It's a one time fee.

I just tested to see if Firefox 47 could load my extension, and it silently fails (Firefox now has partial support for what Mozilla calls WebExtensions, which is basically Chrome/Chromium extensions).

I'm now going to test whether the Chrome extension works in Opera. I expect to have better luck.

EDIT: I just tested the extension in the latest Opera. It works perfectly
I'm just going to rename it so that it becomes "Clouttery for Opera".

Those willing to test the Chrome extension can do so now, by downloading the CRX

An initial version of the Clouttery client for Chrome has been released to the Chrome Web Store. You should be able to install it from:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clouttery/gikhlibmdfgcfbinclomljjbnbfdlodf

Does anyone on Codewalrus have a Chrome OS device? Even though I'm pretty sure everything will work alright, it would be interesting to confirm that an extension can read the battery level on a Chromebook (or other Chrome OS device with battery).

The Chrome Web Store and Google Play publisher accounts are indeed separate. The account registration fee for the Chrome one is $5; for Google Play, $25. The first one I can swallow (it's basically two months of tny.im advertising revenue, but whatever - it's pocket money) but the second one is five times that amount and before I consider it a worthy investment, I'd like to get some more users...

I said the plan was to implement that exciting feature that was going to be selected ( https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=1140.msg42016#msg42016 ) and to release the Linux client. But after that, the necessary and important "behind the scenes" server update of the last week, followed by another less important one today, got in the way. Additionally, I'm having some problems with the Linux client which I'm not really sure how to solve. I'll either need to switch software stacks or I'll need to do some serious debugging on the GTK bindings I'm using.

To avoid leaving Linux users in the dark for much longer, and because a few users like @CowTipper989 expressed interest in the Chrome extension, I decided to shift focus to it.

In an initial phase, the Chrome extension will only allow you to see notifications and information about the devices in your account. It will not read information about the battery level of the current device. However, there's no technical reason why it won't later be able to do so - be it a Windows PC, Mac or Linux machine (including ChromeOS). It's merely a choice I made to get something out of the door sooner.

I also need to see how much a Chrome Webstore dev account costs, and whether it can be shared with the Android dev account (I guess not). Last time I checked those were not exactly cheap (they were expensive in the sense they would cost almost as much as the new SSD I bought for my laptop). Unlike what happens with Android apps, with Chrome the online store is pretty much the only way to distribute extensions. Previously, crx files could be installed from random websites, but that was disabled some time ago for security reasons. There is still the option to load unpacked extensions (which is what I'm using for development) but that doesn't scale to more than a handful of users.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on July 29, 2016, 04:33:00 PMEDIT: Ok so disabling Windows 10 firewall fixed the problem. You might want to fix that gbl08ma because many people will balk away if they can't run/install/download your app right away, or you could put a warning that your app in particular requires disabling the firewall.

I did all my tests on Windows 10 and that didn't happen, other people have also downloaded it on Windows 10 so I'm not sure what's going on. Perhaps it has something to do with downloading the file over HTTP vs HTTPS? But the "source file could not be read" part makes me believe the browser is successfully downloading the file to a temporary folder, but when it tries to move it to its final destination, it is no longer there (presumably because something else deleted or moved it before). That's more the work of an antivirus than a firewall IMO, but in Windows 10 they merged MS Security Essentials even more and made it a core part of the OS, so I don't even know anymore. Using HTTPS should prevent the firewall from seeing it's a EXE file before it is written to the disk.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on July 29, 2016, 04:33:00 PMThis is the same reason why the CodeWalrus shoutbox still lacks iOS compatibility for the most part. We cannot afford to buy a working Mac+iOS emu and/or iOS device to test WIRC code on it.

AFAIK even if you have a iOS device you still need a Mac to compile native apps. Even things like Microsoft's Xamarin that allows for developing for iOS with .NET and VS (on Windows) need a Mac build server. If you just wanted to make a web app the device alone would be enough, though.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on July 29, 2016, 07:02:37 AM
EDIT: By the way @gbl08ma I tried downloading the setup.exe after signing in with Twitter and when I start the download it stops and says "Interrupted: Network Error" . I am using Opera 36 by the way.

That's strange, because I just tested using different browsers, including Opera 38 (the latest version) and setup.exe was correctly downloaded with all of them. And my Internet connection isn't exactly good. Edge warned that "setup.exe is not commonly downloaded" or something like that, but it still let me open the setup, and that's just Microsoft's SmartScreen at work and hopefully it will go away once Clouttery becomes more popular.

Maybe your antivirus or firewall is cutting the connection before it ends?

Quote from: CowTipper989 on July 29, 2016, 05:30:22 AM
I've been looking for a good cross platform battery manager and finally found Clouttery, I was surprised about how they are almost non-existent as standalone apps. I really like Clouttery so far and can't wait until it will be available on the iPhone and Chrome store. When it becomes available on the iPhone will it still be in beta or will it have to leave beta for testers to get it on the iPhone as Apple has it so locked down?

Unfortunately, while a native iOS app is definitely in the plans, it would have to wait until I pull enough money out of Clouttery to buy a Mac and a Apple Developer account (which I recall are not cheap, either).

I don't think one needs a dev account to make a web application that can be pinned to the home screen of iOS, and there is now an API for reading the battery level from web pages ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Status_API ), but surprise, surprise: it's not supported in Safari (http://caniuse.com/#feat=battery-status ). So the only way would be a native app (and that's assuming Apple made the APIs available to native apps...).

