corz clock.. I made it my own!

[corz]

Remember Analog Clock? Like it?

I do, a lot; and so I decided to give it something of an update for my own nefarious purposes, and it now looks, at least on my current desktop, like this..

There have been a few changes!

Here's the feature list, ripped from a page I'm doing right now, all about it..

expandcollapse popup

corz clock remembers EVERYTHING..

    Size, position, transparency, alarms, schemes, messages, previous
    things, everything!


Multiple Alarms!

    Save any amount of alarms and notifications, preset-style, available in
    a drop-down menu. Alarms have individual, and totally configurable..

    Frequency settings..

        Not only multiple Daily, Weekday, Weekend, and "One Date" alarms,
        but now with Custom recurring alarms..

        Set alarms to play every three days, every fortnight, every fifty
        years, or whatever. Handy for birthdays and bin days!

        * 'bin day' is the day the trash is collected (Scotland)

Flash color..

    Oh! I can't wait to tell you about the color picker!

Beep synth or WAV file alarm sounds..

    Create tones, sirens and buzzers, or import WAV files.

Spoken Alarm Messages..

    Enter some text, and have it spoken, and much more. Spoken messages
    can be..

        A simple word or phrase, typed text. The path to a plain text file
        to read. The path to an HTML file to decode and read. A URL to grab,
        decode and read. (HTML start and end points are also configurable)

        So alarms can now be used to read log files, server reports, or
        anything you want to know, but can't be bothered to read manually.
        I've started getting the news headines (from the BBC) in the
        morning. The possibilities are almost limitless.

        Fully configurable speech volume, rate and voice settings for each
        alarm. Sam reads the news, quiet, and Mary does recipes, loud, so I
        can hear them in the kitchen!

        Recent spoken messages and paths are remembered in a drop-down.

        corz clock will even let you know about any alarms you might have
        missed when you computer was switched off (you will be notified of
        all missed "One Date" and "Custom" alarms, whenever they were, and
        of "Daily", "Weekday", and "Weekend" alarms if you missed them by
        less than an hour, though you can alter this)


Schemes!

    You can set the colour of the clock face, numerals, hour, minute, and
    second hand, as well as the hour pips, minute pips and transparency, and
    save all these settings to a cute scheme, readily available in clock's
    handy context menu.

    As well as colors, you can set the length of all the hands, and whether
    or not to draw the numerals and pips, and save that to your scheme, too.

    Create, edit and delete schemes, all from inside the new Schemes
    preference tab. Samples are provided. Minutes of fun!

    Hourly Chimes! (and you want them at five-past? no problem!)
    Spoken Hourly Chimes! Such as "Five o' Clock, and all is well", the time
    part being generated dynamically, of course. And once that's become
    thoroughly annoying, you can have a simple beep, of whatever pitch you
    desire.

    You can also enter the full path to a wav file as your chime.

    Recent WAV and spoken chimes are remembered in a drop-down.

    Note: If you use a plain beep for your chime, you get a double-beep at
    midnight. See commentage if you want the reason.


Live testing!

    Quick testing of all audio features from within the preference interface.

    Fiddle away to your heart's content, test, fiddle, test ...

    Sounds and spoken messages can also be stopped mid-stream. *phew* (as
    well as clicking the buttons, you can use the PAUSE/Break key)

    Individual alarms can be enabled and disabled at will.

    There's also a master alarms switch (and one for Chimes, too).


Drag and Drop import/export

    Drag and Drop single/multiple import, and single/multiple export of Alarms

    Drop-dead easy to store, backup, and share alarms and notifications.

    You can email someone an alarm to drop into their clock; remind them to
    come to your party, or that it's your birthday, or whatever. And of
    course, you can create and customize in your own clock before you export
    and send, get them just right, funny and shit.

    Backwards compatible with your Analog Clock alarm ini! Go chuck it in!


Beep Synthesizer!

    Beep Synthesizer for almost totally unique Beep Alerts!

    Okay, "synthesizer" is a bit of an exaggeration, but it's still a lot of
    fun. You can control all the parameters of a primative beep looping
    mechanism which, though simple, is capable of producing some truly
    whacky sounds, sirens, buzzers and tones, even phone rings; certainly
    distinctive enough to provide a range of useful alert noises.

    Check out the sample presets, and mess around with them. It may seem
    trivial, but like ring-tones, you can learn to associate certain tones
    with certain events. I like it, anyway.

