I suggest a Chumby Scheduler that allows the user to set, for each day of the week, any number of Chumby Events, each occurring at a specified time. Each Event could modify any or all of the following:

* Current Channel
* LCD brightness (Full/Dim/Off)
* Volume level
* Streaming radio channel

as well as trigger

* Start or stop playing streamed audio
* An alarm (ie, initiate playback of a specified sound file)

A scheduling system like this would provide a single consistent interface that would satisfy many of the requests I see in various threads on the board. It would supercede the current "night mode" and accommodate all of the ideas as to how it should work. It would also facilitate fairly sophisticated customization.

To further enhance bedside use, I also suggest:

* When Backlight is less than Full, increase one "level" for ~5 seconds when Chumby is interacted with. (ie, when accelerometer detects that Chumby has been moved, tilted or picked up or the touchscreen has been touched). When Backlight is Off, increase to Dim temporarily; when Backlight is DIm, increase to Full temporarily. This should perhaps be an option that is turned on or off in the Control Panel.

> I especially like your idea of the screen brightness controll, just not sure how it would work as you may inadvertantly interact with a widget that is also using those inputs.

I don't know how easily this could be accomplished with the current Chumby software architecture, but the way I'd do it is this:

Regard less-than-full back light as a "snooze" mode. While snoozing, the first interaction with the device, whether detected by the accelerometer, touchscreen or top button, would not be sent to the active Widget. It would be used only to trigger the temporary increase of backlighting. Subsequent interaction while temporarily woken up would be passed to the active Widget as normal. After five or so seconds of non-interaction with Chumby, it would resume "snoozing" (ie, reduce the backlight and await interaction).

I thought of a way to do this without hacking the control panel.  It's my intent to implement this, as soon as I get the time - but it'll be another week or two, I imagine.  (So far I've only built one real widget, so there'll be some learning involved.)

Here's the concept:  Since it's possible to dim the backlight from flash (with an ASnative call) and widgets can exit early, have a widget that's scheduled to run "forever", and if the localtime is after bedtime (as determined by config panel) then it dims the backlight and stays running until morning.  At morning, it restores the backlight and exits.  During the day it either exits right away or runs for 15 seconds or so. 

Any commentary on how to make this better, or why it won't work?

This could also be added to the new control panel, as an additional action..."Night", rather than a channel switch. The wakeup functionality (and switch to whatever channel) is already available in the new control panel beta. Looks VERY nice.

The current Control Panel allows you to set Night mode on/off as an alarm action.

The current Control Panel also allows you to change the channel as an alarm action.

Duane,

I noticed a bug with the alarm panel when setting up an alarm for night mode.  If I set the audio to one of the built-in sounds, the do not show alarm checkbox is disabled.  This means that the alarm has to wait for me to click the button before it will actually enable night mode.

A scheduler widget would be nice, as it would enable me to make changes without having access to my Chumby (I work in a government building, so gadgets aren't allowed

I'm using the alarm easter egg (see thread at http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=1312) to control the screen brightness without depending on night mode. I have a daily alarm that sets brightness to full every morning via a script on the flash drive called post_alarm_action_2:

#!/bin/sh
echo 0 > /proc/sys/sense1/dimlevel

Then later in the day, I dim the screen with a script called post_alarm_action_3:

#!/bin/sh
echo 1 > /proc/sys/sense1/dimlevel

It works quite well, though one drawback is that night mode only shows the first alarm of the day which means I won't see confirmation of a wake-up alarm if it's set to go later than my brightness alarm.

The other issue I'm having and actually this is a real hassle, is that the brightness state that I set with my post-alarm action isn't being remembered when another alarm goes off. Example:

I have an alarm that switches from night-mode to my default clock and uses the easter egg to set brightness to full at 7:00am. The next alarm is set for 8:00am and has a post-alarm action that switches to my news and weather channel. If I wake up between 7:00 and 8:00, the screen is full brightness as I would expect. But once I shut off the 8:00 alarm and it switches to the news channel, the screen goes back to being dim. So I wind up having to go into the brightness settings and change them manually, which is what I'm trying to avoid.

When I change brightness via a script like above, does the control panel know that the screen brightness state has changed?

If not, is there a place for me to write the brightness value so that the control panel will know I've changed it?

Or is this perhaps a bug?

I'll sixth both suggestions...

I was surprised to find that the night mode was not time-controlled.

Channel should be on a time basis too

I would actually like the ability to associate a brightness level to a channel.  I would like to keep my nighttime channel visible at night, but without having to manually change the brightness level to the lower setting when I go to bed, and then manually change it back to the bright setting in the morning.