(Bangle.js 2) My timer app

[ticalc-travis]

I'm working on a customizable timer app for Bangle.js 2 with various features including intervals and repeat modes. I know there are several stopwatch and timer apps already, but I wanted one that I would feel at home with after so many years of using Timex Triathlon and similar wristwatches, something with a similar range of features as well as large, chunky screen fonts (my eyesight is not good and I found some of the existing apps use fonts that are too small for me to read). I also wanted it to make efficient use of the Bangle v2 touch screen and hardware button so that basic operation was reasonably convenient without too much fiddling.

The result is currently in my personal app loader: https://ticalc-travis.github.io/BangleApps/?id=tevtimer
It's pretty much feature complete but still undergoing testing, so there may be some bugs. I don't really know what to call it, so I named it after one of my online usernames. If anyone has any naming ideas, let me know. :)
For the curious, here's a link to the code: https://github.com/ticalc-travis/BangleApps/tree/tevtimer/apps/tevtimer

My plan is to eventually make a stopwatch/chronograph app with split/lap features also modeled off of my previous watches, using a similar style of UI to this app.

[gfwilliams]

Hi! This looks really neat - and all the info you've put in the README helps a great deal.

Am I right in thinking that you've added your own timer implementation in the app, so for instance if you leave the app the timers won't go off?

I can see in the metadata it's dependent on the scheduler, but I don't think you use it? I don't know how hard it'd be, but if you could swap it to use the sched library (info on using it at https://github.com/ticalc-travis/BangleApps/blob/tevtimer/apps/sched/README.md) then you could set stuff up with your app, leave the app and they'd continue to work in the background and could then reload your app when the timer goes off?

[ticalc-travis]

Thanks for the feedback. I do use sched, and the timers are supposed to fire when the app isn't active, though perhaps my implementation is a bit unusual. While the app is running, it uses its own classes internally for the timer functionality, as this seemed the easiest way to have an interface for manipulating the timers and adding any special functions that aren't implemented directly in sched. Each time a timer changes state (e.g., started or paused), a scheduled callback fires that iterates over the timers for any that are running and have yet to expire and then adds appropriate alarms to the sched alarm list to match. Timers that get paused have their alarms removed. Actually, it first removes all of its own alarms, then recreates the ones that are still valid. This could probably be more efficient, but it seems to perform okay with at least a modest number of timers defined.

I also borrowed the sched.js module from sched (the one that handles alarm alerts) and made a customized version for this app in order to support some of the extra features like chained timers (which requires some extra work to be done as soon as a timer goes off). This app sets up its own timer alarms to run the custom module instead of the standard one.

[gfwilliams]

That sounds great! Sorry - I'd had a quick look at your app.js and didn't see sched mentioned, but I realise now you've made a library and you call sched from that.

It looks really good - if you wanted to submit a PR it'd be great to have it in - I think all you need is a ChangeLog file?

I think the name is fine too - there are a bunch of similarly-named things like 'Hank's World Clock' so it's not out of the ordinary.