Llama now speaks Russian. You can download it from here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?jjjcn9khsz6n07t
It'll be on the market next weekend. In the mean time, here's what happens when you Google image search for лама
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=лама&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch
There's also a new translations page on the blog:
http://kebabapps.blogspot.com/p/translations.html
Monday, 25 April 2011
Sunday, 24 April 2011
New market version
Just to a quick note to say that the versions that were the Beta versions are now on the market. The map addon for Llama has also made an appearance on the market. Thanks to everyone that's emailed me about translations. I'll send out the list of phrases depending on the feedback of the market release.
Please email me about any issues you find. There's an email button in the app now. Cheers all!
Monday, 18 April 2011
Who's bored and wants to translate stuff?
Well I missed my own deadline for the market release, but at least I spent the extra time doing the most tedious and boring part of any piece of software... copying the pieces of text into resource files so that it can be translated into different languages. When I first started writing Llama I never meant to release it to anyone, so I didn't bother with any localisation. It also wasn't supposed to do half of the stuff it can do now! It was literally to just shut my phone up when I got to work. Ah well, hindsight.
If anyone fancies doing some translations for me, then get in touch (the email address is in the app). There's a list of 580 phrases that need translating :D otherwise, I'll chuck it through Google translate and see how that goes. In the mean time, there's a new beta with the localisation ready (but only English at the mo) and some minor bug fixes.
http://kebabapps.blogspot.com/p/beta.html
I've also had no luck getting Llama to force Android to update its location without the screen having to be on. I blame Google. Bad Google! Here's an issue for you all to follow:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=10931
I had attempted to read the radio log cat, but it appears that the logs don't update with any juicy information that give away the current cell ID. A future version of Llama will let you blink the screen every 5 mins or so, so that the location updates. Maybe I can set the screen brightness to zero to fool it into not actually turning on the screen. Meh.
If anyone fancies doing some translations for me, then get in touch (the email address is in the app). There's a list of 580 phrases that need translating :D otherwise, I'll chuck it through Google translate and see how that goes. In the mean time, there's a new beta with the localisation ready (but only English at the mo) and some minor bug fixes.
http://kebabapps.blogspot.com/p/beta.html
I've also had no luck getting Llama to force Android to update its location without the screen having to be on. I blame Google. Bad Google! Here's an issue for you all to follow:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=10931
I had attempted to read the radio log cat, but it appears that the logs don't update with any juicy information that give away the current cell ID. A future version of Llama will let you blink the screen every 5 mins or so, so that the location updates. Maybe I can set the screen brightness to zero to fool it into not actually turning on the screen. Meh.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Nearly time for another Market release
There's a fresh version on the beta page. The Llama UI has received a bit of a revamp, so it now looks a bit more iPhoney with a toolbar rather than relying on the menu button. This should make the functions easier to discover, but also gave me space to put some Llama tips and tricks.
There's also finally a link to this blog and my email address in the app. Hooray!
Sunday, 13 March 2011
Oi, where's my weekly update?
The past couple of weeks I've been spending the beer money, but I've also added a couple of much requested features:
1. Using nearby wifi networks and Bluetooth devices to determine location
2. Maps
These two features have meant a lot of Llama's internal guts have been changed* around and tweaked to allow different types of 'beacon' to be used. You can now get Llama to turn your Wifi on every 5 minutes to have a look at what Wifi networks are nearby. You can then add the Wifi network to an area in a similar way that you do with phone masts. You can add it by name (to encompass your entire organisation's group of Wifi access points) and you can also add them by their unique MAC address if you just want the access point next to your room.
The same thing can also be done with Bluetooth devices. You can optionally tell Llama to briefly enable your Bluetooth every 5 (or so) minutes to see who and what are nearby. Unfortunately only discoverable Bluetooth devices can be found, and most Android phones limit the length of time that they are discoverable for. However, other phone models and computer can be discoverable forever. This means you can identify if you are within range of your PC/laptop, and also if you are within range of your friend's mobile phone (and also your friend, assuming you haven't stolen their phone).
As well as these methods, you can also use Android's built-in location APIs to determine your location. This has the advantage of being able to get a latitude and longitude, which you cannot get using plain old cell IDs or Wifi networks. If you choose to use Android's location API, you can define areas according to positions on a map, using Llama's new map addon**. If you have Wifi permanently enabled, Android's built-in location APIs will use nearby Wifi networks as well as Google's Wifi data to find your location more accurately. It can also use GPS, but I wouldn't recommend it.
These new settings can be found in the 'Experimental' section of Llama's settings. They probably stay in there til I get some feedback from people, and also until I rework the UI to make it less complicated (I'm thinking some kind of step-by-step wizard driven thing to get people started.) Let me know your feedback. As usual, if it force closes, can you email me the LlamaLog.txt that will have appeared in the Llama folder on your SD card. Also, these new features will affect your battery life as Llama has to wake up your phone while its scanning for nearby Wifi and Bluetooth devices.
