What's best than a llama?
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On my old phone, I was using Llama to switch automatically the wifi off when leaving home and other time/location based profile switches. Worked great, loved it (that is, until my phone stopped recognizing cell tower IDs but that's another issue).
I've got a new phone now and no more Llama for me. It's not maintained any more and while I wouldn't care installing an out-of-date application as long as it still works, it apparently isn't even in the app store at all. So, I'm searching for a replacement!
Searching for "llama replacement" provides tons of click-bait pages with "the 5 best 2019 replacement" and so on, but of course it's almost impossible to really get to see what these are worth.
I've installed "automate" (from "Llama labs" so I'm guessing the same company that made Llama, so hopefully what's intended to replace it by their authors?), which allows controlling about anything in your phone by building flows in a graphical flowchart editor (rather nice, although I suspect the whole thing can only ever work if you're already a developer and familiar with code etc. but that's not an issue for me). It works pretty well, but to get the equivalent of what Llama did out-of-the-box, I will have to build a fairly lengthy flow (to define several locations, and define actions on each one), editing them will be painful and I will have to handle all the small things that I never had to care about with Llama (e.g. how do I make sure the locations are saved somewhere and reloaded properly). Basically, it looks like a great (almost) general-purpose programming tool, but that's too low-level for what I want (and also, building a flow with more than 10 nodes or so is likely going to be pretty annoying on that small screen...). There are some pre-built flows I could get, but still, doesn't look very appealing. Also, "automate" is a catastrophic name when it comes to searching for help on-line.
I've seen "tasker" mentioned several times as well, but it really sounds as more or less the same thing as "automate", a general purpose automating thing. It will likely have the same issues as "automate", i.e. too much work to get it to do what I want.
So, anyone knows a good, simple app I could use? I just want it to be able to detect where I am (and the current time), and change sound profiles/wifi settings based on that. I don't need much more than that. And I don't mind paying a few bucks for a good app.
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Personally I had to uninstall Llama because the GPS plugin disappeared and basically decreased utility from it.
Here's an article that seems to at least compare the different ones available.
https://www.slant.co/options/4940/alternatives/~llama-alternatives
One Redd.it thread has an evangelist saying try E-Robot.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in What's best than a llama?:
Here's an article that seems to at least compare the different ones available.
Yes, that's one of those I saw. It's not really obvious what differentiates all those apps though, and descriptions in the app store itself are usually not very helpful (if not entirely misleading...), hence my question here.
Many of those apps seem to be more or less the same as "automate" i.e. building potentially very complex flows to do about anything with your phone. That's nice, but I don't want to spend hours redefining from scratch custom flows and having to handle all small details (i.e. write code!). I'll end up doing it if I need to, but that's a bore.
One Redd.it thread has an evangelist saying try E-Robot.
I saw that one as well. Looks like it's no longer maintained either. At least it's still available in the app store, but for how long? If it's going to go away suddenly like Llama did (or will not be updated at the next major Android API change), that's no good.
Also, I did actually try it and after 2 min I was entirely unable to get it to do anything at all. I can spend a bit more time with it if it's really supposed to be much easier to use than e.g. "automate", but really, that's not a good start (compare with Llama where in 2 min you could get a very basic profile set up and running).
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I mean, if you want specifically llama you can always hand-install it...
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@Tsaukpaetra I might end up doing that, although since it's not maintained for so long, I worry a bit that it might have issues correctly interfacing with newer Android versions (like, it will probably still work but might use an API that's deprecated and uses more battery than it should or reports incorrect information that should now be obtained through another call etc.).
Thanks for the link!
Since Llama was enough of a success to be used as a reference ("Llama replacements" returns a lot of hits!), I am very surprised that there is no straight, well, replacement.
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@remi said in What's best than a llama?:
Since Llama was enough of a success to be used as a reference ("Llama replacements" returns a lot of hits!), I am very surprised that there is no straight, well, replacement.
Everyone has their own interpretation and wants for what to do.
And it's entirely possible that newer API versions got locked down such that a direct replacement just wasn't feasible.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in What's best than a llama?:
@remi said in What's best than a llama?:
Since Llama was enough of a success to be used as a reference ("Llama replacements" returns a lot of hits!), I am very surprised that there is no straight, well, replacement.
