Dindy For Android
This is the homepage of Dindy, my first mobile application for the Android platform. In general, Dindy is an SMS auto reply (or auto respond) application with a twist – it allows urgent calls to get through by letting the caller decide whether the call is urgent or not. See the help text for more details.
Page contents:
Dindy (DND) is useful when you are busy but still want urgent calls to come through. For example, before going to sleep you select the “Night” profile and start it. The first time a mobile contact calls in, Dindy silences the phone and sends an SMS reply automatically telling the caller to call again if the call is urgent. The second time the same person calls, Dindy will make the phone ring to let you know a call requires your attention.
Other examples where Dindy is useful are in meetings (and the phone is set to vibrate on the second call) or while driving.
Per-profile settings allow you to customize Dindy’s behavior. Available settings are:
- Enable SMS reply-to-call: when disabled, Dindy works the same but SMS messages are not sent to callers.
- SMS message: set the message to be sent to mobile phone callers.
- First call notification settings: set whether the phone should ring, vibrate (or both) when a caller calls for the first time.
- Second call notification settings: set whether the phone should ring, vibrate (or both) when a caller calls for the second time.
- Time between calls: set the timeframe between the first and second call during which a call is considered urgent. It is advised to let the caller know this timeframe in the SMS message. Available options are 5 minutes, 10 minutes, half an hour, one hour and until Dindy is stopped. For the latter option, Dindy will activate the second call notification for every caller that calls more than once until Dindy is stopped.
- Unknown caller notification: as Dindy works only for mobile numbers from your contact list, this setting tells Dindy how to treat incoming calls that are not in that category. The choices are to use the first call notification settings, the second call notification settings or your regular call settings from before you started Dindy.Additional notes:
- Dindy will not send the automatic SMS reply message if the incoming call was accepted or declined.
- Alarms will go off while Dindy is running even if it was set to silence the ringer (so, for example, you can set an alarm to wake you up even if the current profile silences the phone.)
- Incoming text messages will make a notification sound and vibrate according to the first call notification settings of the active profile.Using Dindy in Locale
To correctly use Dindy in Locale add the “Stop Dindy” setting to each situation where you do NOT want to use Dindy, specifically the default situation.
For each situation where you want to use Dindy, add the desired Dindy profile setting.
After deleting a Dindy profile that is used in Locale you must change the Dindy setting in the relevant situations. If you uninstall and reinstall Dindy, you must re-apply all of Dindy’s settings in Locale (Dindy upgrades are safe.)Dindy was conceived and created by Amit Schreiber (aka gnobal). For support, comments, requests and bug reports please contact Amit at dindyforandroid@gmail.com. For more information about Dindy, visit Dindy’s page. Check periodically for Dindy updates on the Android App Market.
The green and red power buttons were kindly contributed to public domain by Lumen Media s.r.o.
The launcher icon is a combination of two icons from the Milky and Bright! free icon sets, kindly contributed by Min Tran to public domain.
Copyright © 2009 Amit Schreiber
All Rights Reserved.
ChangeLog
1.0.0 Initial release
1.0.1 Fixed an issue where rarely the SMS was sent later than expected
1.0.2
- Better wakelock granularity (keep the CPU working only for a few seconds, not a few minutes)
- Fixed a rare race which would cause Dindy to treat a third late call as a second call
- Only refresh settings if the currently active profile is edited, not on every edit (slightly faster UI)
- Show notification and status bar icon indicating that Dindy is running only after everything is actually started
1.0.3 Fixed an issue where sometimes a second call was considered as first
1.0.4
- Code + user interface cleanups
- Added two new profiles to new installations: Away and Busy
1.0.5 Speed improvement for the main screen
1.0.6
- Clicking the notification now shows the existing main screen instead of opening a new one
- Speed improvement for the main screen
- Use a little less memory
1.0.7
- Better app behavior
- Even more memory and speed improvements
1.0.8 (27-Feb-2010)
- Introducing single profile widgets
1.0.9 (6-Mar-2010)
- Locale plug-in added
Main screen, inactive state
Main screen, active state (also note the notification DND icon in the status bar)
Home screen single profile widgets with one of them active
Profile manager/select screen, where you either select a profile to use or edit/rename/delete an existing one
The profile editor screen, where you change the settings for a specific profile (not all settings shown in image)
- One of Dindy’s users reported that stopping Dindy on a Motorola DROID (with either 2.0 or 2.0.1) doesn’t always revert the vibration and sound settings to be the same as they were before starting Dindy. I am currently investigating this issue and so far haven’t been able to reproduce it in the emulators for 2.0 and 2.0.1. This may be related to a problem with the DROID itself. See reports on droidforums.net and Motorola DROID Owners’ forums.