As well as the location updates, there's also a headset connected condition and a vibrate action.
You can get the new version from the BETA page
* They are quite big changes too, and I'm not happy releasing it to the market and pissing off 3000 users in one go :)
** Llama's map addon is separate because otherwise the main Llama app would need Internet permissions. I'm not sure how people will react to having both the 'get accounts' permission (used for syncing) and the internet permission. You get a lot of people whinging on the market about simple things like that.
1. Using nearby wifi networks and Bluetooth devices to determine location
2. Maps
These two features have meant a lot of Llama's internal guts have been changed* around and tweaked to allow different types of 'beacon' to be used. You can now get Llama to turn your Wifi on every 5 minutes to have a look at what Wifi networks are nearby. You can then add the Wifi network to an area in a similar way that you do with phone masts. You can add it by name (to encompass your entire organisation's group of Wifi access points) and you can also add them by their unique MAC address if you just want the access point next to your room.
The same thing can also be done with Bluetooth devices. You can optionally tell Llama to briefly enable your Bluetooth every 5 (or so) minutes to see who and what are nearby. Unfortunately only discoverable Bluetooth devices can be found, and most Android phones limit the length of time that they are discoverable for. However, other phone models and computer can be discoverable forever. This means you can identify if you are within range of your PC/laptop, and also if you are within range of your friend's mobile phone (and also your friend, assuming you haven't stolen their phone).
As well as these methods, you can also use Android's built-in location APIs to determine your location. This has the advantage of being able to get a latitude and longitude, which you cannot get using plain old cell IDs or Wifi networks. If you choose to use Android's location API, you can define areas according to positions on a map, using Llama's new map addon**. If you have Wifi permanently enabled, Android's built-in location APIs will use nearby Wifi networks as well as Google's Wifi data to find your location more accurately. It can also use GPS, but I wouldn't recommend it.
These new settings can be found in the 'Experimental' section of Llama's settings. They probably stay in there til I get some feedback from people, and also until I rework the UI to make it less complicated (I'm thinking some kind of step-by-step wizard driven thing to get people started.) Let me know your feedback. As usual, if it force closes, can you email me the LlamaLog.txt that will have appeared in the Llama folder on your SD card. Also, these new features will affect your battery life as Llama has to wake up your phone while its scanning for nearby Wifi and Bluetooth devices.
As well as the location updates, there's also a headset connected condition and a vibrate action.
You can get the new version from the BETA page
* They are quite big changes too, and I'm not happy releasing it to the market and pissing off 3000 users in one go :)
** Llama's map addon is separate because otherwise the main Llama app would need Internet permissions. I'm not sure how people will react to having both the 'get accounts' permission (used for syncing) and the internet permission. You get a lot of people whinging on the market about simple things like that.
Sunday, 6 February 2011
Sleeping CPUs and lazy Llamas
A new version of Llama is now on the Android market. This has an experimental feature which may help some of you that have been experiencing a minor problem. Some people have reported that Llama doesn't run event actions until they've turned their screen on. I'll try and explain what's going on.
It happens because when the screen is off, the phone puts its CPU to sleep. This saves a considerable amount of battery life; if the screen is off, there's probably nothing going on, so the CPU is turned off. The phone will wake the CPU when a phone call comes in or a message arrives. Applications can also request that the CPU wakes every 15 minutes, so they can check your email.
Previously, Llama was different: Llama only asked Android to tell it when the cell changed. If the cell changed when the CPU was turned off, Llama wouldn't be able to process the change. However, when a phone call or messaged arrived (or you turned the screen on) Llama would spring into action and catch up with the cell changes then run whatever actions were necessary (such as turning the volume down before the phone rings).
Normally, this is exactly what you want, and for most event actions this works fine. However, some people wanted Llama to turn on their Bluetooth when they left home. Since they never turned the screen on manually, the CPU never woke up to turn on their Bluetooth. This brings me onto the most recent change in Llama: Cell Polling. It's now possible to check every minute or so to see if the current cell has changed. It's an experimental feature at the moment, so I'd like to hear if you think it helps.
If you enable Cell Polling, you'll be asking the operating system to wake up the CPU for a short period of time so that Llama can check the cell ID. This uses Android's partial wake locks. I left this running overnight for about 8 hours, and Android's hidden battery history screen* showed the Llama only held onto a partial wake lock for 2 seconds in total. I doubt this will have any major affect on battery life if you turn it on, but as I said, the majority of you won't need it :)
Now for some non-phone-geeky stuff. The new version now lets you reboot your phone if you are rooted, which may be helpful if you want to reboot once a week in the middle of the night. Be careful with your event conditions; you don't want your phone rebooting every time you get home. I've tried to prevent any horribleness by requiring that your phone has been on for at least 5 minutes, so that Llama can't trigger a reboot immediately after your phone has just rebooted. This should give you plenty of time to delete an event that's incorrectly configured.
There's also Bluetooth connection and disconnection events, so you can now easily change profiles when your Bluetooth headset is connected, and there's also a 'Not in area' condition to give your events a bit more power. You can now view what events happened and what caused them in the Event History log. To view it, go to the Events tab then press Menu and Event History.
