Hi All, been doing some experimenting, and found a few things I thought worth sharing. I’d posted previously about my efforts to have the screen turn off & turn back on, and had cobbled together something with Automagic and an app from XDA, but continued to have issues with consistency (on/off) as well as brightness. Well, I moved on to try Fully Kiosk, and ran into similar issues. Previously, my process had been to follow the instructions in the XDA post, and then removed multiple apps that I though weren’t needed.
Well, I’ve found that after reflashing it multiple times, (keep wondering if I’m going to burn out my ROM) I’ve discovered that there is some type of dependency with com.microsoft.skype.teams.ipphone as it relates to the screen turning off and turning back on with consistent brightness. I’m able to remove all of the languages, but removing this breaks Fully Kiosk’s ability to turn the screen off, and turn it back on via the camera. I’m going to do some more experimenting to see if any of the other apps can be removed without breaking the on/off functionality, but at this point, other than having to relaunch Fully Kiosk after a reboot, I’ve got it working with HA in a fashion that I’m happy with. Oh, this is the 8.1 version, and not sure if this plays into anything, but I’m using the “ungoogled chromium” as the webview.
Does anyone see long response times when using Fully Kiosk Browser on 8.1 when pressing buttons. If I leave the device for a while and come back to it, pressing a button (eg a light) can take 4-5 seconds to respond. Once I’ve done that, it’s much quicker.
However, it could also be my dashboard config I guess as there’s a reasonable amount going on.
Wondering if something is sleeping and reconnecting?
Sorry for the late response. Yes, whenever the Softkeys app crashes I just disable Launch on boot option in Fully Kiosk app then open the softkey app again to see if it works, after that I re-enable Launch on boot. For now I completely disable Launch on boot option. Also for your latest question I don’t have issue with delaying when controlling devices, maybe try enabling “Prevent from Sleep while Screen is off”, or CPU wakelock, Wifi wakelock options in Power Settings section.
Thanks i’ll give those options a go. Delays might be due to the dashboard then. I’ll experiment with less buttons etc.
On the softkeys thing - I’m finding every time I start, it disables softkeys so I think it’s probably FKB stopping it starting or it’s crashing because of FKB? Maybe.
@JeffC1 - Were you having an issue where the display would simply stay on (irrespective of brightness). I’m wondering if having this Skype app also fixes that issue, or is it just about which brightness it comes back on with?
No, it wasn’t staying on, but what would happen is that the Automagic/BackLightOff combo wouldn’t always turn the screen off after the time period I set in Automagic to trigger BackLightOff, and then, even more unusual, when I would turn the screen back on, the brightness setting didn’t seem to work; the screen would come on with the brightness I set and then within a couple of seconds, dim itself. This was happening even though I’d turned autobrightness off. Finally, when I started to use Fully Kiosk, when I uninstalled com.microsoft.skype.teams.ipphone, the camera motion sensor to turn the screen back on wouldn’t work, or to be more specific, it would work a few times, and then completely stop. Even more unusual, picking up and moving the unit (even though I didn’t have any motion/presence sensing turned on in Fully Kiosk) would turn the screen back on.
Hope this helps.
Anyone using the A11 ROM and know how to prevent the device from sleeping? I’m trying for an always on display but for unknown reasons this ROM will not cooperate with keeping the screen on when idle.
I’m using the A11 ROM. I have been using Automagic along with the proximity sensor. I have mine set to turn off the screen after 5 minutes. The proximity sensor works perfectly and turns on the display when someone is in front of the device. I’ll test the “turn screen on” function and set it to something like 12 hours. I’ll post the test result soon.
Now I’m not 100% certain that it’s not the IP Webcam software I’m using that’s taking over the screen for no reason or Wallpanel app is crashing. What I’m really trying to do is to always have wallpanel app showing on the screen.
Ive since jumped over to the snowboy hotword plugin setup and if you’re comfortable with the pretrained models, it seems to be working much better than ip cam. ip cam and wallpanel kept crashing on me as well (as well as the mic in HA being turned off all the time which i ended up writing an automation for to keep it on all the time) and i havent experienced that using the android companion app, hotword plugin (using just alexa. Although i did have to download a different pretrained model that seems to be much more accurate) and tasker. Its not perfect, but i think until we see a better ROM or PMOS release it’ll do. As far as the screen, i set it to stay on always in developer options and always on in the companion app and somewhere in the settings as well.
I guess I’m just having issues with Wallpanel crashing. IP Webcam keeps running and I don’t get the mic off unless I restart the ThinkSmart. So you are running companion and life is good? I may have to give that a try.
I have this issue too with the backlight will turn off (and does turn back on when I tap the screen) after my desired timeout setting but the display will stay on. I had the teams apk frozen and unfroze to check it made no difference for the display staying on after the backlight turns off.
For some info I have my Thinksmart setup following Chewie610’s steps on XDA forums staying on 8.1 rooted with Magisk for MicroG, Playstore and custom webview.
I had some of these initial teething problems, but since then, it seems to be working okay now using WallPanel on the OP’s ROM.
I basically have it set to turn on the screen with camera motion (I don’t believe these have a proximity sensor) and to keep the screen on for 10 minutes before reverting back to the screensaver clock.
So far, it seems to be working well, though I’m still playing around with the light settings for detecting motion when the lighting is a bit dimmer.
Funny though, I’ve been installing custom ROMs going back to the Pandigital tablet in 2010. I expected and had teething problems then, but I’m a bit surprised to see these teething problems on today’s tablets…granted…the Lenovo is a bit of a purpose-built tablet.
Hi shortlurker,
Not sure if this will help; in my working configuration I did not install MicroG, nor Playstore, and I chose the “ungoogled” chromium for the webview. Picking the webview was not intuitive, pressing the up & down volume, I didn’t install the correct version multiple times because of the selection process. I sideloaded the Fully Kiosk, and the screen backlight on/off has been working like a champ. If you look at my prior post, I only uninstalled on the list of app to the oem.vietnam, the remainder of the apps going down the list I’ve left installed. When I did the test with “com.microsoft.skype.teams.ipphone” I had uninstalled all of the languages, and then jumped to the “com.microsoft.skype.teams.ipphone” and uninstalled it. I rebooted, and after the reboot, the backlight on/off with Fully Kiosk when belly up. Reinstalling “com.microsoft.skype.teams.ipphone” and a reboot had the screenbacklight on/off working correctly via Fully Kiosk.
Glad I decided to just freeze them instead of uninstalling. I’ll try and unfreeze the ones you left installed on yours to see what happens first. I have left kingston.devicesettings unfrozen since I have noticed without it apps like tinyCam with the “keep screen on” setting doesn’t work.
Worst case I’ll just reset it and start all over again and catch when the issue happens.