Tweak: Turn on LED when text message is received

[Keegan99]

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:

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

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

cd /usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.messaging/app/
mkdir scripts
cd scripts

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

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

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

chmod 744 led_on.sh

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

cd /usr/palm/applications/com.palm.app.messaging/app/controllers

Apply the following patch:

--- 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'}
+                       });
                }
        }
 };

Now lock up the filesystem and reboot:

mount -o remount,ro /
/sbin/reboot

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>.

[as4life]

i will definitely try this Thanks!

[lordelfkin]

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

[Keegan99]

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:

ipkg-opt install patch

[tozfeekum]

how do you use patch once you install it?

[Eguy]

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

[lordelfkin]

when installing the patch i get

patching file notification-assistant.js
patch: **** malformed patch at line 11: + method: 'runCmd',

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

[Keegan99]

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.

[lordelfkin]

Originally Posted by tozfeekum

how do you use patch once you install it?

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

[as4life]

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

[Keegan99]

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:

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

[atlanta]

Originally Posted by Eguy

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

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

[Keegan99]

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

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.

[Eguy]

Originally Posted by Keegan99

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.

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


Just an FYI:

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

[atlanta]

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

[Keegan99]

Originally Posted by atlanta

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

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

[Keegan99]

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

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?

[Eguy]

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.

[helfire]

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

not
mount -o remount rw, /

[mdmogren]

Originally Posted by Keegan99

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:

ipkg-opt install patch

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