[APP] Light Flow - Control your LED notification and reminders (phone specific app.. works on DX)

[Lynseyw]

Just found this app and thought I would share. I wanted an app like BerryBuzz that I had on my old Blackberry (that is the only thing I missed about my blackberry

This app works great on my Droid X. Don't give up right away when it doesn't work right off the bat. Took me some time to figure out what needed to be checked etc in different apps to get it working properly and without double or no notification. I had my gmail, sms, missed call, and google voice all flashing appropriate colors and sounds including the reminders!!! I love it! The dev is awesome and responds to emails. Give it a try, its worth the buck. There is also a free version.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rageconsulting.android.lightflow&feature=search_result

 

[Deleted User]

Sweet! I was trying to get the makers of Blink to implement a more comprehensive control system. I'll have to give this a shot, it looks like exactly what I wanted.

 

[PhilD]

Just found this app and thought I would share. I wanted an app like BerryBuzz that I had on my old Blackberry (that is the only thing I missed about my blackberry

This app works great on my Droid X. Don't give up right away when it doesn't work right off the bat. Took me some time to figure out what needed to be checked etc in different apps to get it working properly and without double or no notification. I had my gmail, sms, missed call, and google voice all flashing appropriate colors and sounds including the reminders!!! I love it! The dev is awesome and responds to emails. Give it a try, its worth the buck. There is also a free version.

i just saw this in the Market today...looks interesting. can you tell me whether or not the interleaved LED notifications work on your Droid X? i.e., when you have multiple notification types (email, SMS, etc.), can you make the LED alternate between the different notification colors? thanks

 

[Deleted User]

The interleaved LED notifications work, sort of.

It definitely interleaves them, but it's not perfect - i.e. it doesn't really flash a regular pattern with the right timing. When I tested two notifications, it had a brief period of flashing back and forth really quickly (i.e. the LED was constantly on for several seconds flashing bluepurplebluepurplebluepurple), then it went back into its pattern but won't perfectly alternate - sometimes it'll hit more than one of the same color before switching.

So, while it isn't perfect, it is a LOT better than the similar apps on the market and functions well enough that it was very much worth the buck for me.

I always said that if someone created a bug-free notification app that controlled all common programs and interleaved them well, it'd be worth several bucks for me. This isn't perfect, but it's decent.

 

[Deleted User]

Just noticed something - since this app doesn't do icon notifications at all, you have to leave an icon notifier (i.e. the app notifications) enabled to get status bar notifications.

It appears that this app overrides the stock LED notifications. That is, when I enable notifications for Gmail, I get the Light Flow color rather than the stock green color, and also get the notification icon. Kinda wonder if this will have any funky behavior in the future since some apps don't let you separate the LED notifications from the icon notifications.

 

[Lynseyw]

I got the weird blinking back and forth and then sorta a pattern. I ended up setting it at notification - fast and then the battery and charging - slow. Rebooted and then got a steady pattern of alternating notifications. Rebooting after changing settings seems to be the answer. All my notifications are working perfectly with those settings. Just my two cents so far. So far seems to be the best out there.

 

[Steven58]

moved back to the dx section per BV's reasonable request. I'm easy.

 

[Sokudo Ningyou]

It force closed every single time I tried to change any of the settings on my X. Both free and paid. I went to Led Me Know instead; it's free and gave me the notification I really needed for missed calls.

 

[Deleted User]

Sent Steven a message requesting it be moved back to the X forum since these types of apps are highly device dependent and will perform differently on different devices!

 

[PhilD]

this app appears to be working on my Droid X but i'm a little confused about the settings. should i turn off all light and sound notifications in my other apps, like Handcent for instance, and just use those in Light Flow? do the notifications settings in Light Flow override the notification settings in Handcent or FOLLOW the settings in Handcent? my testing so far implies that they FOLLOW the notifications in the other apps, meaning i should disable the notifications in other apps (but not the status bar notifications) and just use those in Light Flow...

 

[andrewpmoore]

this app appears to be working on my Droid X but i'm a little confused about the settings. should i turn off all light and sound notifications in my other apps, like Handcent for instance, and just use those in Light Flow? do the notifications settings in Light Flow override the notification settings in Handcent or FOLLOW the settings in Handcent? my testing so far implies that they FOLLOW the notifications in the other apps, meaning i should disable the notifications in other apps (but not the status bar notifications) and just use those in Light Flow...

I'm the author of light flow. The way I personally use the app is to leave all standard notifications as they are, then just use light flow to set the colors for the different apps. If a particular app or event doesn't support sound notifications or vibration patterns I then use light flow to set them. In that way I don't have to go through every app enabling and disabling different settings.

I know some people do switch off the notifications in other apps, but I've tried to make it so there's little for the user to do on installing, because if people decide to uninstall, then it's time to go back through all those apps resetting everything back!

