amarok Alarm

Written by Andreas Roth
Last Updated on Friday, 15 January 2010 11:00

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Work in progress

The amarok Alarm is a script for the amarok 1.x series. This script allows you to configure a PC to be used as alarm clock.

Basic Concept

The amarok alarm script uses cron jobs to wake up the PC which is supposed to be used as alarm clock. On this PC an instance of amarok 1.x is running together with the amarok alarm script. The script will run a predefined playlist when an alarm occurs. There are several options to configure what actions the script should perform on an alarm occurrence. You can use suspend-to-disk (hibernate) or suspend-to-ram(standby) to reduce the power consumption of the alarm PC. The amarok script itself does not wake up the PC at the scheduled time, this is the responsibility of another machine. On this second machine the amarok alarm script can be used to generate the cron jobs and do the wake up of the alarm PC.

Configuration

The configuration of the alarm script is divided into two parts: one part for the generic configuration and the second part for scheduling of the alarms. The generic configuration is stored in a simple file ($HOME/.kde/share/apps/amarok/scripts-data/alarmrc) on the disk. The alarm scheduling is done in a calendar in a Kolab mailbox.

The configuration file includes the mail server name, the user name and password to access your Kolab mailbox. It also includes the default settings for the alarms. The defaults can be set in the configuration file and each alarm can override these settings if necessary.The following table includes all parameters in the configuration file (and if the parameter can be overridden by the alarm configuration).

Section	Name	Type	Description	Alarm override
Alarm	mailserver	string	hostname of your mail server	no
Alarm	username	string	user name to access to mailbox	no
Alarm	password	string	password to your mailbox	no
Alarm	authmech	string	authentication mechanism used to access your mailbox. Can be either GSSAPI or PLAIN	no
Alarm	mailbox	string	name of the mailbox (e.g. INBOX\Calendar)	no
Alarm	updateinterval	integer	time in seconds between rescanning of the mailbox	no
Alarm	wolserver	string	name of Wake-On-LAN server	yes
Alarm	fadestart	integer	start volume in percent for volume fading	yes
Alarm	fadestop	integer	stop volume in percent for volume fading	yes
Alarm	fadetime	integer	duration of the volume fading in seconds	yes
Alarm	snoozelen	integer	number of seconds to snooze	yes
Alarm	snoozeOnPause	boolean	if enabled snooze when pause is pressed	yes
Alarm	stopAlarmOnStop	boolean	if enabled stop an alarm when stop is pressed	yes
Playlist	playlist	string	filename of the playlist	yes
Playlist	repeatTrack	boolean	enable/disable repeat of track	yes
Playlist	repeatPlaylist	boolean	enable/disable repeat of the whole playlist	yes
Playlist	random	boolean	enable/disable pick of a random track from the playlist	yes
Sleep	execute	string	command to execute on sleep; usually this command turns off the PC and other related devices.	no

You can use e.g. KOrganizer to create a new alarm or manage existing alarms in your calendar. The alarm script uses a fixed category named 'Wakeup' to distinguish between regular scheduled events and alarms for the script. To schedule an alarm just create a new event and set the start and end time and be sure to select the category 'Wakeup' (just create it if it does not exist yet). amarok alarm also support reoccurring events, so can create a single event to wake you up at 7 o'clock in the morning on every week day. The name of the wake up event can be chosen freely without any restrictions. The description of the event is used by the script for configuration of alarm specific parameters (e.g. playlist).

Download

• Version 1.0

Requirements

• amarok version 1.4.x
• python version 2.5.x (it might work with older versions of python, but it hasn't been tested)
• python-dateutil
• python-kde3
• python-gsasl (available from here or here)

Changelog

• 2008-12-06
  Initial release.