I wrote about needing a good exercise timer here. I am using the yoga timer app that I downloaded and am reasonably happy with it. I hate quite a few things about that app. I could give feedback and make it better, but the app has a paid version. So chances are the paid version has these fixed already. Besides, it doesn’t do many things it claims to. So am quite unhappy with it.
I am not willing to spend more time hunting for another app. So I made the decision to write my own. Of course, I know that costs me USD99 to do this. But heck, I’ll do it now. I want to build an app that does exactly what I want it to do. Nothing less, nothing more.
For the initial prototype, I plan to do the following:
- Voice commands to start and stop the timer
- Audio feedback on timer start and expire
- No configurability – When timer starts, it expires after 30s
- Of course, there will be a way to touch the screen to start and stop the timer as needed.
The second version – assuming the first one works on the phone – would have the following additional features
- Basic configuration – have multiple timers of different intervals. Limit to 10 timers at max. I don’t want to write super general code either.
- Share configurations – import and export json/xmls
- Logs stored in local datastore or icloud that can then be used to analyze how we are doing on time. This part is more for analysis and collection.
That’s about it. No big deal. Only two versions. Only three features per version. Hopefully bug free and simple to use. And hopefully I can afford keeping it free.