 

[andrewpmoore]

As for the weird blinking, it has improved in recent versions, but is difficult to get perfect. To ensure the battery does not get used too much sets of timers are used to change the color, it's pretty much impossible to get these to tie into the speed of the actual blink rate of the phones light due to variances in the timing of firing the code. Other activity on the phone or garbage collection that the system performs means that the app can't always exactly fire the notifications at the same time every time.

The newer version I've really cut down the code that gets hit on each color change to try and make it more consistent and moved other processing that takes place into different threads to try and help a little.

 

[Deleted User]

Andrew, I just wanted to say that Lightflow is precisely what I've been looking for, for nearly a year. The authors of Blink asked what improvements they could make to the app and I talked with one of the devs and said that a universal app that would give me full control over the color of all of my LED notifications, and allow them to flash colors in order, would probably be a $5 app to me.

They ignored the input... you clearly knew what I was going for, though. Immediate knowledge of all notifications awaiting me by glancing at my LED is awesome. At a buck USD, I think you're under-selling it because it's a great app and the updates I get all the time tell me you're committed to it.

Hope you stick with it!

 

[Rockaholic]

Can I set specific colors for my contacts? That alone, or a response from the dev saying that he will add it will warrant my purchase

 

[Deleted User]

Only the dev can say whether he's working on it, but it's not a currently supported function in the app.

 

[scary alien]

Andrew,

Good to see you here on AF!

Let me know if you need anything or I can help with anything related to the LED stuff (and I very much appreciate the tips and help you've already given me).

Cheers!

-Sean

 

[BIG CAT 7]

This ia a great app and works very nicely with the GB leak....

 

[Toolanddiemaker]

I'm happy about finding this app. After the GB leak my txt notifications stopped working on handcent. So this is just what I needed.

 

[Trooper]

I had problems running this on my DX and have ditched it since. This occurred on Froyo as well as GB.

In my situation, it just did not seem to work for SMS/MMS. It also would cause SMS Popup and Messaging apks to force close. It happened continually (which is a bummer) so I've stopped using this app.

Will wait a bit for it to become more polished before I try it again. Maybe it has something to do with using Accessibility for it to do its thing? I dunno, will let the dev and the experts figure this one out.

Cheers.

 

[Deleted User]

Did you contact the developer about the problems?

Just curious. I'm guilty of it myself but I've come to the conclusion that simply stopping using a useful app because it causes problems isn't a good solution since the dev probably never finds out that there is an issue.

If we want devs to polish their apps, we need to be proactive about letting them know the problems.

Not admonishing you, just an observation that I am far-too-often guilty of myself.

 

[scary alien]

Did you contact the developer about the problems?

Just curious. I'm guilty of it myself but I've come to the conclusion that simply stopping using a useful app because it causes problems isn't a good solution since the dev probably never finds out that there is an issue.

If we want devs to polish their apps, we need to be proactive about letting them know the problems.

Not admonishing you, just an observation that I am far-too-often guilty of myself.

+1 and thanks that that ^^^, binary visions (cool name, btw ).

I've gotten a ton of positive feedback on my apps and have been contacted my a lot of folks via email regarding issues that I have tried dilligently to address.

I've also gotten a lot of of positive feedback for which I am also very thankful for.

Feedback is always appreciated .

Let Andrew know what issues you are having...I'm sure he'll be happy to hear from you.

Cheers!

 

[Trooper]

I have not contacted the dev since I uninstalled the app. But you guys are right, I will send him an email. Note that I know of at least one other person having the same issue with a Droid X.

 

[emaN resU]

Thank you Andrew! This app made my gb experience complete!

 

[TheGr81]

Does the Droid X only support certain LED colors? If I sent the color to RED it seems to work fine but if I try any of the less common colors like Sky Blue the notification LED won't come on, even in test mode.

If this is true, is it possible to customize the list of color choices that comes up to oly show the ones that your phone supports?

 

[scary alien]

Does the Droid X only support certain LED colors? If I sent the color to RED it seems to work fine but if I try any of the less common colors like Sky Blue the notification LED won't come on, even in test mode.

If this is true, is it possible to customize the list of color choices that comes up to oly show the ones that your phone supports?

The Droid X LED supports the primary red/green/blue colors which can be combined to make a variety of colors such as violet/purple, light blue, orange, yellow, light green, dark green, and for rooted phones, white.

The LED hardware/firmware, however, does approximations of the above colors, so, your mileage may vary depending (especially on the viewing angle). It seems that most Motorola Droid phones (original Droid, Droid X, Droid 2 / 2G, Milestone) can do the above.

You should also be aware that unless the app is writing directly to the brightness files, you won't be able to see the LED turned on while the screen is on. I think Andrew is staying away from doing the root thing since it does add a layer of complexity to the app.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!