Battery life?

I love the new app (!!!), but I have a question...

Has anyone noticed their battery life do a nose-dive after installing Indigo Touch? It could be a total coincidence, but when I used Safari (on the iPhone) to access my Indigo 3 server, my phone would last for many days. After switching over to Indigo Touch, I'm running out of power all the time and I have to charge it every night. Is there a chance that the software is doing anything that could drain the battery, like (I don't know) polling excessively or something?

Depending on the software, it's quite possible.. Indigo Touch may keep a connection open to the server, to find out when re-query the status...
But that's just a guess...

But, simply returning to the iPhone Main Screen, should stop that behavior. You can see the same issue, if you open the camera app, and then lock the screen. The camera is never turned off, until you return to the iphone main screen.....

I'm going to say no diff or less a hog then using straight CPs. iPod touch G1 and an iPhone 3G.

(I'm hard on battery reviews, but this one is fine)

Yeah you're right, I think maybe it only drains the battery when Indigo Touch was the last app I used before closing the phone. Would it be possible to make the app go to sleep when the display turns off, or something like that? Running out of juice is a real drag.

I have that issue also. Only have to go to the main screen after you are done with the app and everything is fine

Yes, going to the home screen on the phone/touch helps a lot.

[matt (support)]

Indigo does set the UIRequiresPersistentWiFi flag in order to be responsive while it is the front-most application. It also does do regular communication with the Indigo Server to check for device/variable updates. I'd prefer to keep it as responsive as possible while it is running (front most), but might add a preference at some point for this. In the mean time, just make sure you go back to the main screen when you are done and Indigo won't use the CPU or network at all.

Hi Matt, yup, when the screen is on, that's sounds great. Is there any way to detect when the phone goes to sleep (or whatever it's called when the screen goes black) and temporarily switch off UIRequiresPersistentWiFi and not do any more processing until the phone wakes up again? Sorry, I know I'm asking the question like a noob but I haven't dug into the iPhone SDK yet.

[matt (support)]

I don't believe there is a way, after the app has launched, to tell the iPhone to change that state. But I might be able to optimize it a bit by increasing Indigo's polling sleep interval when the iPhone appears idle/dark.

I am sure having a problem with battery life. If I close the iPhone when Indigo Touch is active, the phone will start heating up and the battery will drain all the way to zero in a couple of hours. Indigo is the only app I have with the battery drain problem.

Now I know that I need to return to the home screen as soon as I am done with Indigo, but sometimes I forget. Then I find the phone is totally dead the next time I try to use it, and it has to be charged for 10 minutes before it is able to reboot. After that, it takes a couple of hours to fully recharge the battery.

[jay (support)]

I am sure having a problem with battery life. If I close the iPhone when Indigo Touch is active, the phone will start heating up and the battery will drain all the way to zero in a couple of hours. Indigo is the only app I have with the battery drain problem.

Now I know that I need to return to the home screen as soon as I am done with Indigo, but sometimes I forget. Then I find the phone is totally dead the next time I try to use it, and it has to be charged for 10 minutes before it is able to reboot. After that, it takes a couple of hours to fully recharge the battery.

We'll look into this in a future version of Indigo Touch.

Same issue here. If Indigo Touch is still active when I put the iPhone to sleep, it drains the battery quickly.

I've had the same thing happen sporadically - battery drains super fast and iPhone gets hot. I had called Apple support but couldn't recreate the problem on demand.

Recreated it this morning by leaving Indigo running before closing the phone as described in this thread by gabbas.

Pretty sure that Indigo is not the only app that occasionally causes the super fast battery drain. Before reading this thread, I had suspected it was certain types of pages via Safari (live video feeds from home cameras via my LAN, more specifically).

I'm so happy with the Indigo iPhone app's performance, that I'd prefer to be more careful about returning to the Home screen after using it than to request any app changes that would decrease its performance. Might put a little note into the App or the download site informing new users that leaving the app open without returning to the home screen might cause rapid battery drain (under certain conditions).

ditto here. have noticed this and been frustrated by it on several occasions -- finding phone dead or nearly so and then realizing it's because a few hours back i adjusted the thermostat or dimmed a light.

i have been meaning to post a bug report. i guess this post will serve instead.

this brings to mind another suggestion: would it be possible to build a notification feature into indigo touch such that IT could receive a notification and (configurably) make a sound, pop up a msg, and/or update the app icon when something important happens (like power outage, security breach, etc.)?

within the indigo desktop app, a notification could just be a new type of "verb" in the action part of a trigger action (along side "send email") OR it could simply be a variant of the existing log command, e.g. (in applescript)

log "Your pipes are broken!" using type notification.

this would allow IT to inform the user of important stuff w/o having to run all the time.

[jay (support)]

ditto here. have noticed this and been frustrated by it on several occasions -- finding phone dead or nearly so and then realizing it's because a few hours back i adjusted the thermostat or dimmed a light.

i have been meaning to post a bug report. i guess this post will serve instead.

this brings to mind another suggestion: would it be possible to build a notification feature into indigo touch such that IT could receive a notification and (configurably) make a sound, pop up a msg, and/or update the app icon when something important happens (like power outage, security breach, etc.)?

within the indigo desktop app, a notification could just be a new type of "verb" in the action part of a trigger action (along side "send email") OR it could simply be a variant of the existing log command, e.g. (in applescript)

log "Your pipes are broken!" using type notification.

this would allow IT to inform the user of important stuff w/o having to run all the time.

Notifications for Indigo Touch are already on the wish list. Some guys have been working with Prowl (Growl for iPhone) and had some success - you might want to check it out in the interim.