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Nightstand Central - Music Alarm Clock w/ Weather + Sleep Timer + Photos + Flashlight
- Thread starter csnplt
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Sure, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!
By the way, could someone remove the spam posts by 123xcy?
White noise sleep timer
Any chance of getting a list of the sounds? I started using Lightening Bug (similar app) for android a while back and became completely hooked on falling asleep to the thunderstorm noise. Would way prefer this functionality on my iPad, but of all the apps I've tried thus far, the noises are pretty weak. I love the rest of your app, but unfortunately the only way for me to see (or preferably hear) is to buy the app. Not to sound like a cheap-ass, but I'd kinda like to know (or try) before I buy.
Thanks!!!
Any chance of getting a list of the sounds? I started using Lightening Bug (similar app) for android a while back and became completely hooked on falling asleep to the thunderstorm noise. Would way prefer this functionality on my iPad, but of all the apps I've tried thus far, the noises are pretty weak. I love the rest of your app, but unfortunately the only way for me to see (or preferably hear) is to buy the app. Not to sound like a cheap-ass, but I'd kinda like to know (or try) before I buy.
Thanks!!!
I certainly understand wanting to know what you're getting for your money
The best thing about Nightstand Central's sleep timer, in my opinion, is that it works with any app that supports iOS 4's background audio system. As long as you have at least iOS 4.2.1 installed on your iPad, you can use my app's sleep timer with the audio from any other app. So even if you don't like the included sleep timer sounds, you can still fall asleep to sounds from other apps that are installed on your device.
Here's how it works:
1) Start the audio playback in your app of choice, whether it's Pandora, online radio, a white noise app, or any other app that plays in the background on iOS 4.
2) Switch to Nightstand Central, and the audio from your other app will keep playing.
3) Go to the Sleep Timer settings view within my app and under the Sound setting, select "Other" (rather than Sounds or Music). You can also adjust playback volume and the timer if you'd like (the default time is 30 minutes before the audio fades out).
4) Touch the Start button, and the Sleep Timer will do it's job, fading the audio playback from your other app out after the timer expires. You can return to the main clock screen while the Sleep Timer is on.
That said, my app does come with a number of included sounds, as you mentioned. To be completely honest, I don't believe my app has the best selection of included sounds, as I try to keep the size under 20 MB (for 3G downloads) and am limited in that way. There are also some audible gaps in a few of the sleep timer sound loops. I need to fix these in a future update, but again, I'm limited by file size issues (for gapless playback, files need to be in wav format, not mp3, for example). I'm working on getting around this issue, but for sake of full disclosure, I want to tell you the current state of affairs
Here's a list of included white noise sounds: Birds, Brown Noise, Fan, Flowing Water, Rain, Spring Weather, Waves, and White Noise. There is no thunder sound, but I can work on adding that in an update. In the mean time, you can use a free, dedicated White Noise app like White Noise Box with Nightstand Central's Sleep Timer.
Also, you can use any track from your music library with my app's sleep timer. If you find a good white noise loop, just sync it onto your iPad and you can still use it with Nightstand Central.
Please let me know what you think if you do decide to buy my app! Thanks for your interest!
Version 3.2 for iPhone Released
Version 3.2 for iPhone and iPod touch was just approved by Apple. The iPad version will also be updated soon, to version 1.2, but it's still being reviewed.
Here's what's new:
Version 3.2 of Nightstand Central contains several added features, major performance improvements, and major bug fixes.
Added Features:
-Snoozed alarms now shows remaining time on main clock screen
-Snooze can now be canceled (just tap the remaining snooze time indicator to do so)
-Sleep timer now shows remaining time on main clock screen
-Background alarms can now be snoozed (requires iOS 4+)
-Snoozed alarms now set up snooze local notifications, so if you leave Nightstand Central after snoozing a sounding alarm, you will still be notified via a background alarm once the snooze time is up. You will then be able to stop the alarm or snooze it again. (requires iOS 4+)
-Misc. User Interface Improvements
Improvements and Bug Fixes:
-Fixed bugs related to alarms (completely rewritten alarm system "under the hood" for better reliability)
-Much better performance, especially when adding new alarms
-Fixed crashing that occurred when adding user photos
-Fixed bug that caused incorrect user photos to be added in some cases
-New Wallpaper System:
The wallpaper system has been completely rewritten. In prior versions, user photos were copied into a database within the app. Now, user photos are simply referenced from within Nightstand Central and remain stored in your device's photo library. This saves disk space, makes adding user photos much faster, and automatically updates added photos if they're changed outside of Nightstand Central.
