[APPLET][05-05] HomeCube - Animated FlipClock, Ribbon & Notification, VGA/QVGA

Pointui » Home 2 Applets Showcase

[APPLET][05-05] HomeCube - Animated FlipClock, Ribbon & Notification, VGA/QVGA

(229 posts)

Started 10 months ago by zenkinz
Latest reply from cox1303

Tags:

1 2 3 ... 8 Next »

zenkinz
Member
Yet another Home applet. I'm doing this because I like to personalise my Home2 Home. Since I like Flipclock (but the animation did not work quite well for me)I thought I would rewrite the flipclock to be inserted into my Home2 Home.

Credit

Credits must go to scottcrsi for the images he created for his own [Flipclock] as I basically reuse his images (but not the codes) Still creating the images alone is a big job so I don't want to take any credits away from him. edit: I have re-image the original images but still I don't own the original idea or graphics work that I have enhanced on

May-5: This minor release now fixes some bugs, plus improved version of notification feature.

May-3: This minor release now fixes some bugs plus added notification feature. See release history for more information!

May-2: First public release, WVGA for now. Have done some serious rework to improve on the flipclock performance. See Release notes for features and known bugs

Release History
May-5 version 1.2 - Download link for WVGA/VGA and WQVGA/QVGA devices
- New: Alarm support is now added. Click on the clock brings you to the clock and alarm setting
- New: Minimise/Maximise window for Notification and Next Event Window
- Enhance: SMS Notification now shows text message and sender. Click of the ok button now dismiss the notification permanently. If you want to dismiss temporarily, you can click on the notification window (background) to minimise the window. Click on the notification icon (on the top left) will either run the application (for SMS, email and missed call) or open up the system notification window (for rest of the notifications)
- Enhance: Support for VGA/QVGA devices. (But device may need to enable "Full Screen Support")
- Fix: Bug fix (see list of known bugs for more information)
May-3 version 1.1 - Download link for WVGA and WQVGA devices
- New: Notification feature. Please see this note for more information about the notification feature
- Enhance: Support for WVGA/WQVGA without fullscreen
- Fix: Bluetooth icon shows disabled when bluetooth device is connected
- Fix: Wrong remaining time displayed when next event is more than 1 day away
May-2 version 1.0 - added WQVGA support!

May-2 version 1.0 (for WVGA only) Download link for WVGA and WQVGA devices
1. New: Animated Flip clock. Smoother and Faster animation. Graphics were originally based on scottcrsi but has been substantially reworked to ensure smoother frame transition. See this video for the animated flip
2. New: System Icon Ribbon. Comprises of 10 system icons tracking & managing the respective status (Battery, GSM Signal, GPRS, Wifi, Bluetooth, Activesync, Backlight, Phone/External Storage, Volume). Some productivity tips
3. New: Notification window. Currently this is static, and will only show the next upcoming event. This area is planned to contain notifications for messages, missed call, with the appropiate details.
4. Limited support for VGA (only when full screen is chosen), and landscape.
5. Known bug: Alarm support not added
6. Grainy images / Coarse edges in the digit images, for W/QVGA devices. You can download the following jif package as temporary workaround
Some tips/tricks on the system icon ribbon and flipclock
- GPRS: Click and Hold to disconnect GPRS
- Bluetooth: Click to toggle Bluetooth state (Off, On, Discoverable)
- Wifi: Click to toggle on/off wireless radio
- For most icons, click to go to the setting in control panel
- Click and hold on the alarm icon to simulate animated flip clock.
Known bugs
- ~~Bluetooth status shows disabled when a bluetooth device gets connected~~
- ~~Event shows time remaining incorrect if it's more than 1 day~~
- ~~Time remaining display overflow when the next event is more than 1 day away~~ (fixed in v1.2)
- ~~Carrier name overlapping with the home screen title, in VGA/QVGA non-full screen mode~~ (fixed in v1.2)
- ~~Battery level not showing for device that's capable of displaying incremental value of 1%~~ (fixed in v1.2)
- Volume button not functional
- ~~Alarm is not functional~~ (added in v1.2)
- ~~When wireless is turned on but no network can be found, the icon status shows disabled~~ (fixed in v1.2)
- ~~Next Event window does not refresh automatically to next appointment, and time remaining value becomes negative~~ (fixed in v1.2)
- Time remaining display is wrong when there's no appointment in the next 8 days
Here's the video of the flipclock, and video of the icon ribbon in landscape and portrait in action.
Attachments
1. sms-close.png (116.2 KB, 295 downloads) 10 months old
2. sms-open.png (119.2 KB, 203 downloads) 10 months old
3. nextevent-close.png (116 KB, 126 downloads) 10 months old
4. nextevent-open.png (117.5 KB, 107 downloads) 10 months old
5. sshot007_1.png (96 KB, 94 downloads) 10 months old
6. sshot006_1.png (94.1 KB, 81 downloads) 10 months old
7. sshot004.png (94.1 KB, 129 downloads) 10 months old
Posted 10 months ago #
Nimche
Member

zenkinz,

I don't know if you like to do the graphics yourself but I can help you with a new flip time graphic.

