pointofpresence/bbqtimer

Android lock-screen stopwatch with periodic alarms.

BBQTimer Android app

See it in the Google Play store

A stopwatch with:

1. Lock screen operation for quick access via a lock screen notification (Android 5.0+) or a lock screen widget (Android 4.2 to 4.4).
2. Periodic alarms to remind you to check the food (instead of a one-shot alarm that assumes the food will be done). It’s a count-up stopwatch with alarms.

Of course it can time more things than cooking.

Requires few permissions.
No network access. No ads. No data gathering.
Simple and focused.
Free.

System Requirements

BBQ Timer is for phones and tablets running Android 3.1 (Honeycomb MR1) and later.

If it encounters problems on your Android device, email me the details (device model, Android version, screen size, problem symptom, Android "bugreport" file).

[Note: The app can’t install in external storage (SD card) because Android deletes external storage app widgets every time you use USB to share files with a computer.]

License

MIT License.

Usage Tips

• Android 5.0+: While BBQ Timer is running or paused, you can operate it from the lock screen and the pull-down notification.
• On Android 4.2 to 4.4, place the BBQ Timer widget on your lock screen for quick access.
• The widget also works on the home screen.
• To stretch out the widget to fit longer durations, long-press it then drag its resize handles.
• To remove the widget, long-press it then drag it onto “X Remove”.
• Tap the stopwatch time display to cycle between stopped → running → paused → stopped.
• On the app’s main screen, tap the checkbox to turn on periodic reminder alarms.

To add a lock screen widget (Android 4.2 to 4.4)

• On Android 4.4, first enable Settings → Security → Enable Widgets.
• Wake the screen.
• Swipe from the left edge of the lock screen to the right until you get the “+” screen.
• Tap “+”.
• Unlock the phone.
• Tap the BBQ Timer widget.
• (Optional) Drag lock screen widgets left/right to rearrange them.
• For step-by-step instructions, see Getting started with lock screen widgets on Android Jelly Bean or How to Add Lockscreen Widgets to Android 4.4 KitKat.

Known Issues

• Not tested on Android API level 13 (HONEYCOMB_MR2) or level 14 (ICE_CREAM_SANDWICH) where the emulator takes most of an hour to launch, then croaks.
• There’s a fraction of a second clock skew between the stopwatch time displayed in widgets vs. the notification area. See precise times in the application’s main screen.
• Android emulator bugs: The app’s timer display sometimes stops changing. In emulator API level 12, the notification area shows black text on a black background.

TODO

• A voice action to start a timer.
• A menu of recipes to set the reminder alarm time and suggest the cooking temp.
• Localize into more languages.
• Accessibility.
• Use a font-resizing text view to fit long durations in the Activity. See Stack Overflow: Auto Scale TextView Text to Fit within Bounds, How to adjust text font size to fit textview, How to catch widget size changes.
• Use a font-resizing heuristic to fit hours in a minimum width home screen widget without eliding the seconds.
• Unit tests.
• Material Design shadows.

Building from Source Code

Use Android Studio (an excellent tool!).

Dedication

Dedicated to open source software developers.

Open source software used for this project includes: Android, Android Studio, Audacity, Chrome, Gimp, git, git gui, Inkscape, Java, MinGW, Proguard, and much more that we use without thinking about, like zlib.

Don’t get me wrong -- commercial software is also great!

Media Asset Sources

Notification sound composed from sampled cowbell sounds which are used by permission from Phil Burk, Copyright (c) 2014 Mobileer Inc.

Launcher icon derived from a public domain image on openclipart.org.

Keywords

Cooking, interval timer, lock screen widget, reminder alarm, stopwatch.

Implementation notes

• The lock screen widget and notification need to use a Chronometer view to show the ticking time display while using little battery power.
• When paused, a Chronometer view can’t show the right time value because its API doesn’t accommodate that case. You could fake it by sending it a start time that’s about the right amount of time ago but you can’t control how long until it reads the system clock. Multiple widgets would display different paused time values. The workaround is to switch to a Text view when paused.
• Formatting the elapsed time like 0:12 would look nicer than 00:12 but the app matches Android’s Chronometer view for consistency.
• The widget’s ViewFlipper must explicitly set android:measureAllChildren="false", otherwise flipping its subviews will resize the adjacent ImageButton on Galaxy Nexus Jelly Bean. (Why?)