Please note that the new wallpaper system requires that your iDevice have at least iOS 4.0 installed as it uses the ALAssetsLibrary framework. Since photos in your device's library may contain embedded "geotag" location data, you must also allow Nightstand Central to access location data from within Apple's Settings app (under Settings -> General -> Location Services) in order to add user photos. Nightstand Central does not actually access photos' location information, but this is still a requirement of the ALAssetsLibrary framework.
-Important note for users of older devices:
If your device does not have at least iOS 4 installed, please connect it to iTunes and update its iOS software to continue using your own photos with Nightstand Central.
----------------------------
I hope you guys like the update! Any suggestions for the next version? I'm currently working on a move-and-scale feature for the user photos. I'm also considering adding a countdown-style timer alarm (great for naps). Should be nice...
Version 3.2 for iPhone and iPod touch was just approved by Apple. The iPad version will also be updated soon, to version 1.2, but it's still being reviewed.
Here's what's new:
Version 3.2 of Nightstand Central contains several added features, major performance improvements, and major bug fixes.
Added Features:
-Snoozed alarms now shows remaining time on main clock screen
-Snooze can now be canceled (just tap the remaining snooze time indicator to do so)
-Sleep timer now shows remaining time on main clock screen
-Background alarms can now be snoozed (requires iOS 4+)
-Snoozed alarms now set up snooze local notifications, so if you leave Nightstand Central after snoozing a sounding alarm, you will still be notified via a background alarm once the snooze time is up. You will then be able to stop the alarm or snooze it again. (requires iOS 4+)
-Misc. User Interface Improvements
Improvements and Bug Fixes:
-Fixed bugs related to alarms (completely rewritten alarm system "under the hood" for better reliability)
-Much better performance, especially when adding new alarms
-Fixed crashing that occurred when adding user photos
-Fixed bug that caused incorrect user photos to be added in some cases
-New Wallpaper System:
The wallpaper system has been completely rewritten. In prior versions, user photos were copied into a database within the app. Now, user photos are simply referenced from within Nightstand Central and remain stored in your device's photo library. This saves disk space, makes adding user photos much faster, and automatically updates added photos if they're changed outside of Nightstand Central.
Please note that the new wallpaper system requires that your iDevice have at least iOS 4.0 installed as it uses the ALAssetsLibrary framework. Since photos in your device's library may contain embedded "geotag" location data, you must also allow Nightstand Central to access location data from within Apple's Settings app (under Settings -> General -> Location Services) in order to add user photos. Nightstand Central does not actually access photos' location information, but this is still a requirement of the ALAssetsLibrary framework.
-Important note for users of older devices:
If your device does not have at least iOS 4 installed, please connect it to iTunes and update its iOS software to continue using your own photos with Nightstand Central.
----------------------------
I hope you guys like the update! Any suggestions for the next version? I'm currently working on a move-and-scale feature for the user photos. I'm also considering adding a countdown-style timer alarm (great for naps). Should be nice...
Right, I'm sorry for the delay. I'm still not totally sure how I should add a countdown timer. One option is to make the countdown timer separate from the rest of the alarms (but I worry about confusion with the sleep timer feature). In this case, I would have an option for the countdown timer between the Alarms and Sleep Timer settings in my app.
Another option is to make the countdown timer simply a way of setting a new alarm. Rather than setting a time and repeat schedule, a user could simply set a timer, with the other options remaining the same. In this case, I'd need some sort of toggle within each individual alarm's settings.
If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them. I'm leaning towards the first option (Apple does it that way), but I need to think of a way to differentiate this timer from the sleep timer. Perhaps a different name that doesn't have timer in it?
Just fixed a couple more bugs:
-Alarm could keep sounding indefinitely if it is originally set to play music from your iPod library but you then unsync the selected tracks from your device
-Snooze / sleep timer indicator view doesn't react to touches if in-app brightness is lower than 100%
-Next Alarm Icon (small bell in lower left that shows up when an alarm is set) doesn't react to touches if in-app brightness is lower than 100%.
An update is currently awaiting in Apple's review. In the mean time, I'm working on adding a "nap" timer and move and scale for the user photos.
Thanks guys!
