Custom alert vibration patterns

[Navid200]

Hello @jakobheyman,

I would like to add the option of customizing the vibration pattern for the alerts in the official xDrip.
I think this can be helpful for those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Would you be open to collaborating on this to help us improve the official xDrip?

Thanks,

Navid

[jakobheyman]

Yes - I would happily try to help adding an option to use custom vibration patterns for the alerts in the official xDrip. In a fork of xDrip I have added this in 2021 with these two commits:
b5bec1b
7fafe28

This gives the option to add a custom text string that defines the vibration pattern and it looks like this in the Edit Alert preference page:

The changes are done based on trial and error and I imagine that it could be done better by someone who knows java more properly (I only know what I have learned from some changes of the xDrip code). It has worked good for me though using two different phones, Samsung A41 and Sony Xperia 10 IV. On the Xperia phone I cannot use as long vibration patterns as I could on the Samsung phone, but long enough for not being annoyed by the limit.

[jakobheyman]

Thanks for your comments!
I think all your suggestions sounds very good. When I did the changes I initially intended to at least write some note about it in the xDrip discussions to offer to help get this into the official xDrip. I think the reason that I did not do so was that I felt that my code is probably ugly and that I don't know how to do it better. For example, it seemed a bit ugly to just save the pattern as a string that then has to be fixed to a long array each time it should be used. Looking at the code now, I also think that the variable vibPatLong in EditAlertActivity.java is never used and can be removed.

[Navid200]

I'm not a programmer myself.
I have done a lot of bad things. But, @jamorham has been extremely patient.

If we submit something that is not good, it will not be approved.

Looking at the functionality you have accomplished, I consider you to be very clever and I would love it if you join us.

[Navid200]

The most important question one needs to be able to answer when opening a PR is "Why do we need this"?
If that is reasonable, how it is implemented can be improved if needed.

Another important factor is how could this affect users. There are those who open a PR and when questioned about that, say let the user decide if they want to use it or not. If it hurts them, it is their fault.
That's not good enough.
As an example, I personally can benefit from this new alert: #441
But, I am also worried about how it could negatively affect a user. That worry has made me question the PR. Sometimes, it is not easy to choose a patch forward!

Then, comes maintenance. We should do everything we can to follow all the accepted standard and good practices and avoid complicating the code unnecessarily.

Another important aspect is what xDrip is today. If users have got used to something, it may not be a good idea to make a major change if it could confuse them.
So, the response "this will cause confusion" can be the reason for a PR not to pass.

Going back to vibration patterns, we need to think about what this change will do to the forecast low or persistent high or rising fast etc. alerts.
Adding the ability to customize the vibration pattern for the glucose level alerts should not change the vibration pattern for those other alerts.

[jakobheyman]

Thanks for your positive comments!
I agree that it is good to be careful with changes so that they don't affect users negatively. Regarding forecast low or persistent high I would guess that they should not be affected by the changes I have done but I don't know as I have never used these alerts. I will see if I can test it in my modified version of xDrip. I imagine that there could be users who would like to be able to control such alerts as detailed as the glucose level alerts but I guess that is another question.

[Navid200]

Yes, that is.

I have wanted all alerts to become consistent:
#1762
But, that is not going to be easy. At least, not for me.

So, let's add custom vibration pattern to glucose level alerts as you have. We can always move forward one step at a time.

The alerts are very tricky and we have to do lots of testing to show that nothing is going to break.

Thanks