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My snow holiday countdown app

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  • 12-01-2016 11:59am
    #1
    cormee
    Registered Users Posts: 1,801 ✭✭✭


    As some of you already know, and as some of you also do yourselves, every year coming up to my snowboarding holiday, around September or so, I start the countdown on my phone. In the past that has involved me setting up three different apps, a countdown widget, a webcam widget and a weather widget. So this year I decided to make my own app that incorporates all three widgets, which simplifies matters somewhat.

    unnamed1.pngunnamed.png

    It's hopefully a simple app to use, you only need an event title, location and date/time. Adding the webcam widget requires a little bit of detective work - find your favourite webcam (it can't be a live/panning cam, it has to be one of the old skool, photo ones) right click on it to get the filename and then add it as the Web Image option when setting up the widget. For example - I use the following urls:

    http://static1.morznet.com/image_uploader/webcam/large/morzine-pleney-top-cam.jpg
    http://www.chamonix.com/webcam/webcam-chamonix-hd.jpg
    http://img.snow-forecast.com/webcams/St-Martin-De-Belleville.jpg

    for my Morzine, Chamonix and St. Martin de Belleville widgets. The background is updated hourly with the latest image from the webcam.

    It's all pretty cool, and I'm fairly happy with it! Hope you like it. :D:D

    It's Android only, and you have to add your holiday as a WIDGET for the moment, so once it's downloaded, long-press on a free space on your home screen and then select add widget.

    It's still in beta and I'm going to be making a lot of other improvements over the next few weeks, but your feedback would be great.

    You can download it here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.addtheday.android

    Mods - this app was genuinely born of this forum, and my snow holiday fetish, so hopefully you'll allow this posting as on topic.


Comments

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    #2
    AlternateID
    Registered Users Posts: 941 ✭✭✭AlternateID


    Good job. For me I'd add multiple timers and refresh the image every time the screen is selected. Or have split screen for two images and timers.

    Or I could just open two instances of the app.

    I'll download when I get home.


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    #3
    cormee
    Registered Users Posts: 1,801 ✭✭✭cormee


    AlternateID wrote: »
    Good job. For me I'd add multiple timers and refresh the image every time the screen is selected. Or have split screen for two images and timers.

    Or I could just open two instances of the app.

    I'll download when I get home.

    Cheers, yes, you can add multiple events/widgets already. So I have widgets for my VT trip, on the 23rd, and for my Spring trip in Chamonix :D . There is also a 2x2 stack widget option that will allow you stack the events on top of each other, so they don't take up too much space on your home screen.

    Regarding refresh, I was concerned about complaints from users about data use, and also, there is processing work done on my remote server (to downsize the webcam image to a smaller mobile-friendly, and less data-hungry, size and then send it to your phone), that can take a minute or so, which isn't ideal, but maybe a refresh icon would be an idea.

    [edit]
    Am going with the option of a 15, 30, 45 or 60 min refresh on the webcam image. It will be a global setting so it will apply to all widgets the user creates.


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