App idea: flashlight / color light

[_wb_]

Here's an idea for a simple but potentially fun application: use your Pandora as a flashlight or color lamp. This is quite easy to do: just fill the screen with white pixels (or any other color), and adjust brightness to max.


Philips is selling color led lamps, called LivingColors, quite expensively. They are relatively low brightness lamps, dimmable and with adjustable colors.


I don't have a Pandora but I imagine that in total darkness its display can produce quite some light at max brightness. Its nubs are perfect to be used as a color wheel and dimmer. The action buttons can be used as an on/off switch, perhaps putting the device in low power mode when off. The dpad could be used to adjust color/brightness in a more precise way. The function keys could be used to load stored settings. Perhaps some button can be pressed to make it display the current time too. Maybe some ways to auto-change colors smoothly can be added, etc.


This would be a very nice thing to have. The Pandora would be a nice little bed lamp, nothing very bright (not for reading I guess), but enough to allow my wife to breast-feed my daughter without waking me up, or as an emergency flashlight when power goes out and I need to find an actual flashlight.


Anyone want to implement this?

 

[Binky]

Given that this wouldn't be very complicated to code, I'd say its worth doing (haven't got time myself though )

 

[PowerGod]

So EVERYONE can finally see the display in a PINK dress !!

 

[DaMummy]

white on pandora full brightness in the dark is extremely bright and i can suggest not to look directly at it

 

[SNESFAN]

white on pandora full brightness in the dark is extremely bright and i can suggest not to look directly at it

For shits and grins make the deactivation button a moving touchscreen only button


Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

 

[ibisum]

Do it in LOAD81 in about 10 seconds:

-- flashlight.lua

background(240,240,240)

LOAD81: http://w1xer.at/LOAD81.pnd

 

[_wb_]

A fully dimmable light would go from black background at minimum brightness, all the way to white background at max brightness. I guess the most battery-friendly way would be to keep brightness as low as possible, so from low to high would be:


- screen off


- black background, min brightness


- grey bg, min brightness


- white bg, min brightness


- white bg, medium brightness


- white bg, max brightness

 

[Binky]

This could be used as a universal RPM meter - strobe the light at variable speeds, and provide a live speed calculator based on the number of spokes/teeth

 

[sebt3]

So "General dev section" is for anything ? I whish we had a "cool idea and wish" section like the other board ...

 

[Tom`]

Yeah, you don't even need to develop anything, Rockbox already has this feature.

 

[gruso]

So "General dev section" is for anything ? I whish we had a "cool idea and wish" section like the other board ...

I agree that the dev forum is for dev talk. I'll move any request threads to General.

 

[Lao Rebel]

Here's an idea for a simple but potentially fun application: use your Pandora as a flashlight or color lamp. This is quite easy to do: just fill the screen with white pixels (or any other color), and adjust brightness to max.


Philips is selling color led lamps, called LivingColors, quite expensively. They are relatively low brightness lamps, dimmable and with adjustable colors.


I don't have a Pandora but I imagine that in total darkness its display can produce quite some light at max brightness. Its nubs are perfect to be used as a color wheel and dimmer. The action buttons can be used as an on/off switch, perhaps putting the device in low power mode when off. The dpad could be used to adjust color/brightness in a more precise way. The function keys could be used to load stored settings. Perhaps some button can be pressed to make it display the current time too. Maybe some ways to auto-change colors smoothly can be added, etc.


This would be a very nice thing to have. The Pandora would be a nice little bed lamp, nothing very bright (not for reading I guess), but enough to allow my wife to breast-feed my daughter without waking me up, or as an emergency flashlight when power goes out and I need to find an actual flashlight.


Anyone want to implement this?

i don't think i be using my pandora as a flashlight b/c i have a real flashlight

 

[elwing]

you've no luck, if it was an iSomething device you could even sell that apps...

 

[_wb_]

Sorry for putting this in the wrong subforum!


Binky, could you please explain the RPM meter thing, I don't really get it.


I'll look into Rockbox, thanks for the tip, Tom.


Lao: I also have an actual flashlight, but I don't tend to carry it with me, so I tend to forget where it is or don't have it anywhere near me when I need it. I expect that when I will have a Pandora, it will never be far away

 

[iprice]

Here's a little something. It's a simple program that allows you to fade the screen from black to white by sliding a little slider at the bottom of the screen with the touchscreen.


Don't know if this is exactly what you wanted, but I can adapt it if required.


Unzip the file and run the "pandora-exe.pnd" in the PanFlash directory, not the .PND.


This is not tested as I don't have a Pandora. It should work though.

PanFlash.zip

 

[Binky]

Binky, could you please explain the RPM meter thing, I don't really get it.

imagine I have a spinning cartwheel in a dark room.


I want to know how fast its spinning.


it takes x milliseconds for one spoke to replace the next i.e. one spoke was at the top of the wheel, now the next one is


if I flash a light every time this happens, then I will not see one spoke spinning past and the next one coming into place - assuming the spokes are identical, I will only ever see them in one position


Therefore, they will appear to be still


If I vary the speed of the flashing light until this happens, say to one flash every 200ms, I know that is takes 200ms for one spoke to replace the next


If I also know that my wheel has 36 spokes, I can say that in 200ms, it travels 360/36 = 10o


so 10o/0.2s = 3000o/60s


that's 8.33 full circles each minute = 8.33rpm


only problem is that the spoke might be replaced twice during the dark periods, so the flashing has to be very fast to start with

 

[Fzero]

Something like this might be a bit too much effort to develop, but its pretty nice and you can set the colours to anything you like so you could have white and white .. resulting in a constant bright [torch] light. Or you could run some nice soothing schemes like the defaults.


Its a website so could just shortcut to it i guess


this http://moodlight.org/#4

 

[_wb_]

OK, here is a first quick & dirty attempt to make a colored flashlight application (actually this is just a full screen color picker). I don't yet have a Pandora myself, so I haven't tried this at all on an actual Pandora. The source is in the attachment, build instructions are below. Screenshot is attached.


You can select any color by picking a hue, saturation and value. The slider on the left sets the value (brightness), the idea is that the dpad up/down can be used (not implemented yet). The circular dial next to it sets the hue, the idea is that the left nub can be used for this (again, not implemented yet). The dial on the right sets the saturation. Use enter or click on the big color box to hide/show the controls. The number keys are shortcuts to some predefined colors - the idea is that these will be user-definable in some way (not implemented yet).


To get the source compiled:


- go to some fresh directory, say /foo/bar/


- download the source of FLTK version 1.3.0 (http://www.fltk.org/...p?VERSION=1.3.0), untar and compile ("./configure; make" should do), so you now have a compiled version of FLTK in /foo/bar/fltk-1.3.0/


- untar color_picker.tar.gz, go to /foo/bar/color_picker, do "make"


I hope this works. Can anyone test this? Also, help with getting this to work with the nubs and dpad would be much appreciated.


(license: GPL, feel free to modify in any way, please share your modifications in this thread)



color_picker.tar.gz

 

[mcobit]

If you want to make the nubs work, just poll the first joystick for nub one and the second for nub two.


The dpad is mapped to the directional keys by default.

 

[ibisum]

Oh god, why didn't you just do it in LOAD81? All those dependencies .. okay I guess I have to do this myself.