5. vers 05/04/2012 at 08:53

    picked up on it, hence the ui comment!

    i have a wall mounted hp ultraslim running debian for tv, music and pulling recipes while i cook. would love a solution that would run on this as i have a smaller kitchen – cutting back on whats in my workspace is a big deal.

    as it stands im currently using a couple polder 3 in 1 timers which i recommend should you give up: cooking.com/products/shprodde.asp?SKU=159438

  6. JD 05/04/2012 at 11:57

    Some great ideas guys! Thanks.

    @Matthew, you actually reminded me of a perl script I’d written in the ’90s that does timing and sounds an alarm at the end, but python will be preferred by some others. I need something with both visual AND audio alarming.

    Getting my attention is not easy. Multiple VMs running on multiple different physical computers and sometimes multiple GUI VMs. There’s only a single KVM, so the computer running the VM with a timer GUI may not be on the screen and the speakers may not be connected, powered on or audio device may not have been attached to the VM. Often, VMs usually make my life easier, but not in this situation.

    I already use timers on the stove and on microwaves … the issue here is the timers in the kitchen can’t be heard from the home office. Perhaps I just need another analog kitchen timer in the office? There is a risk – I often forget to set it since the walk leaves lots of time for distractions in the 20-40 seconds it takes to get there.

    That’s the issue with using a timer on a tablet or N800. It isn’t usually in the place I need it. Those devices are spread around the house for other uses and don’t sit in the office.

    For today, the best answer is to modify that perl script to minimize all windows, display an image and play a sound file loudly. It takes an input like hh:mm:ss already. Actually, it is a pretty trivial script. I just need to figure out the CLI way to minimize all windows. The other alarms are easy.