One of the features I liked on my old Treo was the blinking green LED when I had a waiting text message. There's no such functionality out of the box for the Pre.

With this change, however, the center button LED will illuminate when you have a waiting text message!

As a prerequisite, you'll need the webosinternals services installed so you can run shell commands from within your application. If you already have this installed (for the my-tether application, for example) you can skip this step.

As root:

[CODE]cd /tmp/
mount -o remount,rw /

wget http://gitorious.org/webos-internals/applications/blobs/raw/db385edfa3f71ceb98401c16dd94b2490bfaaae5/org.webosinternals.services/org.webosinternals.services-0.4_all.ipk
ipkg install org.webosinternals.services-0.4_all.ipk
rm org.webosinternals.services-0.4_all.ipk
[/CODE]

Next we'll create the script to turn on the LED:

[CODE]
cd /usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.messaging/app/
mkdir scripts
cd scripts
[/CODE]

In vi or your editor of choice, create the file led_on.sh in the scripts directory:

[CODE]
#!/bin/sh
sleep 9
echo 100 >/sys/class/leds/core_navi_center/brightness
[/CODE]

While still in the scripts directory, change the permissions on the file:

[CODE]
chmod 744 led_on.sh
[/CODE]

Now we need to tie our script into the messaging application:

[CODE]
cd /usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.messaging/app/controllers
[/CODE]

Apply the following patch:

[CODE]
--- notification-assistant.js.bak Mon Jul 6 14:04:10 2009
+++ notification-assistant.js Mon Jul 6 18:48:17 2009
@@ -189,7 +189,15 @@
var dashboard = this.controller.getStageController(DashboardMessageStageName);

if (dashboard) {
+ var displayOn = this.Messaging.DisplayState.isDisplayOn();
dashboard.delegateToSceneAssistant("update");
+ if (!displayOn) {
+ this.controller.serviceRequest('palm://org.webosinternals.shell', {
+ method: 'runCmd',
+ parameters: {
+ cmd: '/usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.messaging/app/scripts/led_on.sh'}
+ });
+ }
} else {
// Create a dashboard
var f = function(stageController){
@@ -214,9 +222,13 @@
this.isNewMessageDashboardPending = true;
createDashboard.delay(5);
}
-
} else {
createDashboard(); // if the screen is off, create the dashboard right away
+ this.controller.serviceRequest('palm://org.webosinternals.shell', {
+ method: 'runCmd',
+ parameters: {
+ cmd: '/usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.messaging/app/scripts/led_on.sh'}
+ });
}
}
};
[/CODE]

Now lock up the filesystem and reboot:

[CODE]
mount -o remount,ro /
/sbin/reboot
[/CODE]

More testing and feedback would be appreciated. Only got this working this evening and there may be an unintended side effect or two, but hopefully not <knock on wood>.

Reply

i will definitely try this Thanks!

Reply

ok... so how do i apply the patch? do i just mod the notification-assistant.js if so where does this code fit in? Thanks

Reply

You can either decode it by hand and edit the source file manually (It's basically inserting two small blocks of code into the original notification-assistant.js) or you can grab and use the patch utility:

[code]ipkg-opt install patch[/code]

Reply

how do you use patch once you install it?

Reply

This is great! Is there a way we can have it pulse twice for a new email, 3 times for a missed call, etc?

Reply

when installing the patch i get

?? not sure what i did, simply copied the patch code and created a file with it..

Reply

Pulsing would be a bit of a challenge, as it would require a continuously running script changing the value of the LED intensity. Without the ability to more cleanly kick off and terminate background processes (or a robust LED API) I don't see a way to do it.

Reply

"patch --help" will give you the syntax and how to use

Reply

how do u exactly install the patch? i tried going on the pre wiki page but its down.

Reply

Ok, the copy and paste may have marred the patch file, so here's the attachment.

To run the patch, copy it to /usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.messaging/app/controllers, then:

[CODE]
cd /usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.messaging/app/controllers
patch -p0 -i notification-assistant.js.patch.txt
[/CODE]

Reply

You you can just have the script sleep then go to a different state then sleep again and go back to 100

Reply

That's a one time pulse, but my reading of what Eguy wanted was more of a continual 'heartbeat', for lack of a better term. A morse code of sorts.

Reply

Yes, so it keeps pulsing untill you clear the notification .


Just an FYI:


[code]root@castle:/usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.messaging/app/controllers# patch
-p0 -i notification-assistant.js.patch.txt
patching file notification-assistant.js
Hunk #1 succeeded at 333 with fuzz 1 (offset 144 lines).
Hunk #2 FAILED at 366.
1 out of 2 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file notification-assistant.js.rej[/code]

Reply

Opps put it in a while statement to create a pulse effect.

Reply

The problem there is that there's no clean way to kill the process.

Reply

Very strange. The lines being patched should be in the low 200's, not the mid to high 300's. Have you modified notification-assistant.js for something else previously?

Reply

Nope, but just noticed it was wiped clean somehow and so was my backup, just copied a fresh js from the webos doctor and it worked.

Reply

Your first command should be mount -o remount,rw /

not
mount -o remount rw, /

Reply

Where is ipkg-opt located? I'm getting ipkg-opt not found?

Reply