Maelin comments on Less Wrong Product & Service Recommendations - Less Wrong

24 Post author: lukeprog 02 July 2012 01:18PM

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Comment author: Maelin 03 July 2012 02:27:40AM *  10 points [-]

Tasker (Android app)

Lets you automate many activities on an Android phone. You define a context based on various conditions (e.g. connected to a Wifi network, using certain cell towers, phone spatially oriented a certain way) and various actions to perform upon entering and exiting that context. You can set variables and condition upon them, there is flow control for actions, customisable home screen widgets and shortcuts, and many other neat functions.

Some examples of tasks I use / am pondering:

  • When my phone is on any of the cell towers around my house, it switches the wifi on (to connect to my home network)
  • When the phone connects to my home network, it sends a magic packet to my PC and turns it on - but only if I am getting home at a time when I'm likely to want to use the PC (varies depending on day). But it only does this if it has been disconnected for at least half an hour (in case the connection drops out momentarily overnight)
  • When my phone disconnects from my car's Bluetooth hands free kit, it waits two minutes and then switches the Bluetooth antenna off.
  • When my phone is connected to its charger and turned face-down overnight (how I leave it next to my bed), it engages silent mode until 08:30am
  • A toggle button on my home screens, that switches my phone to silent and turns network-level call forwarding on (for when I am at work/movies/etc)

There's a wiki with lots of downloadable setups you can experiment with for neat results.

Comment author: EvelynM 17 November 2012 10:47:40PM *  1 point [-]

I've got tasker, but haven't successfully set it up to do anything. I find all of the layers of menus and terminology confusing and wonder why there isn't a configuration file I can edit by hand.

Comment author: Maelin 20 November 2012 02:25:04AM 1 point [-]

Yeah, the interface is usually the biggest complaint and I agree it's quite suboptimal. I guess the good bit is once you get something working you don't have to interact with it again until you want to change it.

I haven't tried it myself, but I believe there is a way to write the contexts and tasks in XML files or something similar... you could look that up.

Comment author: Pablo_Stafforini 04 July 2012 05:29:24AM 1 point [-]

I haven't tried Tasker, but I used Llama for this same purpose, with excellent results. Here's a comparison of the two apps. As of July, 2012 both apps have the same rating on Google Play (4.7 stars).

Comment author: Maelin 05 July 2012 03:09:22AM 0 points [-]

Hmm, seems to be a few remarks on how Tasker is tricky to use. I haven't tried Llama, but I didn't find Tasker particularly difficult to get to grips with. Anyone with some programming experience should definitely find it easy enough.

I just got the toggle button for call forwarding set up yesterday. Now a process that used to be annoyingly cumbersome and take 30 seconds every time I arrived at or left work is a breezy two-taps that leave me feeling satisfied with myself for having set it up.

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