    The Beep Synth also comes with its own built-in help system. (which took
    longer to put together than the beep synth!)


Drag and Drop import of Beep Synth and Wav presets!

    Share your whacky sirens along with your alarms!

    Totally loose Drag & Drop protocols!
    You can drop Wavs on the alarm input, drop preset files onto the wav
    input, or whatever. You can even mix and match different preset types in
    the same ini file, and clock will work it all out automatically,
    slotting everything into its proper place.

    This cool functionality makes it possible to create and share
    "collections" (aka "themes"), with custom alarms, schemes, and alerts,
    all with their own individual settings; spoken messages, custom beep
    synth tones, hands and pips styes, everything; all in one file; ready to
    send to another corz clock user.

    There's an option in each of the export menus (right-click any of the
    preset controls) to export into a collection, which enables you to do
    exactly that, either creating a new collection, or adding the current
    preset to an existing collection. Easy.

HotKeys all over!

    Even the clock transparency has HotKeys (Up/Down & PageUp/PageDown).
    Flip through clock schemes with F10 and F11. And more!
    The coolest color pickin chooser on planet earth!
    Forget that dodgy Windows color picker, choose in style!

    As well as seamless integration with all clock's color preferences.

    color pickin chooser is also available separately as a self-contained
    application and AutoIt include, for use in your own programs. En-Joy!

    If you ever need a color for something while corz clock is running, you
    can access the color pickin chooser directly by hitting F8.

Exclusion list..

    No audio while, for example, Audition is running and at the front

    You get a wee tooltip instead, and if you switch to any non-excluded
    application within a minute, you'll also get the alarm proper.

    exclusions list editable from within the Alarms & Chimes preferences.

AND MUCH MORE!!!

*phew*

Okay, I got carried away, but hey! It's all yours; you can grab the "source pack" here, and download a ready-made exe here (it's clean, corz.org guaranteed 100% virus free!). There's a page all about the new clock here, though that's not quite finished that, yet (almost).

The source is a bit long for inserting into a forum post, but if you just want to just view it, you can do that here, though there are other source files involved (like the color pickin chooser, which I'll post about separately), though you can get to them all on-site if you rake about. Everything you need *should* be in the source pack. If not, let me know!

I've been using it now for over a month on my own desktop (fixing and adding, fixing and adding, you know) and though there's likely some unknown bugs in there, so far it's been very stable, and wonk-free. I thought it was about time to share.

That's about it, I think.

Have fun!

;o)

(or

Edited September 23, 2007 by corz

[therks]

That is quite amazing. Very good job, very professional looking!

[Achilles]

Looks good! However, with the .exe file almost none of the menu works for me (to be more precise everything that brings up the GUI gives an error saying something about line -1 and a variable not being declared)

[SmOke_N]

Looks good! However, with the .exe file almost none of the menu works for me (to be more precise everything that brings up the GUI gives an error saying something about line -1 and a variable not being declared)

I agree, a lot of things hard coded there... a bit of a pain to even try to fix the #include issues (most won't put it in the autoit include directory)... many variables being used before being declared, hard coded icon locations...

It does look like you put a lot of work into it though, too bad I don't have my virtual environment here at the house to run your exe, I'd have liked to have seen it in action.

[BananaFredSoft]

Wow! This is fantastic! Great job!

[greenmachine]

I saw that my topic had gotten recent replies, and you linked to this topic, so I figured I ought to take a look. I tried out your clock, and had to log in (for the first time in a long while) to voice my approval. I haven't fully tested it, but what I've seen so far is nice. Good work.

[Edit]

Also figured I'd give it 5 stars...

Edited September 23, 2007 by greenmachine

[_Kurt]

Works very well, and looks very professional. I really like the menu and tray-icon ideas.

Kurt

[corz]

Thanks guys, especially greenmachine! Your approval makes all the difference!

You guys getting errors, I dunno; I've tried the exe on other machines, and it works fine, even on lowly accounts. More details would be good, if you could.

The only things that are "hard coded" are things that need to be, i.e. "FileInstall" commands, and once compiled they are nullified. Is there another way to do this? I'd be keen to learn of it. If you want to try to compile, all the extras are included in the source pack, so it should be easy enough.

Folk won't drop includes in the include directory? That does seem strange. In that case, either specify extra paths (in the registry) for includes and keep them elsewhere, or else use the full path in the include statement. No biggie.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\AutoIt v3\AutoIt]
"Include"="C:\\Program Files\\dev\\AutoIt3Beta\\Include;C:\\Program Files\\dev\\AutoIt3\\Include;W:\\dev\\AutoIt\\source;I:\\work\\dev\\autoit"

SmOke_N, you don't need a virtual environment, your regular one will work just fine!

l*rz..

