Statusbar notification update/Activity Started-Ended/Scenes

[ferda-mravenec]

Hello Martin.
I am a user of Llama, but I feel, it's time to move on So I am trying its alternatives.
Tasker was the choice numero uno. I was able to "rewrite" all my current llamas tasks to Tasker but it took me 5 days ,( Also, Tasker lacks of many build in triggers, actions, and so on.
The second alternative I tried was Automate, but to be honest, it's just a baby in the field of automation.
Do not know how, but I have came across Automagic. The first impression was fantastic. Rewriting my tasks took me a few hours! (I am running the latest dev build - hope there will be a possibility to export all my flows to regular Premium version.)

Now, I have a few question or requests or whatever those are ,)

1) Is there a possibility to modify Automagic's default notification on statusbar? I mean changing title, text, big message, adding action buttons and so on? Current notification is, how to say that, boring. I would like to modify the default notification instead of hiding it (which is not recommended at all) and creating a custom one.

2) This one is related to the first. I was able to set notification's text with using variable {global_xxx}, but the thing I was not able to do was to change the text. For example with setting new value to global_xxx variable. Is it possible to update notification's text in case of changing variable value? My interest is to display current profile in statusbar which is based on a global variable.

3) Scenes or custom layouts. It will be great to define a custom layout for, for example, input dialogs. Currently we there are options like Single Choice, Multi Choice and so on. But I would like to define a layout like this one:

Title
some_text
<br>
single_choice_one_of_group_1
single_choice_two_of_group_1
single_choice_three_of_group_1
<br>
single_choice_one_of_group_2
single_choice_two_of_group_2
<br>
some_text
multi_choice_one
multi_choice_two
<?button_one><?button_two>

4) Please, can you add an option like "main activity only" to Activity Started/Ended trigger? Or change background color of the main activity in the list of all activities. I would like to do something when an application's main activity started or ended. Now there is a list of activities but it is hard to determine which one is the main one.

5) Looks like Automagic is a "big" resource consumer. It takes five times more ram than running Llama or Automate and three times more than Tasker. I also notified that Automagic figures in Battery usage screen with 3-4%. This is a big surprise to me because I only have a few flows with triggers based on day/time, variable change and gsm cell connected/disconnected. The only one flow which iterate every 2 mins checks whether wifi or mobile data are enabled or not. Is Automagic really so aggressive?


At the end I would like to thank you for this peace of haven you have been developing. Keep going man!

Best Regards,
Ferda

[Martin]

Hi,

Welcome!

The version from Google Play (once 1.29 is released) should load the flows/widgets defined in the EAP version (except when I screw up something witch is entirely possible in the EAP version). I recommend to regularly create a backup. You can use action Export Flows/Widgets and upload the generated file to Dropbox or Google Drive or send the file by mail to your own account.

I hope I can answer your questions but I fear that you won't like some of my answers

1) No, the one shown by Automagic itself can not be customized atm. This feature was requested before but I did not yet have time to implement it.
You could show your own notification with the text you like and also include some custom actions (see action Notification on Statusbar ).

2) You can change the text by posting the notification a second time with the new text. It will replace the first notification when it's the same action that posts the notification. You can also use a specific ID to have control when a notification should be replaced.

3) No, and I have no plans to provide this in the short term since it's difficult to create proper layouts that work across different devices with different screen sizes. It would require to use layout managers instead of placing objects at fixed coordinates.
You can create custom widgets (flowlist: menu->Custom Widgets). Such widgets don't provide real input elements but you could define custom clickable actions and show an input dialog of some sort.

4) There's no good definition of main activity for this purpose since many apps use an entry point activity (like a splashscreen) and then redirect immediately to another activity. Sometimes I use trigger Activity Started: */* with action Notification on Screen: {package_name}/{activity_class} to learn the names of the displayed activities of an app.

5) Memory consumption of Automagic highly depends on Android version since I did not disable hardware acceleration for the app and newer versions of Android usually allow apps to use more memory. Memory consumption can become quite high when you are changing flows in the user interface use maps etc. but it should come down again when the system reclaims the memory when required by other apps.
Battery consumption depends on the defined flows. Flows that keep the device awake the whole time will lead to high battery consumption. Triggers that use sensors are often one of the causes for battery drain so I recommend to turn such flows off when not used (you can use action Set Flow State to automate enabling/disabling flows).

Regards,
Martin

[ferda-mravenec]

Hello Martin.
Thank you for your reply.

1) Hope this such a feature will be available soon. It will be enough for me to have a possibility to change it's text ,)
2) I am already using Notification on Statusbar, but I did not try to push second notification. It's working, great. Please, can you add an option to disable/change default action on the notification? When I push a notification from a flow, then click event opens this specific flow. My intention is to open Flow List.
3) I understand, this is not a small thing.
4) Good point. My intention is to create a flow which will set auto rotation to on when such an application is in foreground and then turn it back off.
5) I am running Android 4.3.1/AOKP on Samsung Galaxy Nexus. You are right, maybe it is related to changing flows within the application. I will check battery usage and will report my results in case of any problems.

I have another request. Is possible to add an option to Notification on Statusbar to show action buttons only on Big message when the notification is expanded? This will save some space.

Thank you,
Ferda

[Martin]

Hi,

2) You can use your own notification ID and then react to the notification with trigger Notification on Statusbar Selected (trigger on notification from action) to execute your own flow. You can then launch Automagic or execute whatever action(s) you want.
4) You could use trigger App Task Started (respectively Ended) with action Set Auto-rotate Screen State: On (respectively Off) for this. You could also use action Set Screen Orientation to force a particular orientation (but some apps don't like this and might crash when the app does not support the forced orientation).
5) Let me know if you encounter some kind of battery draining bugs. Apps like Better Battery Stats or Wake Lock Detector can give additional hints to the flow that causes the problem. Flowlist: Menu->Manage->About->Statistics can also be helpful to detect flows that are execute too often or execute for a very long duration.

To my knowledge most ROMs display the action buttons only for the expanded/big notification. Maybe your notification was the topmost notification and expanded by default. You can try to collapse the notification by swiping up with two fingers on the notification. You can also display the notification with a priority set to Low which would display the notification not at the first position when there are other notifications with a normal priority.

Regards,
Martin