If you are intersted I can show you some concepts?

Posted 10 months ago #
michaelp
Member

Bring it on Zenkinz n Nimche!

Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

@Nimche, yes! Please help me if you can. I love art but I'm bad with computing graphics. So if you can help in rendering new images, that'll be superb.

Basically, I have build a code to accept the clock background (i.e. what you see on the screen), the digits (from 0 to 9), and a set of animated background (not the entire background, but just the flipping part, and this background will be used by both the hour and minute card) and digits. Each set of animation contains 7 images.

The digit animation is alittle complicated. It consists of animation for top and bottom (so that when the clock flips, there's actually one animation for the current digit and another animation for the new digit, on top of the background animation)

however, if you have other ideas on how the animation graphics could be created, please do so, and I will adapt the code accordingly.

Posted 10 months ago #
Nimche
Member

I am in process of making some graphic right now but time is tight but I will try to take it somewhere.

Thank Zenkinz

Posted 10 months ago #
Tomber
Member

hej zenkinz and nimche,
I already worked on new graphics for the flip clock (posted a sample in the thread). I could get those exported during next week. Customization and export of the design/size of the clock is quite easy. The project is in after effects for those interested.
I also did some applet speed testing for triggering the animations - it seems that slightly delayed triggered loading of new graphics, runs smoother then loading all 3 parts at the same time. I keep an eye on this topic, so if you are interested, just let me know and I join you guys :)

post #250
http://community.pointui.com/topic/appletvgaqvga-flipclock-v01-beta/page/9

Posted 10 months ago #
Nimche
Member

Tomber,

I couldn't run the mov file. COuld you please put it as a different format?

thanks

Posted 10 months ago #
nartoab
Member

Tomber's animation for the clock is very awesome, but i hope it won't be buggy running in real life and a word for Zenkinz: you should use some others rather than the basic flipclock, or else it would be like having a HTC device all over with TF3D and such

Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

Tomber,

that was a nice animated flip!

I'm not sure if it's possible to perform such a fast flip, there's some limitation in creating an animation in pointui. anything that's more than 4 frame per second (or each frame every 250ms), will be too fast for pointui to catch all the frames.

nevertheless, if you are willing to get involved in this mini project, feel free to share your work with us :)

Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

@nartoab,

I'm building a class that gives animated flip clock. HTC Flipclock will be one of them. The others, depends on the graphic work, which I'm hoping folks here will contribute.

Posted 10 months ago #
Tomber
Member
Sadly I haven't done any testing of layered animations yet, but on my omnia I get around 10-15 frames/second having 3 jif animations (120x120 pixel, alpha) running continously next to each other. Looks fantastic on screen :)

zenkinz, consider updating the clock before it slights into view (without flipping in the new numbers). This is by far the biggest problem with the current applet, as the phone really slows down during the movement of the applet an parallely running the animation.

I attached a WMV Version of the preview
Attachments
1. flipclock_preview2.zip (67.5 KB, 423 downloads) 10 months old
Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

@Tomber,

when I did just 3 jif animation, it can be faster than 4 frame/s, but once I include the full animation (which consists of 10 jifs animation set), it slows considerably. It could be a problem on my end, so if you can achieve full animation with 10-15 frames/s I will be interested to see how.

The flip clock I did flips a second after the applet slides into focus, so it'll not have the lag like the original one. I can for sure do it before it slides in (which means I don't need to animate at all) but I'm trying to add abit of bells/whistle to the clock ;-)

Posted 10 months ago #
TheDrizzle
Member

This looks awesome! FlipClock DOES NOT work on my Omnia (well it works as a clock, but I get no flipping animation) so I'm quite excited about this applet. Any idea when a version will be available for download?

Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

@TheDrizzle,

The flipclock is already functional, and the foundation is also done so that I can add new status icons easily just with skins/graphics (like the signal and battery).

