Alarm Panel v4.3.2!

Instuctions (and requirements) now in ExEx.

History:
Fixed in v4.3.2:
Bugs with snooze and auto-stop timers starting when they weren't supposed to.
MP3 Bugs
Bug where detials windows showing timers that shouldn't be shown.

Fixed in v4.3.1:
Bug where music doesn't stop when AutoSilence on and Snooze off.

New Features in v4.3:
3 News Alarms! Introducing - Hourly, Monthly, and Yearly Alarms
All dialogs have been redesigned.
One line for each alarm in panel list.
Details Window contains more information about alarms.
Initial task directory options in properties dialog.
AM/PM support.
Command-line arguments.
Property options to turn off activation of panel and scroll to row.
Auto-deletion of one time use alarms.
NEW Custom Alert window that won't disappear until you close it. Fully customizable in properties!
Option to turn off confirmation dialogs.
Fixed bug in checking of values on alarm dialogs.
Fixed bug in One Time Only alarms not working sometimes and changing to '06 incorrectly.
Fixed bug that would make a One Time Only alarm set to next year when loading DS after trigger time.
Fixed bug that alarms would not be corrected for Daylight Savings changes.
Fixed critical bug that would not stop sound when an alarm is deleted while it played a sound.
Fixed critical bug where Custom Daily wouldn't reset to next day after current day check.

New Features in v4.2:
1) Snooze! (instructions in first post).
2) Snooze countdown timer in details window.
3) Auto-silence countdown timer in details window.
4) Scrolls to playing alarm when an alarm triggers.
5) Right-click menu contains option to return to top of the list.
6) Implemented logging of alarm actions.
7) Better messages for setting alarms.
8) Right-click menu modified to be slightly more useful.
9) Fixed bug for clear disabled alarms.

New Features in v4.1:
1) Fixed bug where panel forgets to save task information between restarts of the panel.
2) RTL support for the list of alarms. Will be included in details window when it is fixed.

New Features in v4.0:
1) Automatically save when alarm is added or deleted, so you don't have to close DS to save your set alarms.
2) Fixed the display of seconds on the Timer alarm so that when it is less than 10, it will show up with a leading 0.
3) Auto-silence alarms after a set amount of minutes that you can define in the properties dialog.
4) Can run a task on alarm trigger. You can't use command line arguments, but if you make a shortcut with the desired command, it will work nicely.
5) Fixes an "enable panel" bug so it now enables only when the alarm is actually going off.
6) Initial music directory in Properties dialog.
7) Save configuration when you hit OK in the Properties dialog.
8) Fixed the tab orders on all dialogs.

New Features in v3.0:
1) Clear Disabled function - clears all alarms that are currently off.
2) Confirm Clear dialogs - confirms whether you want to delete all alarms or disabled alarms.
3) Properties Dialog check - makes sure you don't set the max alarms less than 0, and less than the current amount of alarms.
4) Custom Daily Alarm - daily alarm but goes off only on selected days of the week.
5) Uptime in uptime alarm detials window - lets you know how long your computer has been on so you can see how much longer the timer has.
6) Countdown timer in timer alarm details window- lets you know how much longer a timer has left till trigger.
7) Details window will update if pinned.
8) One Time Only Alarm - goes off on the specified day at the specified time. If the trigger date and time has already passed, then it applies it to the following year. Supports leap year checking as well.
9) Can select mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy formats in properties dialog
10) Timer alarm now allows you to specify number of seconds till trigger.
11) Panel will check to make sure you have room for another alarm, before you go through setting one.
12) If you use a custom style for controls, the dialogs in this panel will show them in your custom style.

New Features in v2.0:
1) Multiple alarms!
2) 3 Alarm types.
3) MP3 music capability.

As this panel has been through a lot of testing and beta phases, please report any problems you may find so I can fix them! Enjoy and please share your thoughts and comments in this post.
Eitan

Get it at the Extension Exchange!

Nice panel You're getting experience with making panels and your'e doing very well There's is a problem with your panel - when I try to load the properties menu from the context menu (right click menu) I can't see it. And also I set the panel to show the alarm after a minuteand I didn't see it. Maybe I'm wrong.

I didn't implement the properties window yet. It's coming. I'm still trying to organize how I want to do this panel....
As for setting the alarm to go off in a minute, right now, it won't work. The timer starts right away, but as soon as the system clock starts a new minute, the timer is synchronized to the clock. I should really have two timers going so that there is no loss of time.....

synchronized? Why?