;o)

(or

[Nahuel]

Wow.. this is awesome! Very good looking.

I tried peeping in the includes to see if I can understand how you managed to make that GUI, but it's all too confusing.. :">

Could you explain shortly? It's alright if it's too long or you can't.

[corz]

Wow.. this is awesome! Very good looking.

I tried peeping in the includes to see if I can understand how you managed to make that GUI, but it's all too confusing.. :">

Could you explain shortly? It's alright if it's too long or you can't.

You mean the clock face? Check out Analog Clock..

http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=24678

Or did you mean something else? The auto-resizing? Or the tabbed prefs? Or sliding tips? or what?

;o)

(or

[Nahuel]

Yes, I mean the clock face.

[corz]

A slightly updated version went up today, no new features, just a potential bugfix.

I'm *VERY* keen to know if my clock works in Vista.

Anyone?

;o)

(or

[BrettF]

I got an error when I tried to change the colour.

[corz]

Need more details!

The color of what? Flash color? One of the scheme colors?

Or perhaps the entire color scheme (with the context menu)?

What error did you get?

Could you type it here, or do a wee screencap?

What operating system are you using?

And are you using the latest version of clock? (v2.4.8.1)?

Give me more!

;o)

(or

Edited October 5, 2007 by corz

[BrettF]

Need more details!

The color of what? Flash color? One of the scheme colors?

Or perhaps the entire color scheme (with the context menu)?

What error did you get?

Could you type it here, or do a wee screencap?

What operating system are you using?

And are you using the latest version ot clock? (v2.4.8.1)?

Give me more!

;o)

(or

Sorry... I'm using the exe, cause the other thing didn't work. And I looked through it, couldn't see any problems. So I ran the exe, and tried to change the scheme colour.

It gave me an AutoIt Error

Line -1:

Error: Subscript used with non-array variable.

[corz]

Switch scheme? As in, to "Aqua Splash", from the concept menu?

And this is clock v2.4.8.1, right? (choose the "About.." option)

Windows XP?

I'm assuming something *isn't* returning an array, and I'm not checking for @error, or something.

If only *I* got the error, it would all be so easy to fix!

;o)

(or

[BrettF]

Switch scheme? As in, to "Aqua Splash", from the concept menu?

And this is clock v2.4.8.1, right? (choose the "About.." option)

Windows XP?

I'm assuming something *isn't* returning an array, and I'm not checking for @error, or something.

If only *I* got the error, it would all be so easy to fix!

;o)

(or

Changing the first scheme colour...

EDIT: XPSP2 and V2.4.8.1. And you are exactly right when it isn't returning an array. Check the portion of code where you define what happens when you try change the colour.

Edited October 5, 2007 by Bert

[corz]

Gotcha! That's when it loads the color pickin chooser, a whole different bag of worms!

There were a couple of GetPos commands that didn't have error-checking, which I've added, and uploaded another minor update. Give it a whirl! I can but hope.

Thanks for your help so far.

;o)

(or

[correction, NOW I have: v2.4.8.2]

Edited October 5, 2007 by corz

[corz]

Hopefully, the clock should have benefitted from recent updates to color pickin chooser, so if you have a previous version you couldn't get working, grab it again..

exe: here

source pack: here

Also, from now on, I'm developing it in the exact same folder that I put out as the "source pack", which should ensure that what works for me, also works for you. Dunno about Vista, yet.

I've also used relative paths for all the FileInstall() commands, and the include statements; so if you are compiling this yourself, apart from the extra icons in the compiler directives (see the very foot of clock.au3 - which looks like an AutoIt Wrapped bug) there should be no need to edit any paths.

You need to use AutoIt Wrapper, afaik, to put extra icons inside the final exe.

;o)

(or

[corz]

Clock is working fine in Vista (and unlike that daft gadget, will happily sit at the bottom of your desktop). The only issue is with the color pickin chooser mag update if you have an Aero theme enabled (bug in GDI GetPixel() function, apparently - M$ are being informed!) - switch to a classic theme and it's fine. Otherwise everything is 100%.

If you still have any issues, it's probably your security settings.

Have fun!

;o)

(or

[edit: bug source located!]

Edited October 11, 2007 by corz