[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] elfchick:
Okay, great, that is really helpful and gives me a place to start :) Thank you!

I do have Tasker, and I'm willing to buy other apps if they look like they'd help, but I think Tasker is probably going to be my biggest help with the location detection.

I do not have any idea how to tell Tasker "turn off alarms on [primary phone] phone if [home network] is detected, turn on X, Z, and Q alarms if [home network] is not detected." I've played around a bit with it and realized that getting Tasker to execute specific actions with other programs--in this case, Alarm Clock Xtreme--is really kind of obscure, if it's even possible. It must be possible, yeah?

--Wait, is there an alarm clock for the Alarm Control Freak that will *also* detect [home network]? I loooove the way I can use Alarm Clock Extreme: unlimited numbers of preprogrammed alarms, just toggle the ones I need; all kind of options with respect to what happens when the alarm goes off, choice of snooze duration, etc etc. If there's one like that that _also_ has the option to detect location, that would be awesomeness.

Or...hmmm...I suppose I could have it freeze Alarm Clock Xtreme if it's on [home network] but activate it if it's off. I really do have to get around to rooting the phone, I suppose.

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Do you have any suggestions for what to use for streaming from the house server, and what apps to use for receiving the streaming? Oh, I see you mentioned VLC (for some reason my brain parsed that as VPN); I'll look into that.

I think if there's a decent app for listening to streaming (suggestion welcome!), and the server can stream to all the devices at once, I can probably figure out how to use just one device to ...mute the server? (With the app itself, or a shortcut, or a short ssh script maybe.) Since they all need to be listening 24/7, muting is the thing to do, right? If I turn off the server, that could make them disconnect or stop listening, right?

I still need a snooze mechanism, though. Among other things, sometimes I need to postpone whatever the reminder alarm is going off for; sometimes I need it to help me keep track of the passing of time after the alarm goes off. It's complicated. I need to be able to snooze.

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Question: In this setup, how do we prevent the alarms from going off on all the devices when the primary phone has left the house? I can see how we get the alarms on the primary phone TO go off, but not how we turn off the streaming alarms. I mean, I don't know how to tell the server to stop serving if it can't detect [primary phone]; is that possible?

It's not that I object to music playing when I'm not home. It's that if the dogs wake up while I'm gone, they'll need to pee. I'd really, really like not to have to clean that up every time I leave :)

Hm. A kind of bulky and inefficient way to do it could be turning off the streaming on the devices. Perhaps have them turn off the streaming app when the phone leaves the network, and then start it up again when they detect it again.

This is slightly problematic, because my house has very, very, VERY bad reception inside. We have to have a repeater (effectively a second network) for The Spouse's computer, which is FIFTEEN FEET from the wi-fi router. With no walls between. Really, really terrible reception. My phone drops off the wifi network, and immediately reconnects, dozens of times in a day. So does my laptop.

Soooooo I probably need a better metric than "is [primary phone] visible on wifi? No? TURN IT ALL OFF!" Maybe this is better: "Has [primary phone] been off the network for 15 minutes? Okay! TURN IT ALL OFF!" But reconnecting would still be a bit of a pain, unless the other devices only check for re-connections when the streaming app is already off. Hmmmm. I suppose they could check, say, 20 minutes before an alarm is due to go off, then 5 minutes before, and otherwise not check at all.

Except that, drat, it's the server that knows the alarm times, not the devices. They're _mostly_ on the hour, but not always. And what if I forget and it's partway through a "snooze" when I'm heading out the door? They should definitely shut off rather than continue once the snooze duration is up.

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Nuts, it looks like this is not going to be the jumping-off point for a whole-house intercom system the way I hoped it would be. Not if everything is strung though the server, which is only working with streaming media. I could really, really use that intercom system. I just want to be able to touch a shortcut on one device and have all the rest of them repeat whatever that device hears. Then tap it again [to stop broadcasting] and let someone else respond, if they want to, from another device, the same way.

This will eventually need to reach to an outbuilding, with either a cat6 line run to it or a wireless repeater, so bluetooth won't do. I'm wondering if Skype set up to call all the other devices in the house would do it, but I want push to talk, not push to dial. (Not to mention the pain in the neck of giving each wi-fi only device a whole voip setup.)

(The various intercom apps I've tried don't work very well. The first time one of the devices leaves the home network, they never seem to reconnect and accept transmissions again. Even the apps that are _supposed_ to work if they have ANY kind of reception, including mobile data or other wifi networks.)

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You've given me a lot to think about, thank you. But I know I am not there yet. I am wide open to further suggestions, for mechanisms, for apps, for anything!