Database Users

Screen saver or locker available?

The other day I tried my XDA2 as an MP3 player for the first time, walking to the supermarket with headphones on. I realised that you must keep the machine turned on otherwise Windows Media Player stops playing. Bit surprised by this! (Does this fit with what other people have found? Seems a little impractical.)
So, I had to walk to Tescos with the XDA2 switched on in my trouser pocket. By the time I got there, I'd managed to open the Contacts app, find an ex-girlfriend's contact info and edit it. I'm not sure how I did this in my pocket. (But she always used to call me 'Clever ****' )
Anyway, has anyone heard of an app that covers the screen with some sort of blank page and turns off the backlight, so that I need to touch a specific spot to reactivate the regular display? With something like that, I couldn't accidentally mess about with the machine and cause havoc. If such a thing doesn't exist, does someone fancy making one? Surely it would be so simple.
Would be interested in your thoughts, XDA2 brethren.

sublimatica
WMP has an option to Toggle off the screen.
Tools - Settings - Buttons
Hardware buttons are still live but the screen, and touch capability, are disabled. It also helps to extend battery life.

COOOL!
Perfect! Map the Action button to the screen toggle and my prayers are answered! Thanks a bunch for that - I'd discovered how to map play, pause, stop etc to the cursor pad, but didn't realise what 'screen toggle' did.
Nice one. Much appreciated.

Use of buttons while closed - A question for Vijay?

I guess this is one for Vijay, but I'm getting confused as to the situtation with regard to buttons when the clam is shut.
I know there is a bit of overlap with the Torch utility here, but I'd really like the VoiceDial button to work while the clam is shut (plus, I think the upcoming Torch utility would be most useful if it worked while the clam was shut).
What's the current state of play with regard to getting these buttons to work while the clam is shut?
Cheers,
Steve.

StevePritchard: this could go in the old thread really, but you're right, there is an overlap with the torch app (I've settled on "VJCandela"). I did a bit of R&D from the viewpoint of enabling keys generally for both the torch app and VC. I will seek to release VJCandela prior to a full fix and update should a solution be found.
I know it can be done. Let's say this: I've had a very successful negative finding that indicates a possible way to go. I'm seeking an opinion from the Oracle (Buzz) and will then continue with this, probably around the weekend.
V

That's interesting news. Do you think there will be any "issues" with the technique you are investigating, i.e. are you fooling it to think that the clam is open so the screen stays on and reduces battery life?
Cheers,
Steve.

I think it's more like fooling the device into it's thinking its in PDA mode, I use my Exec screen out all the time, and pressing the camera button, or phone buttons wakes the device up no problem, no need to use the power button and the battery life seems to last no problem at all.
I have "turn off device" on batteries after 3 mins
I have even thought about opening it up to find the system it uses to detect screen in as opposed to screen out and seeing if I could disble it mechanically
Regards

gooroo: it's not merely a hardware mechanism. I can already disable detection of the clam closing, to a degree (ie I can't enable external keys yet), as Steve knows. He's used VJElectrify which incorporates VJClamHack (Steve - I've made a better version of this, no reboot required, but not for release until I can do something with it).
However, if the next hack can be pulled off, which is all software based, then it open up interesting possiblities... certainly the perfect clam hack (with full external key access with clam closed) would be possible. But, and it's a but bigger then this one, it depends on a fundamental piece of information/technique I've yet to work through with help from the real brains behind this operation...
V

QWERTY Keyboard Issue

One of the main reasons a friend of mine & I puchased the HTC PPC6800 from Alltel was that we intended on loading up Roms & Emulators from the original NES. However, while you can put an emulator onto the phone & run it, the QWERTY keyboard only allows you to push one keystroke at a time!! Anyone familiar with gaming, reguardless of the platform, can understand just how unplayable almost every game is without the ability to run & jump! You can run.. You can jump. You just can't do both simultaniously.
If there are any known fixes for this, please help.. I'm desperate. I'm guessing it's a software issue as there are already keys on the keyboard that support multi-button pushing such as the shift and function keys. I imagine there must be a work-around of some kind out there. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading!

Turn the 6800 on it's side(closed) like a psp and use the d-pad for direction and the e-mail and internet buttons for A and B. From what I understand those buttons don't suffer from the one keystroke limitation.

The only issue with that is the emulator, and subsequently every emulator I've tried after for NES doesn't support the sideways resolution for whatever reason. The loading screen for booting a rom with turn just like any other window would but the second the actual game loads it flips back up vertical. SNES emulators seem to handle the horizontal resolution just fine but the controller on the SNES had 6 buttons so mapping just 2 really doesn't cut it.
I currently try to play on the tiny little controls at the bottom and none of them seem to be effected by the two buttons at a time issue but the Ok button can't be mapped so playing around it is unbearable to the point of just not wanting to play. Not to mention it kills the WOW factor of showing someone when you have to play the game with a controller that's the size of a quarter.

Good call. I forgot to mention the landscape resolution thing. I ran into this thread shortly after reading yours. If you haven't seen it check this one out. I believe one or more of those emulators address the landscape abilities (MorphGear and SmartGear). Hope that helps.

The program is really slick for emulation, I'll give you that. lol. It's pay for use so I'm just messing with it in the 5 min demo mode but so far it looks like it'd definitely be worth buying.. I'm still however running into the multi-key issue on the QWERTY. NES is fine without using the QWERTY as it only requires an A & B button but the SNES had 6 buttons that need to be mapped and getting them all in an accessable spot on the face of the unit just isn't happening.
Has anyone heard anything about a possible fix for this?

Turn device screen off when on VGA/TV-Out?

