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Setting Profiles v. Tasker v. Timerrific

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phositadc

Well-Known Member
I've heard good things and bad things about all of these apps. It seems that with the location-based apps, sometimes it does not actually switch your phone to the correct profile for one reason or another.

My question is, which of these apps most reliably switches your phone to the correct profile every single time it is supposed to do so (whether based on location, time, wifi ap, etc.)?

All I want it to do is change the settings of my phone based on when I'm at work or when I'm at home, so I am fine with a time-based switch or a location-based switch. Does not matter how the phone knows to switch... it only matters that the phone actually does switch the profile every time it is supposed to.

Also, can any of these apps be used to send an SMS based on location? For instance, could I set Setting Profile or Tasker to SMS my wife every time I arrive at my office (based on location, of course)?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/comments.
 
chrikenn said:
I've heard good things and bad things about all of these apps. It seems that with the location-based apps, sometimes it does not actually switch your phone to the correct profile for one reason or another.

My question is, which of these apps most reliably switches your phone to the correct profile every single time it is supposed to do so (whether based on location, time, wifi ap, etc.)?

All I want it to do is change the settings of my phone based on when I'm at work or when I'm at home, so I am fine with a time-based switch or a location-based switch. Does not matter how the phone knows to switch... it only matters that the phone actually does switch the profile every time it is supposed to.

Also, can any of these apps be used to send an SMS based on location? For instance, could I set Setting Profile or Tasker to SMS my wife every time I arrive at my office (based on location, of course)?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/comments.
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I've been using Timerrific since I gave up on Locale (when it left beta - too unreliable to pay that much for).
I use it for time based switching of volumes (based on my working week) for the office and at night - I've not yet had it fail.

I send my girlfriend an SMS every day when I leave work - I use a shortcut created with an app called Pager to do this setup so that 1 press activates the message and a further press confirms sending (the confirm is optional).

Can't comment on the other 2 apps as I've not used them.
 
I played a bit with Setting Profiles and while its UI is nicer, it doesn't come close to what you can do with Tasker.

Tasker, however, takes some noodling to figure out.
 
I've been using Setting Profiles for a while now, it works great for me, it's about 95% reliable however, there are a few times where the wifi has issues when I come home. Since it works so well for me I haven't really looked at anything else and don't plan to. Features have been added that help make it less confusing and know which profile you're in using the widget.
 
negreenfield said:
I've been using Setting Profiles for a while now, it works great for me, it's about 95% reliable however, there are a few times where the wifi has issues when I come home. Since it works so well for me I haven't really looked at anything else and don't plan to. Features have been added that help make it less confusing and know which profile you're in using the widget.
Click to expand...

Is the only thing that fails wifi? 95% reliable would be OK then. But if it is only 95% reliable in for instance, muting your ringer, that probably is not good enough. My phone going off in a meeting, even if just once every 20 or 30 days, is not ideal...
 
I will add a vote for Timeriffic. I have it set up to turn all volumes off and wifi off while I'm at work, then turn them all back on in the evenings and weekends. Also it mutes everything and turns wifi off overnight.

I've had it for about 2 months and it's been 100% accurate.

I've looked at the location based ones, but I've noticed my GPS sometimes tells me I'm in cities I've never heard of, so I haven't even attempted one of those because I don't completely trust the GPS.
 
chrikenn said:
Is the only thing that fails wifi? 95% reliable would be OK then. But if it is only 95% reliable in for instance, muting your ringer, that probably is not good enough. My phone going off in a meeting, even if just once every 20 or 30 days, is not ideal...
Click to expand...
The volume pieces work great for me, the only issue I have is the location based stuff can sometimes have issues and I don't know if that's due to the program, the phone, or cell tower positioning problems. But what I like is the widget now has the ability to show colors which I've assigned specific colors to profiles so I can double check my profile quickly. It also has the ability to search through meetings in the calendar and activate profiles based on key words. I don't currently use this since my work email only works through Touchdown.
 
