Homeopathic Pill Timer in the Phone Store

This was my first Windows Phone app, written for a DVLUP challenge for Windows Phone 8.  When I started I had no idea what I was doing, which was one reason for doing it, though I might have had second thoughts if I knew going in what I knew coming out.

Anyway, the problem I saw was that some homeopathic remedies (Cold Calm, for example) ask to be taken at 15 minute intervals for the first two hours or so and this is tricky to keep track of, particularly when you’re suffering from something you’re taking the remedy for.

So I decided to build a specialized timer program, nothing fancy I thought, that would default to a 15-minute alarm, configurable to any other length, and which could be repeated by pressing a single button.

I don’t have good notes on the twists and turns of the development process, but I did face a number of problems, daunting for a newbie.  First of all of course the phone goes to sleep faster than the 15-minute interval, and anyway you might want to be doing something else with it besides just watching and waiting.  If you have to watch and wait you might as well use a clock.

So I learned about background processing and alerts.  Unfortunately alerts aren’t as precise as one would like, so mine come early just to be safe.  But there’s a suggestion they can be made more precise in Windows 8.1, so it may be time for a sequel.

As for the DVLUP challenge,  I got a Lumia 920 out of it.  Not too bad.

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