Looks like a nice start, but I have a few suggestions:

I think you are already trying to figure out a way to play a sound which would be awesome, but just getting it to run a file would work for me. I just want one of my MP3s or something to run so I know I need to get to class.

The option to have multiple alarms in one panel would be great too. To add to that add the ability to set which days it will go off. Like if I need to get up for class on MWF, but sleep in every other day (what a life huh?) I would like to have my alarm to have the ability to only go off on MWF.

This could be completely different from what you are doing... but a countdown timer similar to the how long until panel that would be able to count down the minutes and seconds until something would be nice. Maybe you could talk to the How Long Until panel and try to combine your panels.

Hmm... I can't think of anymore, but I will be sure to let you know if I do. Overall I am impressed with your ability to learn and develope panels so quickly. Keep up the good work.

~acommonjo

acommonjo - thanks for the suggestions. this panel started as a simple example, but I think I am going to play with it some more. I'm working on mp3 functionality, but I think it requires DirectX as far as I know. It comes with windows now, but I think I need to get the DirectX SDK, which I thought that I had...As for picking which days, I am stuck between letting the user pick days of the week (like you can for a vcr, remember those?) or pick a day of a month/year. I think I'm going to do the week one as you said, b/c I am a student too .

yyy - if I don't synchronize the timer to the system clock, if you have the alarm set for 8:30, then the alarm will go off at any time during the 8:30 minute. The timer only fires in one minute inteverals. Either that, or I make it every second and not worry about it, except that it would raise your cpu usage to do that. I have another solution I thought of last night: on startup, calculate how long till the next minute triggers, set the timer interval accordingly (so it fires when the minute changes), then synchronize with the clock so that it fires at the next minute. You don't lose a minute that way.

What?
You can set any interval. Do it this way:
timer.Interval = 60000* 8.3;

6000 is a minute so that's the calculation you need for a minute. Instead of 8.3 put the the number the user entered and that's it. I probably don't understand you well. When I used timers, sometimes they did the functin I told them to do right after I set them but there's a way to handle this.

I don't understand why you need to multiply it by a number.

Just to show you that you can set an interval of any minute. You can change the 8.3 with the number the use enetered and you have an interval. Why do you need to synchronize it with the system clock? I don't understan why you do it?

So when the clock changes from 8:29 to 8:30, the alarm goes off right when the clock hits 8:30 and not 8:30 and 45 seconds.

But even if it is now 20:30:15 - if the user set the panel to show the alarm after 8:30 seconds, he wants to see it immediately after 8:30 minutes - at 20:38:45.
Other wise it isn't 8:30 minutes. It is more. I believe that most uses will want it to work that way. But it is your panel and you choice

That would be more of a timer with an alarm. I didn't think ppl wanted it to be set in minutes from now. I won't set an alarm to go off IN 10 minutes. I would set it to go off at a certain time, which happens to be 10 min from now.

So best for you is to let the user to choose the exact time when he/she wants to see the alarm and then set a timer to check every second if the time which the user entered is the same as the system time. I think that you should implement an option to show the alarm after a specific time or on a specific time.

checking every second is a waste of resources. it only goes by the minute anyways. regarding the idea of making it somewhat like the how long until panel, i will look into that for a future release.

I think that the most resource-less method is calculating the time between now and the given time, set a timer for 3/4 of this time, and then set another timer which will count in minutes.

For instance, let's say that now it's 10:00 and the user set the alarm for 12:00.
You should set a timer which is interval will be 1 hour and 45 minutes.
This timer will pop up in 11:45, and then you should set another timer, with an interval of one minute.

Very true. I can optimize this as well. Right now I am working on multiple alarms and multiple types of alarms in addition to getting sounds to be a trigger event.

Come on, your computer counts all the time - setting the panel to check what time it is is nothing, I think. I also think that the best way is just to set the timer to count the number of minutes which the user entered.

I have come up with 5 different timers and I prob will implement them all when I get the functionality I want out of the IListOutput....
1. Regular Daily Alarm (triggered at a certain time)
2. Chronograph Alarm (triggered after a set amount of time)
3. Uptime Alarm (triggered after a certain amount of time the computer has been turned on - this is as long as it is OK with mattisking as his uptime panel could do this as well)
4. Day Specific Alarm (Goes off on certain days of the week only - for acommonjo)
5. One Time Only Alarm (Goes off on certain day and time only - as long as this is OK with Prism since his How Long Until panel could do the same thing)

How does that sound?

