Recording countdown timer

[Mmmm]

How would you like a countdown timer so you can set your unit up to start recording in a few hours?

Here's a patch to do just that.. I've only just finished it so it may have a couple of bugs.

As yet, when you leave the recording screen the timer pauses and resumes when you re-enter (so you need to be constantly in the recording screen for the timer to work properly). I realise this is not ideal and it'd be great if it just kept ticking away while you were doing other things, but that would take me ages to work out how to do. But I'll be thinking about it.

So, to get it to work, you set the timer in the settings and then press record as usual in the recording screen - press record again to pause the countdown etc... I've set the max time as 25 hours - is this enough do you think?

I also still have to do the lang files..(it's hardcoded in English at the mo).

Any other ideas or any bugs, just post here....

(reply#16 has latest patch)

[mlind]

GREAT!

How about a button for "immediate start" if the band starts early or if you by misstake have entered the wrong countdown time.

[Mmmm]

Good idea, an override button would be useful....
If you entered the wrong time though you can easily go back into the menu and change it.

Maybe the play/pause button should act as start/stop timer and the newfile button should always be newfile....

[Mmmm]

Ok, so now the ON button starts/pauses the timer and the REC button starts a new file as usual and resets the timer to 0.

Also I've enabled long presses of the up/down buttons and the stop in the timer settings...seems more obvious to use now.

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[Rincewind]

great idea!

[mborus]

So, to get it to work, you set the timer in the settings and then press record as usual in the recording screen - press record again to pause the countdown etc... I've set the max time as 25 hours - is this enough do you think?

For me, longer periods might be useful. Like 72 hours, so I can go away for a weekend on friday and still set the countdown to record on sunday...

[Mmmm]

WOW..72 hours...the problem there is the battery I think...although it would be ok if it was plugged in I suppose...hmmmm what do you think might be your maximum? I have to assign a certain number of bits to hold the values you see so it has to be finite (and the more unused assigned bits the more memory wasted).

[Llorean]

I think one solution could be an option to set a time/date to begin recording for RTC targets only, that way those with an RTC can set *any* arbitrary time. Not removing the other option, but expanding it.

[Mmmm]

I think one solution could be an option to set a time/date to begin recording for RTC targets only, that way those with an RTC can set *any* arbitrary time. Not removing the other option, but expanding it.

Yes, this is the possible next step, although I dont have a clock on my player so the motivation isn't quite so high. That's why I went for a countdown timer first!

[Mmmm]

Hmmm the timer doesn't seem to be very accurate, it loses about 3 seconds per minute...the peakmeter seems to be taking a lot of juice... If I disable it it is spot on... I wonder what happens if I boost the CPU... Or maybe a disabled peakmeter while it is ticking would be ok as you wont be looking at the unit while it is counting down. What do you think?

[Rincewind]

maybe you could get your time from the runtime counter?
but this won't be possible when the player is plugged in  
Perhaps there is some code there how to get an exact time.

I haven't seen your code yet, but I suppose you did something like

    sleep(HZ*x);

Disabeling everything that uses cpu time (and wastes battery) when the player is waiting is a good idea anyway. Make it an option

[Mmmm]

maybe you could get your time from the runtime counter?
but this won't be possible when the player is plugged in  
Perhaps there is some code there how to get an exact time.

I haven't seen your code yet, but I suppose you did something like

 Â   sleep(HZ*x);

Disabeling everything that uses cpu time (and wastes battery) when the player is waiting is a good idea anyway. Make it an option

Boosted it only loses 2 seconds per minute...that's rubbish!

To get the timing i'm setting last_tick = current_tick as soon as it is activated and then decreasing by one when current_tick - last_tick >= HZ.
I'm running the whole of the recording loop while I do this as well.

It's fast enough to work without the peakmeter unboosted but it just wont work with it... maybe I should try decreasing within the peakmeter code instead....

If I used a sleep then nothing else would happen while it slept, so then there would definitely be no peakmeters! But it would give spot on timing.

[Mmmm]

\o/
\o/

it's working...

It's ticking in time...

\o/

but not only that.....

... it keeps ticking no matter what you are doing!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Too good to believe eh?
It certainly is....
I'm not going to post the patch until i've checked it over a bit more.. I still don't believe it!

[Mmmm]

Alright then, heres the new patch..bug free... ahem...

The timer is now accurate and ticks at all times (not sure about plugins though).

I had it so that it automatically started the recording screen wherever you are too but calling the recording screen from the timer was a bad idea....it crashed quite often but it worked often too..however, that's not good enough.

So if the timer reaches 0 while you are away from the recording screen nothing will happen... when you enter the recording screen next it will automatically start recording.

I thought that a good idea would be to have an icon in the statusbar that is always on when the timer is ticking and flashes or something when it reaches 0. Unfortunately the statusbar is full on the Archos...hmmmm... That'll be for version 4 I think!

PS. mborus you can now have up to 128 hours timing! Is that enough?

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[whatboutbob]

Only 128 hours?  Oh man...but there's this gig next monday I wanna record...and I wanted to get started early...