Everyone has their own interpretation and wants for what to do.
Sure, but still...
And it's entirely possible that newer API versions got locked down such that a direct replacement just wasn't feasible.
Since the replacements I've looked at until now all do tons more than Llama did, I'm not sure of that.
I mean, after looking at it for about 1 hour, I am confident that I can make a flow that replaces Llama in automate. All the basic building blocks are here, I can poll the current location, set up geofences (or list cell towers if I want to use the same as what Llama did), check if I'm in a location, change sound profiles, wifi and what not, run all that in background etc. I'm not yet clear how to persist the location definitions but there is file I/O so that shouldn't be too hard to do. So there is clearly no API lock down that prevents doing it. It's just that I have to do everything myself
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@remi said in What's best than a llama?:
@Tsaukpaetra I might end up doing that, although since it's not maintained for so long, I worry a bit that it might have issues correctly interfacing with newer Android versions (like, it will probably still work but might use an API that's deprecated and uses more battery than it should or reports incorrect information that should now be obtained through another call etc.).
Android is pretty dedicated to backwards compat. Like, compatibility is generally wedged down your throat by the API. If it worked on older phones, and installs successfully on your newer phone, it'll work on your newer phone.
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It might actually be marked incompatible with your new phone in some way. Normally if an app is in your play store account you can install it from there even if it's otherwise been made unavailable. For example, I still have the original flappy bird on my s9.
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I have used Situations on an alternative phone OS and back then it seemed to do what you want. No idea if the Android version is the same...
The main reason I stopped using it is that it seemed to drain the (aging) battery faster, likely it was polling every so often which kept the phone out of low-power standby.
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@PleegWat What will happen if I still try to install the APK directly then? An error message and failure, or something worse?
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@remi I'm not sure, I've never tried anything like that. I doubt it'll be worse than the app not working though.
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@remi If you install the APK and it's incompatible, it'll tell you the APK isn't compatible with your device and the install button will be grayed out.
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So, the llama APK seems to install properly. Since that what I'm used to, I'll keep using it and see if it still works as before (unfortunately since it wasn't restored from backup, I've lost all settings, but it should be fast to re-train). Thanks for the direct link, I had not thought this would still work (I thought that once it was out of the play store, it was basically game over).
I have tried Situations, I guess if Llama doesn't work that looks like a basic replacement for it (well that's what I asked for...). It does seem a bit too basic in some respects e.g. I did not see a way to reuse a location in another rule so if you want to make a rule "when at location X (and other conditions) do Y" and another rule "when not at location X (and other conditions) do Z", then you have to redefine the location twice. But that's just setting up things, as long as it runs fine afterwards, that would be OK.
I also dug a bit more into Automate. It has apparently a fairly active community that shares a large number of flows to do a lot of things, and I found a flow that does exactly the same as Llama. It's large enough (more than 30 blocks) that it requires the paid version, but I could pay for it. It does look fairly complicated, and despite looking well structured, it's probably still a bit fiddly to tweak the rules. So I'm keeping it in a corner in case I ever want to do subtle stuff that Llama cannot, and I will probably still use it for various tweaks that I never found out how to do otherwise (for example I found a flow to turn on the flashlight by pressing the power button several times, which is something I always wanted to be able to do).
I'm still open to other replacements for Llama (since it's no longer maintained), but I think I'll stick to that for now. Thanks everyone for your help!
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@remi said in What's best than a llama?:
(I thought that once it was out of the play store, it was basically game over).
Only for paid apps that actually use entitlement checking.
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@remi said in What's best than a llama?:
@Tsaukpaetra said in What's best than a llama?:
One Redd.it thread has an evangelist saying try E-Robot.
I saw that one as well. Looks like it's no longer maintained either. At least it's still available in the app store, but for how long? If it's going to go away suddenly like Llama did (or will not be updated at the next major Android API change), that's no good.
Looks like a fine alternative. The Play Store says it was last updated on March 27, 2019, so I see no indication of abandonment.
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@LaoC said in What's best than a llama?:
The Play Store says it was last updated on March 27, 2019
Not updated for over a month? Must be unsupported!!!!
