If you’re running a HTC device on Jellybean then you’ll no doubt have noticed the Power Saver icon remains on your notification panel at all times with no way to remove it.
If like me you prefer to have as little on your bar as possible then you may want to check out Jmz Power Saver Disable which will remove the icon all together.
Note: this will only run on rooted devices.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jmzsoft.powersaverdisabler
Over on the XDA Noob/Beginners guide to Tasker I was asked how it’s possible to create a profile which will control or return information from another device. For instance, I have some profiles which will allow me to see the battery level of my wife’s phone or react to things like when we are both at Home (such as my automated Christmas tree lights).
So how can I know if my wife is at home or what her battery level is without her having to tell me? There are several ways, one of which is to have Tasker on both phones and to configure a profile on Device B (my wife’s phone) which will send a text to Device A (my phone) with a pre-defined message, i.e. “Home” and for device A to watch for texts from that sender with just that word in it and react to it. This can lead to lots of texts back and forth, creates lots of texts in your messages app and can also cost if you’re in and out a lot and don’t have a large or unlimited text plan.
My preferred method is a more silent back-door approach using the excellent Tasker plugin AutoRemote. You can read the description on the Play Store for more info about this app, but in essence what it does is creates a personal Google url for your device. It then uses this to link other devices and you can send messages via this url directly to another phone which can then react on this message. This is completely silent and works in the background so is a more discreet.
So how to set it up?
First of all both devices which you want to use will require Tasker and AutoRemote to be installed (there is a free version of AR, however it is limited to the amount of characters in a message to 2). Once installed on both devices opening the app up will start the generation of your unique url which will begin with http://goo.gl/. Once you have both urls just click on the devices button within AR and then click the +. Now enter the part after goo.gl/ in the box and let it associate the 2 devices together (You’ll get options to name your devices to make it easier to identify later).
That’s pretty much it for AR, you can now create profiles in Tasker to react to or send messages to the secondary device.
Now to configure Tasker:
To fully utilise AR you need to have a profile setup on device A to send a message, and a profile on device B to run whatever task you need on receipt of the message. I’ll start with setting up a basic battery level checker. Device A being my main device & Device B being a secondary tablet/phone for which I want to find the battery level for. What this will do is send a message to Device B asking for the battery level, and once received back will display it in the notification bar of device A.
While I use the Pro version of AutoRemote and highly recommend purchasing it, I’ll use messages with just 2 characters which will work on the free version so you can test before purchasing it. I’ve used “ba” for battery, and “br” for battery response. But you can tailor these as you see fit.
1. Device A. Requesting the battery level. This is just the task, you can assign it to a widget or set it up to run every half hour or so in a profile. I leave that up to you.
2. Device B. Receives the message and sends one back with the battery level.
3. Device A. Gets the battery level back and puts it into a notification.
And that’s essentially it. Now if you trigger the task from Device A you should get a response back within a few seconds.
If you have some knowledge on Tasker variables you can do all sorts like have Device A send a find command (“fi”) and have Device B raise all volumes and sound an alert. Even have it find the phone by getting Device B to use the Misc – Get Location task to establish a GPS fix and then send that as something like “lo=:=%LOC” back to device A. On receipt Device A could write the %arcomm to a user variable and then run the task Open Map in point mode to the Lat/Long of your newly created variable (if you do this, add a label in this task to get a precise location).
Other ideas are on the AutoRemote main page. Ones I use and like are turning your PC off at night (yep, There’s an AutoRemote program to enable you to control a PC as well). Open a specific app on a secondary phone when you leave the house, this starts the IPWebcam app on one of my old phones to be used as a home surveillance camera. The world really is your oyster.
You could even use the AutoVoice app as your context for the first task. So for instance you can press the AV shortcut on the homescreen and say “What is DeviceB’s battery level”… this could trigger the AR message to be sent…. it could even read it back to you using Tasker’s ‘Say’ task.
This is a very basic step by step of how to create a simple task. You can do a lot more using the AR variables and multiple parameters. A Good guide to these extra features can be found on the Pocketables.com site here.
Techabella 