When I'm plugged into TV-Out or VGA-Out watching movies, there's no need for the screen on the device to be on. I've got TCPMP configured so it doesn't keep the backlight on, which increases the battery life a fair bit (up to around 2 movies).
But there's no need for the screen to be on at all, and surely the screen uses a large chunk (most?) of the power in this kind of situation?
Anyone have any ideas on how I could set this up so I could turn the device screen off? I was thinking I could perhaps allocate one of the hardware buttons to run a mort script or something? At the least I might see if I can link up the "volume" slider (which I never use) to do backlight levels (if I can work out how)...

WhiteMonkey said:
When I'm plugged into TV-Out or VGA-Out watching movies, there's no need for the screen on the device to be on. I've got TCPMP configured so it doesn't keep the backlight on, which increases the battery life a fair bit (up to around 2 movies).
But there's no need for the screen to be on at all, and surely the screen uses a large chunk (most?) of the power in this kind of situation?
Anyone have any ideas on how I could set this up so I could turn the device screen off? I was thinking I could perhaps allocate one of the hardware buttons to run a mort script or something? At the least I might see if I can link up the "volume" slider (which I never use) to do backlight levels (if I can work out how)...
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I don't know. Very intersted though.

I don't know if this will help but I have "Wisbar" installed and one of the shortcuts in their menu is to "Toggle screen" or "Power off" which does the same. I have tried to hit the Toggle screen and have had some success with the screen going out and having the movie still play on the TV...TJ

Thanks TrekkerJmm, I'll give Wisbar a go, see if I can replicate your success.
Which version are you using?

Im using "WA3_v3.1.0.5_WM6" ...TJ

A screen-off utility that works
I installed a $0.99 utility called 'Awady ScreenOff' that I got from Handango - it works fine on my Advantage x7501.
John

johnmcd said:
I installed a $0.99 utility called 'Awady ScreenOff' that I got from Handango - it works fine on my Advantage x7501.
John
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Interesting first post! Nice to see an app priced sensibly - small, but for those that need it, useful. Good find!

OK, so I finally got around to testing this out (been away from home for some time) and I came across 2 issues:
1) Obviously once you've turned the screen off you can't control the device using the touch screen (duh!) - so an external mouse at the minimum is required so that you can turn off the screen and then play and full screen your media player (I initially forgot this during my "trial").
2) The video stayed on the screen, but didn't play - it was just frozen on the last image before I pressed the Wisbar button to turn off the screen.
As far as 2 goes - I've noticed that TCPMP has a "Play video in background" option (which was not turned on when I tried this out) that may be what I'm looking for. I always kinda wondered why you would want to use this option... I think I know now!
I'll give that Awady ScreenOff a go too... looks ideal. Thanks John!

FPSECE .10 Alpha Key Mapping

As you FPSECE fans know, the LG expo Alpha keys are currently not mappable for input.
Anyone working on some sort of fix that will let FPSECE use the hardware keyboard, or am i stuck using my old Kaiser as a blue tooth remote control?

my thoughts exactly. anybody know how to map alpha keys?

I have the same problem, and also when I play gran turismo and hold the key for riding and while I press the arrow, the key for riding is disconnected
sorry for my english

Sorry guys, there is no keyboard fix. The keyboard will not support multiple key presses, only a few keys are mappable, and the screen is not multi-touch... so no on screen controls either. Go snag Cobalt Controller and use a ps3 sixaxis controller. You'll have to re-assign the controller's blutooth mac and then it works flawlessly with FPSECE.

Just an idea
I have an AT&T fuze, and we had a similar problem on our phone due to it not been able to register the keys individualy, but as a hole, what could be the case with your phones. Some developers made some programs to fix this issue, but what really did it for me was the duttythroy Disable xt9 cab, very simple an easy, and you can find it here with search.
If you could try this please let me know your results on this thread, since I was thinking of purchasing this phone.
Thanks for your reply

I use a PS3 sixaxis controller also. I have 2 Dualshock PS3 controllers and 2 regular sixaxis controllers so I just dedicated one of those to the phone. Seriously the most amazing way to play. 58-60FPS Gran Turismo 2 with a controller is phenomenal.

I have read about several people using a PS3 controller to play PS1 games on the expo as well as some people also using the pico projector as well to run the games. So just in case people didn't know the pico projector does work very well in combination with the PS3 controller.
However, that's not for me. I don't want to purchase or lug around either one of those to play games. Part of the reason I initially got the expo over something like the tilt 2 was because of the faster processor, but it's almost pointless if the keys don't work. In all honesty though I really like the phone and wouldn't trade it for another phone after using it, PS1 games or not. But still, if anyone figures out a way or writes a program to get the keys to work please keep us posted.

Using the multi-key function you can overcome a few things. Playing a racing game, use multi-keys to combine the gas button with both the right and left button. This will allow you to turn while still applying gas. Also the multi-keys work to map a single button, this seems to have a better response compared to the normal d-pad buttons.

PDAnewbie said:
Using the multi-key function you can overcome a few things. Playing a racing game, use multi-keys to combine the gas button with both the right and left button. This will allow you to turn while still applying gas. Also the multi-keys work to map a single button, this seems to have a better response compared to the normal d-pad buttons.
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Thanks for the help. I'll see if this makes it any easier. It would be nice though if eventually someone made a fix for this.

carlosdayas said:
I have an AT&T fuze, and we had a similar problem on our phone due to it not been able to register the keys individualy, but as a hole, what could be the case with your phones. Some developers made some programs to fix this issue, but what really did it for me was the duttythroy Disable xt9 cab, very simple an easy, and you can find it here with search.
If you could try this please let me know your results on this thread, since I was thinking of purchasing this phone.
Thanks for your reply
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Click to collapse
I had the same Fuze phone and I had the same issue with the keyboard, also the fix was to disable xt9, now Im going to buy this eXpo phone, I hope the xt9 fix works too.