Collecting Emails

[sburford]

Hi,

I was just wondering something about how i would use my pandora when it arrives... I obviously would like it to check / download my emails every few minutes like my mobile would, but i also would normally have it closed in standby unless im using it, so i question is will it be possible to have it comeout of sleep mode say every 5 mins connect to wifi (if available)check/download emails, beep if it gets one and then shut down again if if doesnt or i dont read it after another 5 mins etc?
I dont really want to leave it on, with wifi runing all the time... would really kill the battery.
Cheers,

Shaun

 

[mindlord]

Hi,

I was just wondering something about how i would use my pandora when it arrives... I obviously would like it to check / download my emails every few minutes like my mobile would, but i also would normally have it closed in standby unless im using it, so i question is will it be possible to have it comeout of sleep mode say every 5 mins connect to wifi (if available)check/download emails, beep if it gets one and then shut down again if if doesnt or i dont read it after another 5 mins etc?
I dont really want to leave it on, with wifi runing all the time... would really kill the battery.
Cheers,

Shaun

The beauty of the Pandora is that you can do just about anything with it that you want.
The short answer to your question is yes.
Will is be a built in feature? Probably not.

What you're talking about is a pretty simple cron job so as long as you leave cron running even when the lid is closed to fire up and perform the requested tasks using a shell script then the Pandora can be set to wake up at any given moment and do all manner of crazy things. This of course will take some tinkering on your part. This will also cut down on the Pandora's standby time and you'll have to recharge a bit more often. But not so much as you might think. The CPU is very energy efficient.

So as long as you're willing to get your hands dirty it shouldn't be hard at all. However, I'm sure that someone will be interested in doing something similar and will post up scripts of doing a similar task not too long after the Pandora goes public.

 

[lvyelion]

Hi,

I was just wondering something about how i would use my pandora when it arrives... I obviously would like it to check / download my emails every few minutes like my mobile would, but i also would normally have it closed in standby unless im using it, so i question is will it be possible to have it comeout of sleep mode say every 5 mins connect to wifi (if available)check/download emails, beep if it gets one and then shut down again if if doesnt or i dont read it after another 5 mins etc?
I dont really want to leave it on, with wifi runing all the time... would really kill the battery.
Cheers,

Shaun

The beauty of the Pandora is that you can do just about anything with it that you want.
The short answer to your question is yes.
Will is be a built in feature? Probably not.

What you're talking about is a pretty simple cron job so as long as you leave cron running even when the lid is closed to fire up and perform the requested tasks using a shell script then the Pandora can be set to wake up at any given moment and do all manner of crazy things. This of course will take some tinkering on your part. This will also cut down on the Pandora's standby time and you'll have to recharge a bit more often. But not so much as you might think. The CPU is very energy efficient.

So as long as you're willing to get your hands dirty it shouldn't be hard at all. However, I'm sure that someone will be interested in doing something similar and will post up scripts of doing a similar task not too long after the Pandora goes public.


Anything but Hotmail

 

[mindlord]

Anything but Hotmail

A clever enough person could write a curl script (faking the browser agent header to IE) to scrape hotmail and at least get the list of unread mail, and read it to. It's not impossible. Impractical maybe.

 

[Chip]

So as long as you're willing to get your hands dirty it shouldn't be hard at all. However, I'm sure that someone will be interested in doing something similar and will post up scripts of doing a similar task not too long after the Pandora goes public.
If you're willing to get your hands a fair bit dirtier, you could save even more power. The system supports some sort of wake-on-timer, so you could have the Pandora do a full suspend to RAM, then wake at certain intervals to retrieve messages (or do whatever) and go back to sleep when done. This functionality would have to be coded into the the Email program, but it is within the capabilities of the hardware.

 

[mindlord]

So as long as you're willing to get your hands dirty it shouldn't be hard at all. However, I'm sure that someone will be interested in doing something similar and will post up scripts of doing a similar task not too long after the Pandora goes public.
If you're willing to get your hands a fair bit dirtier, you could save even more power. The system supports some sort of wake-on-timer, so you could have the Pandora do a full suspend to RAM, then wake at certain intervals to retrieve messages (or do whatever) and go back to sleep when done. This functionality would have to be coded into the the Email program, but it is within the capabilities of the hardware.

* Mind reels with the possibilities for directing his overseas minions even in his sleep! *

 

[sburford]

Thanks for the responses. Chip thats what i imagined. Having it all shut down to save maximum power most of the time, then do a quick check and down again. Having the cpu, ram etc all going, even in power saving mode seems a waste really. This would require a email app hack though? be a nice feature to include...

 

[mindlord]

Thanks for the responses. Chip thats what i imagined. Having it all shut down to save maximum power most of the time, then do a quick check and down again. Having the cpu, ram etc all going, even in power saving mode seems a waste really. This would require a email app hack though? be a nice feature to include...

One of the nice things about the CPU in the Pandora is the fact that even when on if it isn't doing anything it doesn't draw power. Even when it has to do something it autoscales the CPU Speed for maximum power efficiency. However, the system is suspending to RAM according to Chip, so there it's still refreshing the RAM. According to earlier estimates can stay that way for over a month. So the RAM isn't a big deal.It's really the LCD that's the biggest drain on the battery, anyways.

 

[sindbad]

So as long as you're willing to get your hands dirty it shouldn't be hard at all. However, I'm sure that someone will be interested in doing something similar and will post up scripts of doing a similar task not too long after the Pandora goes public.
If you're willing to get your hands a fair bit dirtier, you could save even more power. The system supports some sort of wake-on-timer, so you could have the Pandora do a full suspend to RAM, then wake at certain intervals to retrieve messages (or do whatever) and go back to sleep when done. This functionality would have to be coded into the the Email program, but it is within the capabilities of the hardware.This could be implemented as a dbus service through PolicyKit, so that apps can register desired wake-up times/intervals to a system daemon.

 

[Chero]

Thanks for the responses. Chip thats what i imagined. Having it all shut down to save maximum power most of the time, then do a quick check and down again. Having the cpu, ram etc all going, even in power saving mode seems a waste really. This would require a email app hack though? be a nice feature to include...

no need to hack anything, just a script that "resumes - calls the email app - goes to sleep" will do.

 

[Tor]

I dont really want to leave it on, with wifi runing all the time... would really kill the battery.

Not necessarily. I leave the wi-fi on at all times (as long as there's a wi-fi AP nearby) on my Nokia tablet. It doesn't last as many days as with wi-fi off (8-10 days vs. about 3), but I wouldn't dream of turning it off.

The only exception is when connecting to access points with bad or non-working support for power saving mode. If I connect to those kind of APs the battery on the Nokia drains much faster. It also drains faster if the signal is very weak.

It should be possible to make the Pandora work equally well, unless the wi-fi chipset is truly inferior compared to the one Nokia uses - and if what I read about the chipset (if the ID that was posted in another thread is correct) is true then it should be good in this respect. And the Pandora has a much bigger battery than the Nokia.