The more - the better

OK, so my ToDo list is very long but it keeps me informed on the progress I am making. I don't have a release date for v2.0 yet, but I may release a tease along the way .

can you also add the ability to enable/disable the alarm without having to add it and remove it every time. for example, if i have 9:00 am alarms set for Mon, Wed, and Fri, but my Wed class got cancelled, i want to click an icon next to the alarm, and disable it. and re-enable it by clicking on the icon again, on thursday, so that it wakes me up on friday morning. i hope that makes sense.

i want to suggest a format for the alarm panel... it will be nice if you can list multiple alarm times in three columns.
first column: Icon for alarm ON/OFF (u can use the volume mute/muted buttons)
second column: Alarm Time
third column: alarm days (Mo = Monday, Tu - Tuesday, etc; Today; Tomorrow; Date; etc)

Here is an illustration:

ON 8:30 AM Mo,We,Fr
OFF 10:00 AM Tu,Th
ON 5:00 PM Everyday
ON 9:00 PM Tomorrow
ON 8:00 AM 08-30-04

In addition, it will be nice if i can put my mouse on top of the alarm time and the details window will tell me what the alarm is for, for example, Class, or Meeting, etc. Like calendar panel.

In order to make editing easy, i suggest that alarm can be turned ON or OFF my clicking on the ON/OFF indicator. By clicking on the Time field, the time can be changed. By clicking on the Day column, the day can be changed.

hope i didnt make it toooooooo complicated.

I actually like this idea. Formats could look like this:
Daily Alarm - ON 09:00 Daily - shows status, time, and type
Timer Alarm - ON 1:29 Timer- shows status, time remaining (i could update the value every minute)
Uptime Alarm - ON 1:15:30 Uptime - shows status, trigger time, and type
Custom Daily Alarm - ON 15:00 M,W,F - shows status, trigger time and days to trigger the alarm
one time only - MM/DD/YY 00:00 - shows date and time (will be on till the alarm is triggered, no need for status....

how does that sound? it might be complicated to implement. I will look into it. Oh, and instead of something to click to turn off and on the alarm, how about just clicking on it in the list? if not that, i might be able to add a button to the details window to do the same thing, or customize the context menu depending on what you click.....i have to check up on it. In any event, word wrap is on and it is a list, so if your sidebar isn't wide enough, it should be OK. the details window is going to show: alarm type, trigger time, trigger events, and enabled/disabled status....it's a lot of work....

that sounds like a really detailed panel. itll be kick-butt. i hope all those can be implemented. instead of adding a button for ON/OFF, you could also put that in the right-click context menu or details window.

do you mean wordwrap in details window or the main DS? i think the mail DS display for each alarms should not be more then one line. people are going to have atleast 5 - 6 alarms, and more then one line would make it too large. i think you can limit the main DS display to ON/OFF status, Time, and Comment or Days. More then that would not really be needed in the mail DS. it can be included in the details window.

Well one line is all relative, depending on how wide every person's sidebar is.... I think I am going to allow up to 15 alarms. mattisking has helped me with mp3 support, and when i add that, we'll see how it goes. As for the rest of development, it is going kind of slow, as I am finding some bugs in the DSSDK that i don't know when they will be fixed. Removing alarms, might be impossible. I think I will have to have a clear all or implement something like Prism's How Long Until Panel to manage alarms.....

can you make it also play standard windows sound files (.wav) instead of mp3? that will give it a more universal appeal.

I think mattisking said the class he wrote for me would support most popular music file types. Let me check....I'll edit this post when i find out.

His email said it should cover ANY sound file type. He listed MIDI, WAV and MP3 for sure. I have't tried it yet, but it will go through testing of many types before i release it....it's a big project.....i shortened the list only by a little today

will it be able to loop the files. if a user selects a windows midi or wav sound file, it will only play for a few seconds. maybe 10s of seconds. it should be able to repeat the file until the user stops the alarm.

which brings me to my next feature. snooze.

