[APP] NoLED v6.0.19 - Use the AMOLED screen for incoming notifications

Before asking questions, please read the FAQ.

Introduction:

I saw the idea posted somewhere previously that instead of getting the capacitive lights on, we really should be putting the phone's AMOLED screen to work ! specially that it doesn't consume any backlight energy when displaying a black screen. So I developed an app that does just that: upon receiving a notification, it will display a black screen with a dot or icon somewhere in the screen. I really should put these in bullet points..

Description:

the application does the following:

1. When your phone receives a notification, it switches the screen on and displays a notification. The notification bounces around every 3 seconds (changeable via an option). This will guarantee using different LEDs so that the same ones won't be burned out.

2. You can customize whether to have a dot or an icon for each type of supported notification. Users may also customize the colors of these icons/dots.

3. NoLED will work with SMS/MMS, Gtalk, Gmail, Missed calls, Voicemail, Calendar and K-9 (email client) without any additional permissions. Any other 3rd party software (e.g. Whatsapp, Email app, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail) will need to be checked under Monitored Apps and will require granting Accessibility rights to NoLED.

4. The app runs as a service, after installing, you have two ways to activate the app. (a) by restarting. (b) by loading the widget into your home screen and clicking on it.

5. To get rid of the notification screen, you may use the home or the back key. You can enable dismissal via more keys in the Miscellaneous submenu. Once your notifications are dismissed, all notifications disappear and will not come back up.

I have also logged the touch drivers and saw that although I'm displaying a black screen and setting flags to not respond to touch messages, android is still receiving touch messages when you touch any spot on the screen. This, I imagine, consumes resources! So I disabled the touch drivers when the black screen is active. Dismissing the notifications should reactive the touch drivers. If your screen is unresponsive to touch even after the notification screen is dismissed, a simple restart should take care of it. There is also an option to completely disable that feature. The touch drivers are only disabled on the Samsung Galaxy S variants, all other devices are still receptive to touch events.

Now the touchscreen drivers were a lot easier to mess around with. The sourcecode given by samsung helped me achieve the activation/deactivation of the screen. Things are not the same with the capacitive buttons. You'll notice that when the black screen is on, if you touch any of the soft buttons, they'll light up (although am suppressing them programatically). On some other devices like the Nexus S, these backlights cannot be switched off once the screen is turned on programatically. This is a bug from Google and more info is in the FAQ.

Video review:

Thank you totallydubbedHD for giving us this neat preview of the app:




Themes:

Want to change the default icons that ship with NoLED?
Check out Themes:

http://www.devasque.com/noled/themes.php

Official web site:

http://www.devasque.com/noled/

Translations:

NoLED is translated into several languages thanks to our army of volunteers ! More details can be found at: http://www.devasque.com/noled/translations.php

If you think you can help expand that list, please see this link
I appreciate all the help we can get on this.

Enjoy ! Comments and feedback will be appreciated

Update 8/11/2010: Application is now on the Android Market.


If you like this work and want to motivate and encourage further development, please consider a donation
Thanks

Change log

v6.0.19 6/5/2013

• Added Vietnamese, updated Italian and Ukranian (Thanks nhh1994, 4lex and Olex)
• Support Gmail 4.5 and new tabbed inbox
• NoLED will insert a .nomedia in the custom themes folder so as not to show these themes in your Gallery app

Please go to http://www.devasque.com/noled/change.php for the complete change log.

NoLED Weather

v0.8 10/23/2012

• Weather should now reflect current city more accurately; it will choose the first returned search result.

v0.7 10/10/2012

• Weather was not automatically updating after a restart. Now it does.

v0.5 9/13/2012

• Fixed an issue where geolocator was causing auto-update to stop working.

v0.4 9/6/2012

• Updated language files
• Changed weather provider to MSN. Google just quietly killed their APIs
• Changed geolocator timeout to 90 seconds (used to be 20 seconds)

v0.3 1/26/2012

• Added Geolocation using Wireless networks (no physical GPS will be used).
• -it will give up wireless location discovery after 20 seconds (will release all wakelocks).
• -if timedout, weather will query the latest weather location on record.
• Removed the noled weather icon from the app launcher (i personally found it so ugly and useless). Instead, you access the weather app/plug-in via the NoLED settings under toggle notifications (requires NoLED > v5.0.1b).

FAQ

Please go to http://www.devasque.com/noled/FAQ.php.

andy2na said:

this is a very clever idea.

I tried it out, but it isnt working for me on my Samsung Captivate

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Strange, it really should work.

Did you lock the screen and unlock once after installation ? Try sending a sms to yourself from another phone while the screen is off. Then wait for about 10 seconds (enough time for the whole screen to light up, go off, and then show a notification). Let me know if this still doesn't work, the captivate might have different screen timeouts than our galaxy S.

rkadve said:

Its now working on my SGS.
The reason could be > I have lost my default notifications after sd card fix. I do have a media folder on my sdcard/sd with default samsung tones which i copied before the fix on to my ext sd.
Any solutions ?

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I would say try to sms from another phone, or give yourself a missed call to see if the application is running. These should work regardless of where you placed your notification tones.

If these do work, then make sure you place your notification tones in /sdcard/sd/media/audio/notifications , playing any of them should trigger the notification.

Bajo76 said:

Unfortunatly not working for me too. Using JG1 and modaco´s r2. All default ringtones selected.

Would love to get this working.

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

Can you go to Settings > Applications > Running Services and see whether NoLED is listed there ?

buddy01 said:

suggestions that i don't think would consume too much power:

Have different images for different notifications, as suggested before: phone icon for call, mail icon for mail, sms icon for sms etc.

Make the image jump to a different random spot every few second, so it won't just stay in one place and so be bad for the panel. (dunno if this would consume too much energy).

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

I think these are two great ideas. I'll try to implement them if I get sometime. I will try to set a different icon/color for each notification, and make them move around every few seconds. This might have a hit on cpu utilization, but its well worth a try.

Bajo76 said:

yes it is listed

Click to expand...

Click to collapse

With what are you testing the application btw ? Are you sending an email to yourself ? If you turn the screen off, send an email that has a default samsung ringtone, do you receive anything?

INeedYourHelp said:

How come this method got so quickly made, but the other method still isn't functional? (talking about the other thread)

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Click to collapse

well, the android SDK allows for programs like this to exist, the SDK has no APIs to support lighting up the soft buttons. that's why.

also, the drivers for the backlight are disabled and enabled in ways that we don't fully understand yet.