When the phone gets a location reading (from either the GPS or the network), the accuracy can vary considerably. It's actually possible for an app to obtain the accuracy of a location reading. The app I am working on (LocationBot) can be configured to ignore inaccurate readings, i.e. where the location can't be reliably pinpointed to (say) 700 meters (you can set the threshold). This can prevent the kind of profile switching mentioned above.

The app can be found in the Android Market or at LocationBot
 
Tasker can also take the accuracy of the current GPS loc into account. All of my location triggered tasks start with something like "stop if %loa > 200", which says don't do this if your last fix wasn't within 200 meters.

There hasn't been anything I wanted done with Tasker I couldn't do. But then I'm an ex-programmer and don't have a problem with it's visual procedual language. If you're not a techie it may be a bit daunting and a different app may be more appropriate.
 
Using one called Phoneweaver at the moment which is very similar to those already mentioned. It's a WinMo port - apparently the best selling of its kind on that platform.

For me (using time and location profiles) its been very accurate - much much moreso that Locale which I found to be worse than useless. It doesn't do quite as much as Locale (no plug-ins etc) at the moment but its just on version 1 and looks like development will be quite active. Does what I want though - can use time/location/calendar/connections to implement profiles for sounds/volumes/wifi/gps/BT/calls/brightness/app execution.

Been using it for a week or so now and all seems solid.
 
I used Timeriffic and it was great. Never had any problems - except when I stayed home from work and realized that I wasn't getting data because it had been turned off :p. Go User Forgetfulness!

I wanted more customization and tried the Settings Profiles. Couldn't get some of the "rules" I wanted to work (didn't help that I was on the Lite version and could only activate so many at once) so when my phone went poof last time I just didn't reinstall it. I wasn't sure if I had wanted to pay for the full version otherwise I might have spent more time with it.

Settings Profile has a widget. I don't think Timeriffic did.

I haven't used the other two (Tasker/Locale).
 
nightfishing said:
Which (if any) of these have a widget/homescreen icon that indicates the current active profile?
Click to expand...

Tasker has a Notification bar entry which shows how many Profiles are active. I've noticed that when less than two Profiles are active, the Tasker notification shows the Profile names.

Anyway, as powerful as Tasker is, there's always a way to do anything. If I wanted to know which profiles are active, I could set each Tasker Profile to place a 'permanent' notification in the Notification bar, and remove that permanent notification in the Profile's exit task. That way each active Profile would be listed on my notification bar separately when it's active. Heck, I could even have Tasker run an Event Profile task if I select the Profile's entry on the Notification bar. I guess a more advance Tasker user might opt to use variables, or use a static file on the SDCard to maintain a list of active profiles which could then be displayed somewhere.

Tasker just offers so many ways to go around the barn. So, just put on your 'thinking cap' and put Tasker to work doing what you want it to do.
 
Volume Toggle combined with Volume Timer is another volume scheduler. Very customizable allowing unlimited (probably) sound profiles and timer profiles. I've been using it a little over 1 week and it has been 100% reliable. There is also a widget that allows you to cycle through your volume profiles with one touch that I've added to my home screen.
 
Hi,

I was using Timeriffic for simple things and not location based but while in general its pretty good it has features and limitations which I got rid of quite quickly using "Tasker".

I have exit states on my Tasker profiles so that if its night and docked I don't get notification sounds/vibration etc, but if I remove it (working at night) then it automatically turns notifications back on, and then when I got back to sleep (dock it) then off again, much simpler than Timerrific and it can't do that anyway, basically unless they change Timerrific your stuffed (note that its "Check Now" doesn't always work either).

I can say however that Tasker could use much more documentation and it is quite cryptic (The "profile" term is I think quite misleading also, its a description of/wrapper for a set of conditions). It is much more powerful than anything else I've seen and is closer to how a tool like this should work than anything else I've seen (separation of conditions from actions).

Anyway, thats my 2 cents worth,
Dennis
 
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