I'll have to ask about looping files. I am running out of places to put features. On the one hand, I can make snooze by clicking on the alert window, but that can be shut off. i can pop up a message box that will snooze if you click ok, and it wont always stay on top. i can also make it so that if you click on the counter, it snoozes all alarms. right now, i think clicking on the alarm will enable/disable it, and snooze will either be done via messagebox (although i dont like how invasive it can be) or the clicking on the counter.

btw, I have finished two alarm types (daily alarm and timer alarm) they aren't fully functional yet, but it is getting there. i've been having some UI issues, but they are slowly being rooted out. I might get these two working, and then expand for a later release so you can see what it will look like, and at least let you have 2 kinds of alarms and multiple alarms.

I am afraid work on this panel has stopped for the time being pending the results of a hard drive failure (the second time this year!). I backed up yesterday, so I have it on a disk, but it would be so much easier to code up on my computer, with visual studio, sharpdevelop, and DS.

Sorry to hear that.

my work isn't lost. i have it on an external HD, it is just that i need some software on my laptops HD to make the work significantly easier

Woah...two in a year? Either you are doing some major RW to those drives or maybe you should check the IDE port/cable on the board.

They never fixed it the first time. Apparently, after 3 weeks of sitting in Best Buy's repair center, it worked just fine and has worked for 6 months. Same problem again. The drive is spinning, but it is humming louder than usual. No scratching, but it is very loud and windows won't boot at all. I'll have to take it in tomorrow. I'm not sure how to fix it on a laptop, Indian Mayhem. Any suggestions?

You sure it isn't overheating and not the harddrive? My sister's laptop started to do the same thing, and it was due to it not being able to vent hot air (she used it on her bed alot).

I don't know. I don't think it is overheating. It never seemed hot to me. It is warm, but nothing extremely hot. But how would the heat keep the harddrive from loading hte OS or being able to be detected at all? It is unplugged and cooling off right now though.

what about adding chimes? It would be nice to have a kind of clock that has chimes as bigben.exe

He said he'll implement custom wav/mp3 files.

Yes, but I mean chimes not wavs for alarms, I mean automatically make a chime for the quartes, hor the half hours and for every hour.

Thanks

thats a neat idea. one way to implement it would be to set an alarm every 15 mins or half hour or hour and repeat it and use any windows wav sound file u want to act as a chime and turn off looping or snoozing.

it is an interesting idea. when i get back up and running (my computer is broken), i will work on getting the fundamental functionalities ready to be distributed. i can consider doing this chime idea, however, i feel that it is more appropriate for the clock panel. i may one day add clock functionality to this panel, but i do not know what the developers' plans are for the current clock panel. i recall hearing hints from marines in another thread that there might be alarm functionality in the clock panel, but not in the near future. so in short, it depends .

WHEN your back at work, would it be to hard to have an alarm execute an action such as run a program or keystroke? I have just downloaded your panel and not yet installed it so if it already does this forgive my stupidity

Nah! You're not being stupid. I would announce if my panel did something neat like that I think it is a good idea. I'd have to give it some thought and it may not be implemented right away, but when I have the basic funtionality working, it shouldn't be too hard to implement....Thanks for the suggestion.

if you can implement that, your alarm panel can also become a windows task scheduler panel. i can make my virus and spybot scan run every wednesday night, i can wake up to songs playing on my winamp, etc. a task scheduler for windows would be really neat.

I will try to add as much funtionality to this panel in time. Keep the ideas coming. I will continue to work on this panel starting tomorrow night.

Panel is making good progress. Outside of one resource issue (which I can't confirm originated from my panel) I am thinking of releasing a partially funtional version for testing and feedback. Features for this release will include:
3 types of alarms - Daily, Timer, Uptime
Detials Window
Counter
Clear All Alarms
Turn on and off individual alarms with a single click
Alarm action is alert window
panel will activiate itself on alarm trigger
ability to delete individual alarms

What would be left to do:
MP3 funtionality
2 more alarm types - Custom Daily, One Time Only
Properties Window
Edit Alarms
Snooze (possibly)

1. Am I missing anything that was suggested? (besides running a file/program)
2. Should I just skip the pre-release and release it when I've finished what I want to do with it?

New features is like little children to Michael Jackson...
Ok, that was a bit tasteless...but still the same point applies...everyone loves new features.

Is that a "give us what you got and we'll eagerly wait for the rest" Indian_Mayhem?

Of course!

OK, well I have classes this week, but I will focus on getting what I said done and do some more testing and will release a pre-final release.