Finally, for anyone that's interested in how free apps perform on the Android market, here's some stats. Hopefully you'll find this useful if you want to put any apps on the Market. I couldn't find stats like this when I was deciding to release Llama:
* to view Android's battery history, type *#*#4636#*#* in the phone dialer, then choose battery history and Partial Wake Usage. (more info here)
Recent changes in version 1.2011.02.06.1300
It happens because when the screen is off, the phone puts its CPU to sleep. This saves a considerable amount of battery life; if the screen is off, there's probably nothing going on, so the CPU is turned off. The phone will wake the CPU when a phone call comes in or a message arrives. Applications can also request that the CPU wakes every 15 minutes, so they can check your email.
Previously, Llama was different: Llama only asked Android to tell it when the cell changed. If the cell changed when the CPU was turned off, Llama wouldn't be able to process the change. However, when a phone call or messaged arrived (or you turned the screen on) Llama would spring into action and catch up with the cell changes then run whatever actions were necessary (such as turning the volume down before the phone rings).
Normally, this is exactly what you want, and for most event actions this works fine. However, some people wanted Llama to turn on their Bluetooth when they left home. Since they never turned the screen on manually, the CPU never woke up to turn on their Bluetooth. This brings me onto the most recent change in Llama: Cell Polling. It's now possible to check every minute or so to see if the current cell has changed. It's an experimental feature at the moment, so I'd like to hear if you think it helps.
If you enable Cell Polling, you'll be asking the operating system to wake up the CPU for a short period of time so that Llama can check the cell ID. This uses Android's partial wake locks. I left this running overnight for about 8 hours, and Android's hidden battery history screen* showed the Llama only held onto a partial wake lock for 2 seconds in total. I doubt this will have any major affect on battery life if you turn it on, but as I said, the majority of you won't need it :)
Now for some non-phone-geeky stuff. The new version now lets you reboot your phone if you are rooted, which may be helpful if you want to reboot once a week in the middle of the night. Be careful with your event conditions; you don't want your phone rebooting every time you get home. I've tried to prevent any horribleness by requiring that your phone has been on for at least 5 minutes, so that Llama can't trigger a reboot immediately after your phone has just rebooted. This should give you plenty of time to delete an event that's incorrectly configured.
There's also Bluetooth connection and disconnection events, so you can now easily change profiles when your Bluetooth headset is connected, and there's also a 'Not in area' condition to give your events a bit more power. You can now view what events happened and what caused them in the Event History log. To view it, go to the Events tab then press Menu and Event History.
Finally, for anyone that's interested in how free apps perform on the Android market, here's some stats. Hopefully you'll find this useful if you want to put any apps on the Market. I couldn't find stats like this when I was deciding to release Llama:
Days on market:
|
9
|
Downloads:
|
about 4000
|
Active installs:
|
about 2000
|
Support emails:
|
24
|
Donations:
|
14
|
* to view Android's battery history, type *#*#4636#*#* in the phone dialer, then choose battery history and Partial Wake Usage. (more info here)
Recent changes in version 1.2011.02.06.1300
- Event History Log (go to Events tab and press Menu)
- Reboot action (requires root)
- Bluetooth device connect/disconnect condition
- Car mode condition
- Not in area condition
- Optional cell polling to wake the CPU every 2-3 minutes, to catch every cell change. This might affect battery life a tiny bit if it's enabled.
- Fixed a whole load of stuff to do with how the service works
Monday, 31 January 2011
It's been a couple of days...
So firstly, thanks to all of you for downloading Llama and thanks for your positive comments and feedback. I've updated Llama a number of times since it was first put on the Android Market. The change log is below. It was at the top of AppBrain's hot apps for about half a day which I was pretty pleased with, so thanks to them and everyone that visited the AppBrain page too! Also thanks to the peeps over at reddit.com/r/android for their feedback. Finally, a massive thanks to you guys that have donated! I now have enough for one pint :) Cheers
Here's the changes up til now:
1.2011.01.31.1830
Here's the changes up til now:
1.2011.01.31.1830
- Multiselect for Enter and Leave area conditons. These are treated as ORs. e.g. Arrive 'London Office' OR 'Cambridge Office', change profile
- Change Brightness action
- Time Between picker now scrolls horizontally for small screened devices
- Fixed duplicate naming of areas, profiles and event
- Fixed rotation problem in event and profile editor
- Event editor doesn't let you add the same condition/action more than once
- Bluetooth permission as well as Bluetooth_Admin permission
- Ignore No Signal/Unknown cell option now defaults to on, since that's what most people would probably want
- Warnings rather than Force Closes when you forget to choose an area to enter/leave or a profile to change to
- Music playing/paused condition
- Clone events
- Max volume sliders now read the correct max volume from the phone. Not all phones are created equal.
- Notification volume is now part of profiles
- Fixed some force closing related to profiles and APN
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