More On Numpad's WEEKLY feature

Very often, I get one of the following questions from Numpad/Txtpad users:

  • My alarms seem to go off even if I don't set them.
  • My alarm was disabled, but every Tuesday it gets enabled again.
  • I keep enabling my alarm, but it keeps getting disabled somehow.
  • No matter what I do, Alarm #1 goes off every Monday, then Alarm #2 goes off every Tuesday, etc.

    Here's the answer:

    The TDL150 has three types of reminders: Daily alarms, One-time appointments, and Annual anniversaries. Unfortunately, there is no provision for another commonly needed type of reminder: A weekly alarm.

    Numpad and Txtpad fix that by adding a new feature, called WEEKLY. It allows the user to create weekly alarms, weekday-only alarms (Mon-Fri), and weekend only alarms (Sat-Sun). Here's the explanation for WEEKLY, from file numpad.txt: 

    
WEEKLY: This is an invisible function, which affects the way the alarms are handled by 
        the watch. 

        Each alarm has an 8-character text field associated with it. Weekly uses the 
        last (8th) character in that field to automatically set the alarms ON and OFF, 
        allowing for a weekly schedule.

        To use WEEKLY, set your alarms to DAILY, and set the last digit of the alarm text
        to one of the following values:

            0 - Ring on Weekdays only
            1 - Ring on Mondays only
            2 - Tuesdays
            .
            .
            7 - Sundays 
            8 - Weekends
            9 - Do not adjust

        Any non-numeric values in the field have the same result as 9.
        Alarms are adjusted using the current timezone (1 or 2).

        When setting alarms ON or OFF manually, please note: If the 8th digit in the
        TEXT field is 0 through 8, your setting will be reset as soon as you return to 
        TIME mode. This is not a bug, but the way the program functions.

    A common cause of confusion is that this function is active all the time, even if the user has not intentionally activated it. Most often, users who still use the default alarm names ("ALARM #1", "ALARM #2", etc.), find the alarms going off at different days of the week. If you read the notes above carefully, the reason for that should become clear.

    The other thing that is important to realize is that if an alarm has a digit in the 8th position of the name (which makes it a weekly alarm), the user-set status of the alarm (ON/OFF, indicated by the o)))) icon), becomes irrelevant. The wristapp will override the status every day according to the rules above. I've had many requests that I modify the software so that the User Setting overrides the WEEKLY feature, however the technical limitations of the watch make that impossible to implement.

    There are two ways of regaining control of your alarms:

  • Rename your daily or unused alarms so that the 8th char in the name is not "0".."8".
  • Use a variant of Numpad/Txtpad that does not have the WEEKLY feature (Numpad-D or Txtpad-A)

    I hope this was helpful. Please let me know if you still have any more questions on the Weekly feature. Thanks.

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    This page is maintained by Michael Polymenakos (mpoly@panix.com)