• Registered: 2009-12-21
  • Posts: 44

Topic: Night mode if offline

Our WLAN goes down nightly between 10:15pm and 5am, leaving the Chumby One offline for that period. The night before yesterday I set it to "Night" mode manually at about 10:10pm and was rewarded with my scheduled alarm at 5:25 in the morning. I rather had some clock widget(s) running during night time, but that's another story.

Last night I did not switch to night mode. At about 10:25pm the Chumby complained about missing network connection and went into fallback mode - blue screen with clock, leaving me only one option to try to reconnect. Since the blue screen is very bright, my bedroom was illuminated quite nicely... I finally turned off the C1 completely to get rid of the shine.

So my request is twofold:

* I would like to be able to switch to night mode from the fallback screen
* I would like to automate the day/night toggle (crontab or alarm)

  • From: Austin, TX
  • Registered: 2009-05-07
  • Posts: 471

Re: Night mode if offline

You can schedule an alarm for 10:15ish to go into night mode, and then another one for 5am to come out of it.  Just set the alarm sound to "none" and specify the switch as the action.

unwiredben's Website

  • Registered: 2009-12-21
  • Posts: 44

Re: Night mode if offline

Thanks, will try that tonight. I did not see the switch as an option when defining alarms.

By the way: would it be possible to mix that with Christian's offline mode? Can I trigger the shell scripts and restart the Control Panel from an alarm?

  • From: Austria
  • Registered: 2007-10-12
  • Posts: 179

Re: Night mode if offline

u063096 wrote:

By the way: would it be possible to mix that with Christian's offline mode? Can I trigger the shell scripts and restart the Control Panel from an alarm?

I think that should work. You can add scripts that are executed as post alarm actions:
http://wiki.chumby.com/mediawiki/index. … rm_actions

But if you want to set it up just once and don't need to configure that in the controlpanel, than it would be better if you set up some cron tab entries for doing that.

5 Reply by SvenC (edited by SvenC 2010-01-15 06:14:40)

  • Registered: 2010-01-09
  • Posts: 70

Re: Night mode if offline

1. Currently I prefer the normal mode in the night, because the clock of the night mode is a little bit too dark for me
(the chumby is on the desk and my bed is ~1 m under it).
I cannot see the dark clock in this angle (the screen brightness is set to full), but I can see the normal clock.

Is it possible to make the colour of the night clock a liitle bit brighter?

2. I also wish a switch to toggle automatically between night / day mode via internal crontab-routine or extra setting
(setting via crontab (switch via GUI) would be a nice deal). big_smile

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,197

Re: Night mode if offline

You can set the brightness of Night Mode in the Settings->Brightness panel.

Duane's Website

  • Registered: 2010-01-09
  • Posts: 70

Re: Night mode if offline

Hi Duane.
That´s correct, but the brightness was set to the highest level... wink
The problem is the brightness of the night clock and the angle in this case.

  • Registered: 2009-12-27
  • Posts: 65

Re: Night mode if offline

SvenC wrote:

2. I also wish a switch to toggle automatically between night / day mode via internal crontab-routine or extra setting  (setting via crontab (switch via GUI) would be a nice deal). big_smile

You can already do this via an alarm.  Set a custom alarm that triggers daily, at the correct time, no sound and trigger day mode respectively.  Duplicate it for night mode with whatever time you need.

You can also change the channel, change the brightness and turn the Chumby or screen off.

SvenC wrote:

1. Currently I prefer the normal mode in the night, because the clock of the night mode is a little bit too dark for me (the chumby is on the desk and my bed is ~1 m under it).

If you can find a clock that is okay for night time usage then make a new channel with just that in it and you can auto switch to/from that channel at preset times.  The only problem is that you're in a different channel.  You'd have to manually switch back to your regular channel if you want to continue using it after night time.

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,197

Re: Night mode if offline

You can use cron to generate Control Panel Events, one of which can take the device into and out of Night Mode, among other things.

Duane's Website