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on July 28, 2016, 10:00:57 PM
I just hope that the NX won't just compete head-on with the 3DS or the PS5 and Xbox 4 or whatever those will be called. Otherwise when will Nintendo learn?

Yeah, I think it would be best for Nintendo to distance the launch of the NX as much as possible from the next version of the competitors' consoles, to make it clear they are not in for a specs race of yet-another-PC-in-a-console-shell. The problem is that the media and many users will always try to forcibly catalog things into generations, so even if the NX was released tomorrow it'd still be called the first console of the 9th generation, and once Sony and Microsoft released theirs, welp, there goes the Nintendo product into the "low specs" bin again.

Today, a major server overhaul was pushed to production. Even though it doesn't yet include any of the two features I mentioned earlier, this is a very important update, as it is the result of major code refactoring, laying down the foundation for more exciting stuff It's one of those updates where things stay mostly the same on the surface, but major things happened deep down.

Probably the most important and visible change is that you can now sign in with Twitter, so if you have been put off from using Clouttery because you didn't feel like creating an account on yet another website, that friction is gone. Support for signing in with other services is coming soon, but first I'd like to test the Twitter+dotAccount pair to iron out any remaining bugs on the new authentication code, before adding more services to the mix.

The home page also had significant additions, including:

A help center: https://clouttery.xyz/help
Contact page: https://clouttery.xyz/contact
Security information: https://clouttery.xyz/security

Existing pages changed style to be more consistent with the new pages, as can be seen on the clients (https://clouttery.xyz/apps ) and sign-up pages ( https://clouttery.xyz/signup ).

Let me know what you think.

Support for dumb devices would rely on users letting Clouttery know whenever they change the batteries or recharge the device. Of course, this only works for devices with more or less constant battery draw. For example, if it's a 3DS you rarely use and just sits in a shelf, then Clouttery would often get its battery level guess right, and could remind you to charge it when the battery gets to 40% or so (adjustable, ofc). But if you begin using it more often all of a sudden, for a while Clouttery's estimate will be off by a lot.
Similarly, if you use it every day for a bit, say, you spend 20% of the battery each day, then that is a approximately constant battery draw too, and Clouttery will catch on the fact that the battery goes empty every five days. Of course, with these devices it wouldn't be possible to notify the user when charging completes.

This feature really would work best with "set and forget" devices that are always on, like smoke alarms, wall clocks, watches, room thermometers and weather stations. It could also work well for low-power devices that are randomly used and thus use energy randomly, but have a constant draw when analyzing large time periods: remote controls, emergency/presence lights and doorbells. Finally, it should also work well with devices that are very rarely used but have batteries always put on for whatever reason (which will naturally lose charge by themselves as time goes) - pocket radios, flashlights, etc. It could be of use to people with large collections of calculators, iPods or whatever which they obviously aren't always using (but you should take out the batteries if possible, then. And the iPods could go to a museum ).

Clouttery wouldn't care what type of "dumb device" it is, all it wants to know is how often the batteries need to be charged or changed and the last time you did it. It would then assume a constant power draw and let you know when the guesstimate of the battery level gets down to a certain value, which could be zero for alkaline batteries, or something higher for rechargeable ones of the kinds that don't like full discharges.

On the server side, what feature would you like to see developed next?
- Support for advanced notifications, including battery health warnings (so you would be notified, for example, about devices staying on the charger for too long, or batteries left empty for extended periods of time), or
- Support for "dumb" devices which are never going to be able to support Clouttery clients, like toys, calculators, game consoles (and their remotes), etc.

After implementing the selected feature (and maybe after releasing the Linux client), and making the sign-up experience easier, I'd like to begin advertising the project more, including posting on more forums, maybe present it to websites like Hacker News, etc.
So ideally the feature to choose would be the one that makes Clouttery a more interesting product. But I'm unsure, so opinions about what you'd find more useful in the shorter term would be appreciated.

No, the app uses a negligible amount of power. It stays well below Google's own apps such as Gmail, and even below Pushbullet. For example, right now in over 12 hours of monitoring, Clouttery held my phone awake for a total of 27 seconds. Gmail held it awake for over thirty minutes (!), Android's default calendar 55 seconds (little to no events for today, and no reminders) and Pushbullet for 40 seconds.

...and today, there's a new version of the Android app. Here's what changed:

• Estimates for battery life and charging times
• Simplification of notification settings user interface
• API client updated to work with latest API version, with support for encrypted communication (HTTPS session requests for key negotiation, followed by AES-over-HTTP)
• Fix for problems with sizing of graphical resources
• Fix for bug where notifications would vibrate the device regardless of the setting
• Fix for problems with battery history graph
• Performance and stability improvements

The download link is the same, get the clients at: https://clouttery.xyz/apps .

Prior to release the app was hanging after running for a while, but I think I managed to find the cause and fix the problem - at least, in further testing it didn't happen again. Please report if you experience any issue.

Today, some changes have been pushed to the management console:

• Data can now be exported from the account in CSV and JSON format
• Users can now upgrade and downgrade their accounts, but this isn't of much use to the Beta testers which already have a plan with all the features and unlimited capacity
• Accounts can now be deleted
• The controls for the battery graphs have changed
• Other minor changes and fixes

You can see these by yourself at https://clouttery.xyz/manage

That's more or less the idea behind https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=250623 , but the project seems to have been abandoned.