Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Pizzasgood

This is a simple alarm clock for the commandline. It can use your media player to play a song when it goes off, or you can set it to run any command you want. It could play a movie, start a text editor, open a website, or delete a file. Basically, it can do whatever you want at the specified time.

alarmclock-CLI-v1.1.pup
alarmclock-CLI-v1.0.pup
alarmclock-CLI-v0.5.pup

Current version is 1.1.

Ted Dog · Joined: 13 Sep 2005 Posts: 1064 Location: Heart of Texas

http://tcron.sourceforge.net/
If you hook this up you can have the computer turn on at the time needed.
How to build a costly alarm clock

Nevermore · Joined: 26 Nov 2005 Posts: 365 Location: Italy

hello
i was trying your script on my 2.11 and i found the following problem (i dunno if is only in my lap)
first of all i must say that i am running a script that syncs the time with a timeserver every 5 mins, because puppy time works strangerly with my laptop (usually is twice faster), then assume is 22 and i want the script to wake me up at 9am next morning:
i enter:

Pizzasgood · Posted: Wed 10 Jan 2007, 19:05 Post_subject:

Well, better early than late I guess Neutral

What it does, is after it calculates the number of seconds, it uses the 'sleep' command to sleep for that long. I don't know how the sleep command works internally. It might decide what time it should be done sleeping and then wakes up (alarm-clock style), but it probably tries to time itself (kitchen-timer style). If it uses the latter, re-sycing the clock might not fix it.

As for the computational errors, I'll look into it. I might try running it overnight too, but I'll have to make sure I won't need to reboot during the interval.

One solution would be to re-write it to enter a while loop and check the system time. It could use shorter sleeps to keep it from eating resources, and calculate how long of a sleep is safe. For example, if it has several hours, it can be every ten minutes. When it gets close, it could speed up. Eventually it would have to calculate the exact amount to sleep and follow it with the wakeup (otherwise it would start running in a full-speed while loop).

Another way is to have it run normally, but double-check the time before doing the wake-up. Then it could go back to sleep. That way wouldn't work with slow clocks though, just fast ones.

MU · Posted: Wed 10 Jan 2007, 19:13 Post_subject:

I think sleep is not very precise.

You might need a routine, that compares the time-values.
see
date --help

Mark

Nevermore · Joined: 26 Nov 2005 Posts: 365 Location: Italy

it is 00.20 and the alarm still doesn't go on..
seems this time is gonna be late..
ok i went now 15 mins late..
considering i put on only 2 hours ago :p

Pizzasgood · Posted: Wed 10 Jan 2007, 19:32 Post_subject:

The reported time is the time it will go off, not in how long (that's what the seconds are). I neglected to have it subtract 24 when it goes over Rolling Eyes

Hmm.. It also won't let you set it to the same hour as the current one, but several minutes earlier. I'll fix that too.

Well, I guess I'll look into precise-icizing it then. While I'm at it, I'll fix the stupid interface it uses, so you can input times as 18:31 if you like. I wrote the current version very quickly with the intention of returning, then I forgot Rolling Eyes

Nevermore · Joined: 26 Nov 2005 Posts: 365 Location: Italy

actually pizzas, it works pretty good,
just i changed the mediaplayer line
and opens xmms playing the stream with no problem!
gxins instead NEVER EVER was able to play a stream Very Happy

Pizzasgood · Posted: Wed 10 Jan 2007, 20:43 Post_subject:

You mean it's accurate now because you used XMMS?

I never realized it before, but if it's set to Gxine or Mplayer, you could also point it to a movie, without having to edit the code. By editing the code, you could easlily set it to run any app with any file or options. I might make the next version have an option to change the command, so you could do it easier.

marksouth2000 · Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 620

Nevermore · Joined: 26 Nov 2005 Posts: 365 Location: Italy

muggins · Joined: 20 Jan 2006 Posts: 6663 Location: lisbon

hey pizzasgood,

were you aware of an xmms alarm plugin? see here:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/xmmsalarm/

http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/01/22/how-to-use-your-linux-machine-as-an-alarm/

Nevermore · Joined: 26 Nov 2005 Posts: 365 Location: Italy

that would be perfect
however the script does something different, runs something at a defined time
doesn't matter if is another program, a sound, a movie, or whatever..
in any case, if someone could make a .pup of the plugin it would be great!
or i can make under ubuntu?
thanks

Pizzasgood · Posted: Fri 12 Jan 2007, 12:13 Post_subject:

alarmclock-CLI-v1.0.pup

support for time formatted HH:MM, with the -t option
support for time with -H <hour> -M <minute> format
custom application with -a or --app option
song, file, website, whatever, with the -s or -f option (identical)
don't run an app or make noise: -q (why use -q? Maybe to put it in a script:

darkerror05 · Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 277 Location: Rochester NY, USA

nice app works great. But could you add the feature to execute a custom command instead of say just a song? It would e great to use it as also a general automation application. For exaple I want to execute the command "cdplay play 4" when the alarm goes off. Thanks for the great work pizza.