- A user wrote on a review: “Good app but it stopped my alarms going off this morning. Htc magic 1.6″ without specifying any more information. Dindy was specifically written to allow alarms to go off while it’s working, or otherwise there would be no sense in having a “Night” profile. I use it every night and the alarm wakes me up in the morning on my HTC Hero with Android 1.5. I hope to get more data from users, as I haven’t been able to reproduce this issue as well on the emulator. Again, this may be an issue unrelated to Dindy.
When pressing the start/stop button repeatedly and quickly – Dindy will crash. There’s a simple workaround: don’t do it :) I plan to fix this issue in the future but it’s low priority.This issue has been fixed.
User reviews
The following are all 5 star reviews from the Android app market, written by Dindy users:
Miguel (3-Nov-2009):
It works, so far so good. Not for everyone. Helpful for students, busy people, productive folks and for those that just wanna sleep.
Jason (12-Dec-2009):
I really like this app and the Dev is super quick with a response to feedback. Multiple profiles can be used and its simple to set up!
corina (13-Dec-2009):
Wonderful! Works like a charm!
Riël (24-Jan-2010):
It is … pretty good! And usefull, never thought of this functionality
John (2-Mar-2010):
Great app. Works on my N1
Dalien (6-Mar-2010):
Great app use it all the time in meetings now.
Looks like a good idea. Good luck with it.
Thanks a lot! :)
is it possible to customize default call screen?????
Hi… what exactly do you mean by default call screen?
Hey, I have been following your app for a while. I am usually pretty stingy about getting paid apps, but I love your idea and am planning on getting it soon. Can the profiles be set to start/stop at certain times? I’d like a “sleep” and “work” profile set up to automatically turn on/off at certain times. Also, I would like it if certain numbers/contacts could be excluded. Some of my contact #s are house phones, so I would want their calls to come straight through (in case of emergency). Thanks!
Hi Andre,
Thank you very much for the positive comment.
You’re not the first to request automatic start/stop with time. The good news is that Dindy will be a Locale plugin starting March 6th, when I release version 1.0.9. If you haven’t heard of Locale – it’s a very elaborate application that allows you to start different settings (including plugins) in response to different conditions (like a specific time of day, but many many more like a location condition which is suitable for work.) So that would be one solution to starting Dindy with a time setting.
The bad news is that the Locale beta (that was free) is over and now Locale costs 10$. While I think Locale is great, I also think 10$ is pretty steep. So I thought about asking the guys who make the app Timeriffic (which changes phone settings according to time) to create a similar plugin system so that Dindy could work with that. Timeriffic is free and is very highly rated (I haven’t used it myself, though.)
If that doesn’t work I might consider implementing a mechanism inside Dindy, but I can’t promise anything.
As for exclusion lists (either to always silence or always make a sound) I’m sorry but I’m not inclined to support those. First of all – note that Dindy only works for numbers you have specified as mobile, because it can’t assume that a text message will be seen if the number isn’t a mobile phone. For other numbers you specify Dindy’s behavior (see the help text for details.) What I do for the “night” profile (and that’s the default when you install Dindy) is that all non-mobile and unrecognized numbers ring on the first call. So a home number will be included in those if it’s not indicated as mobile.
Second, the overhead for a mobile caller is that he/she only needs to dial the same number twice. I realize that in a real emergency where seconds are important this isn’t a good solution, but Dindy wasn’t created to handle these cases.
One of the reasons I generally object to exclusion lists is that they might complicate Dindy for users who simply want a smart silent mode for their phones, like myself. Also, there are other apps on the market for emergency numbers which I think may work while Dindy is working.
I can’t help but feel that I’m disappointing you with my answers. As you can see in the market, Dindy still hasn’t caught on (100-500 users currently) so in the future if there’s demand for a specific feature I might implement it even if I’m not a supporter. But again… no promises.
All I can hope for is that you’ll find Dindy useful the way it is and if a feature that you asked for will be added – then it will be a bonus for your money.
Thanks again for writing. I’ll keep in mind the features you have requested.