-Alarm could keep sounding indefinitely if it is originally set to play music from your iPod library but you then unsync the selected tracks from your device
-Snooze / sleep timer indicator view doesn't react to touches if in-app brightness is lower than 100%
-Next Alarm Icon (small bell in lower left that shows up when an alarm is set) doesn't react to touches if in-app brightness is lower than 100%.
An update is currently awaiting in Apple's review. In the mean time, I'm working on adding a "nap" timer and move and scale for the user photos.
Thanks guys!
Nightstand Central has been completely unreliable for me. Maybe it's me, but I keep setting alarms that don't go off (although once in a while the alarm will go off - but RARELY).
I'm using the Verizon iPhone 4.
I will set an alarm:
at a given time
select a sound
set "vibrate" is off
set "snooze" to 5 minutes
set "repeat" to never
set the volume all the way
set "Fade In Sound" to "never"
The alarm is set to "ON" and the The gold "bell" icon is shown in the lower-left corner. The app is left running in background.
but, no alarm! What am I doing wrong??
Post script: If I set the "background alarm" on, the background alarm will sound for a ~30 seconds, but the "normal" alarm won't. (BTW, what's the purpose of the "background alarm"?
thanks,
bert
I'm using the Verizon iPhone 4.
I will set an alarm:
at a given time
select a sound
set "vibrate" is off
set "snooze" to 5 minutes
set "repeat" to never
set the volume all the way
set "Fade In Sound" to "never"
The alarm is set to "ON" and the The gold "bell" icon is shown in the lower-left corner. The app is left running in background.
but, no alarm! What am I doing wrong??
Post script: If I set the "background alarm" on, the background alarm will sound for a ~30 seconds, but the "normal" alarm won't. (BTW, what's the purpose of the "background alarm"?
thanks,
bert
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I just had a quick question regarding the Nightstand Central.
I purchased it probably about a month and a half ago, seeing as I was coming to China to teach children English, and couldn't bring an alarm clock and didn't want to purchase one here, so I purchased this app and did a lot of testing to make sure it would work using my music.
It has worked awesomely up until the past two or three days. I hadn't used it in a week or two and set it up for my roommate and I to wake up to. When it went off, the music was silent, I checked to make sure that the sound was up and did everything I could think of to get it to work. Finally, as a last resort, I uninstalled and reinstalled it and was able to get it to work for one day.
But today, I had changed the song to wake up to, and the alarm went off silent again. I've made sure it was on the foreground etc. and cannot figure out how to get it to work without uninstalling and reinstalling it. I continued to test it as well, and it came up silent each time.
Do you have any suggestions as to why it's doing it and what I can do?
Thanks a lot.
I purchased it probably about a month and a half ago, seeing as I was coming to China to teach children English, and couldn't bring an alarm clock and didn't want to purchase one here, so I purchased this app and did a lot of testing to make sure it would work using my music.
It has worked awesomely up until the past two or three days. I hadn't used it in a week or two and set it up for my roommate and I to wake up to. When it went off, the music was silent, I checked to make sure that the sound was up and did everything I could think of to get it to work. Finally, as a last resort, I uninstalled and reinstalled it and was able to get it to work for one day.
But today, I had changed the song to wake up to, and the alarm went off silent again. I've made sure it was on the foreground etc. and cannot figure out how to get it to work without uninstalling and reinstalling it. I continued to test it as well, and it came up silent each time.
Do you have any suggestions as to why it's doing it and what I can do?
Thanks a lot.
Progressive snooze
Is anyone else having trouble with progressive snooze? I have my alarm set to 10 minute snooze with progressive snooze enabled, but it remains at 10 minutes. I have emailed the help site twice with no response. I'm using an iPhone 4s with latest software. And the latest version of NSC.
Thanks,
Dave
Is anyone else having trouble with progressive snooze? I have my alarm set to 10 minute snooze with progressive snooze enabled, but it remains at 10 minutes. I have emailed the help site twice with no response. I'm using an iPhone 4s with latest software. And the latest version of NSC.
Thanks,
Dave
Nightstand Central won't open
I bought and have used Nightstand Central. For some reason when I now go to open it on my jailbroken iphone 4 (IOS 5.0.1) the app won't progress all the way to opening. It just stays stuck on the opening screen. Any ideas on on how to get this working again?
I bought and have used Nightstand Central. For some reason when I now go to open it on my jailbroken iphone 4 (IOS 5.0.1) the app won't progress all the way to opening. It just stays stuck on the opening screen. Any ideas on on how to get this working again?