Right now I'm planning to make the bottom of the screen (where the battery and signal icons are) to be the 'icon ribbon', and you can slide the icons if there's too many of them shown in a ribbon. (i.e. collapse/slider alternative :-))

What I need help, is graphic designers who can design the icons. The icon should contains a set of icon for different states (named 0 to 100), and a set of overlay images if you need to display the icons depending on the state (like the charging/no-charging in the case of battery)

Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

added a set of icons, and they are functional (as in they will show the state/status of the corresponding system resources :) See the first post in this thread for the screenshot.

am trying to add more icons so that I can go on and build/test the ribbon concept on this icons.

Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

here's how an "Icon Ribbon" would look like on a landscape. (pardon the graphics & layout)

YouTube Video

Posted 10 months ago #
Nimche
Member

zenkinz
Very nice work.

Posted 10 months ago #
sidvizioso
Member

here's how an "Icon Ribbon" would look like on a landscape. (pardon the graphics & layout)

YouTube Video

it looks like TF3D, but from Pointui developers
great idea zenkinz

Posted 10 months ago #
TheDrizzle
Member

This looks soooo cool! I will be following this thread as it develops. I just noticed though your samples and vids are VGA... will there be a QVGA or WQVGA version?

Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

@TheDrizzle,

sure if this gets released eventually, it would have QWVGA supports. I have to say this applet needs alot of space (even with an icon ribbon) so a wide screen is preferred.

Posted 10 months ago #
aussie_boi
Member

Or QVGA users may just run in Landscape mode, perhaps?

Really fantastic concept and development so far.

This is taking Home2 to the next level!

Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

@aussie_boi,

actually it would run on QVGA as well, I reckon just some section of information would not be displayed (e.g. call history, unread sms, etc) since they are taking a chunk of the screen estate and they are not part of the ribbon :)

Posted 10 months ago #
aussie_boi
Member

Even better I think, thanks zenkinz :P

Posted 10 months ago #
Tomber
Member
Ok, I further optimized my animation routine and exported the animation in 3 layers for testing. Animations are running smooth, even in the emulator. Compared to the "_alternative" version (that simply forces loading with parallel timers), I added a routine that checks if all images were loaded and then consequentialy refreshes the screen. Sadly I haven't done any programming in ages and I have problems making the code OOP :/

I'm trying to do some benchmarking and mayebe even an auto adjust for the timer speeds, but I got stuck getting some DateTime functions working (see other thread...).

It would be also necessary to see if the surface.draw/overlay function is faster then outputting 3 images seperately.
Attachments
1. fliptest.zip (63.5 KB, 156 downloads) 10 months old
Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

could you do a set of numbers so that I can test it out in my home applet? I see that you create 3 timers, which from my experience (while rewriting the flip code), it could hit the performance.

Right now, I only use 1 timer, and am doing animation for a set 10 jif files, so if I were to base on your design, I could save it to just 6, and hopefully that'll enable me to have more frames / sec versus what I have now.

Posted 10 months ago #
Tomber
Member

Yeah I will render those numbers in the next days, but doing all 60 animations would blow the size of the applet (70+ mb?). So we will have to stick to those 9/10 animations. Using extra timers for every file showed, that it runs alot smoother then loading them in one call. Those timers destroy themself directly after getting executed, so they are just a simple delay.

I ask myself if we would get an speed improvement, putting all imagefiles into memory (1,5mb(qvga) - 4mb(vga)) and then just changing the visiblity... we are desperately in need of a format for animations!

Would you mind sending me the code for the flipclock, so I could directly adapt my further testing to your layout?

Posted 10 months ago #
zenkinz
Member

I just sent you the entire Homecube code with all the jif files.

Posted 10 months ago #
Nimche
Member

Can't wait for the new release. I will produce my files based on your published CS file later when its completed. I think I can adopt it.

Thanks

Posted 10 months ago #
costp
Member

Tomber, You don't need 60 animations, you need 6 for the 10th and 10 for the minutes.
You should only split the minutes in 2... So you only get 16 animations but still 20 Megs...

just one thing, why not trying with jpeg files as the images are small so they should load fast no? Or you have transparency and it's not a go

just my 0,2 cents

Posted 10 months ago #
Tomber
Member

@costp jpeg is not an option, as there is no alpha chanel. regarding those 60 animations would be based on the assumption to use all possibilities. Still there are animations needed for the upper/lower part of the aniamtion (you understandt if you look at the current flipcode files). so yout get 2*10 animations. Of course you could only make animations from one number to the next one, but it wouldn't be very flexible to split it up to the all possebilities. Still a nice idea just to focus on animations with consequent numbers.

Thanks zemkins for sending the code!

Posted 10 months ago #