TimerAndroid - Running apps at certain times

I have described my blog as mostly photography related and I think it is. Today I will discuss a cool android app call TimerAndroid. And it doesn't have much to do with photography.

Background: I wanted to be able to turn the bluetooth network on/off at certain times of the day automatically. I have voice sync in my auto, and I wanted to turn on bluetooth during my morning and evening rides to work. I wanted to do this automatically.  I didn't want to leave the bluetooth option on all the time because of the battery drain.

I found the an app called TimerAndroid which will do just that. I am able to set the blue tooth function to come on at 6:00AM and off at 7:00AM. Then I also set it to come on at 4:00PM and go off at 5:00PM. And it works. Did I mention it is a free app? How cool is that?

It is relatively easy to program. You add an entry for a given time, and then choose on or off. So to have something on from 4:00 to 5:00 requires 2 entrys, one for on at 4:00 and another for off at 5:00. It works great.

Plant Names for Photographers

If you like to photograph and tag wildflowers, vines, trees in the US there is an excellent source for finding the scientific name of plants. This database is provided on the web by the USDA at Plant Database. I like to use this to add scientific names to the plant photos I take.

I have taken this a step further and add this database (with some filtering) to my Android phone. I imported it into memento . Memento is an app that lets you create databases and add/view data. I was able to import the plants id data into memento. Now I can search by common name or scientific name for plants from my phone.