[PingGuy]

Anybody who has a Nextel BB is aware of the dreadfully quick timeout on Direct Connect's, at least they are if they've ever used a regular Nextel phone. I've decided to look into writing something that will help with the issue. My plan is to make something simple that just extends the existing functionality without being too robust.

What I would really like to do is have the app run in the background like BBLight does and just keep track of the last DC call/ping that happened. Then when it senses a push of your DC button it would throw you into the standard RIM phone app pointing at the last DC in the log and then initiate a DC request. I think that would be sufficient enough, at least for the first version of the software.

My problem at this point is how to detect the push of the DC button, I looked through net.rim.device.api.system and didn't see anything specific about it. I'm going to try to throw together a little app that echo's the last key pressed to see if the KeyListener covers it, I should be able to test that on the 7510 simulator. If anybody knows how already and can save me the trouble I would appreciate it.

[jdalegonzalez]

When the DC button is pushed, a global even is raised. You can register yourself as a globalEventListener to pickup this event. The GUID of the event is -1362476256209316272L

[PingGuy]

Thank you for the information, that will make my life easier. I'm planning to start work on this soon, but my wife is going to have a baby any day now so I've been a bit distracted. ;)

[chuy]

on the baby AND the program!

That covers the only gripe I've had with my 7520, is the DC timeout.

I'll be a beta tester in the future if you need one.

[PingGuy]

I wrote a simple Global Event Listener app to listen for the PTT button but it didn't work. After some testing I found that the GUID of my PTT button is -1602902615298266273, but it's not consistant. The app I wrote displays any Global Events that it receives, and it should be receiving all events. When I first turned my radio on it picked up the PTT button press as the number above. But now, a few minutes after that, I don't get a global event for pushing the button at all. Not even when initiating an actual DC ping to another phone.

Needless to say this is very frustrating, if the PTT button doesn't consistantly push a Global Event when pressed then this app may be dead before it even got started. :(

I'm going to tweak my listener app a bit and then I'll make it available for others to test on their units. Maybe if we all screw with it for a while we can find a rhyme or reason to how it works. At that point I could get back to coding the functionality of the DC app.

[PingGuy]

I did some more research last night and found a post on the RIM Developer Forums that said you can pick up the PTT button using the KeyListener by using the keyDown method. I'm going to go back to my original plan of writing a KeyListener app and see what that gets me. I'm beginning to doubt that the GUID I picked up earlier had anything to do with pushing my PTT button, more likely it was just a coincedence.

I'll report back when I know more.

[crs]

pingguy,

I also tested this. I get no global event when the DC button is pressed. The keylistener does work everytime, but your app has to be the foreground app to receive keyboard events, so it won't be of much use to you.

Mark

[PingGuy]

Oi, this project is becoming less and less feasible by the day. Thanks for the information tirsch.

I have one last idea that I'm still looking into though. What I've found is that when you holster the BB with the phone app active it drops you back to the main app list screen. This prevents you from pushing the PTT button to DC whoever you had selected. What I'd like to try is to have a background app that opens the phone screen whenever you holster the BB. Of course if the HolsterListener works the same way the KeyListener does then we're back to square one.