I am trying to work out best practices for Tasker, and it's lopsided enough that I'm just confused.

What I want to do, is to set up my phone so that if I place it face down at night, calls, texts, and voicemails don't make any perceptible sounds. Alarms, on the other hand, should be left alone.

It seems to be designed so that you have a context of 1 item (as in, either the time period or the phone orientation) that triggers certain results. The lopsidedness to which I refer means that I have to detect the face down status in the context, because I don't see how to pick that up later with vanilla Tasker.

So, basically--that part I can do, but I need to make sure that if the phone is face up, or if it's not in that time period, the volumes are unfucked with. Should I achieve this entirely with exit tasks? Or should some/any of that be in the elses of the if statements that parse the time period?

You can add multiple contexts, I'm pretty sure. Long press on the existing context and it should come up with a menu including "add."

I haven't set it back up since I got this (third!) replacement phone, but the way I had it was, if it's night, and plugged in, and at home, then shush everything except alarms and calls.

You can do two contexts at once. The task will only happen when both contexts occur simultaneously. Add one of the contexts, then add the action. Then go back to the main screen, click the profile to expand it, then press (don't long-press) on the context you already added. A menu pops up with the ability to add a new context.

So you would make a new profile with the context "face-down" and the task "make things different loudnesses" and then go back, press on the "face-down" context and add a new context for "nighttime".

It is a REALLY poorly designed interface element, but once you discover it, it's very useful!

Thanks! Since I had only done 1 context 1 task scenarios, I didn't realise that add wasn't for more tasks. There is an add for more tasks, right? Lemme go look...okay--I guess you would have to chain those together from inside one task?

Back to best practices--should I be recording the state of the device when the contexts are satisfied and restoring that state in the exit task? I can't decide if that's better than having a default context/profile the way Locale does.

Have any of you done anything including scenes?

I think Tasker stores the previous state and restores it automatically for state, time, and location contexts. In fact, I know it does - when I leave work, my phone goes back to whatever it was when I got to work (ring, vibrate, or silent).

ETA: I've never played with scenes. They seem possibly cool, but I haven't found a need yet.

My latest awesome tasker profile was for emergency calls - when my phone is on silent or vibrate or has a low volume, and the same person calls me twice within 10 minutes, the second call always rings. I did this because I was thinking about the fact that at night, my wife and I both completely silence our phone. I want to be reachable in emergencies.

It's not for all things, though. There's an indicator if it's going to restore to previous state.

Oh, that's brilliant, Gris. I leave my ringers on because it's not uncommon for me to get urgent (but not necessarily emergency) calls or texts through the night. I need to be able to respond to my students, but I don't need to know if I have a new facebook message or email, so I set it up that way.

Doesn't the reinstatement depend on what property you are talking about? They're indicated by icon in the app, so it is definitely not all of them.

How are you tracking "twice in ten minutes"?

I haven't worked out if Tasker works with Google Voice texts yet. My emergency plan was going to be a coded text that forces the phone out of silent mode. But I haven't gotten very far with that. And my face-down silence doesn't silence alarms or whitelisted callers.

Oh, and of course I plan on implementing the "answer me with your location" trick, but I'm assuming I can just copy that from a million places.

Hmm. I just remembered that my devices are set to upload pictures to Dropbox automatically. That would be the simplest way to collect stealth photos of the person that stole your shit.

I use Where's My Droid for the forcing out of silent mode. It's awesome. You text the name of my favorite hockey player, which is nearly unspellable, and then it lights up and yells and stuff.

It can also force GPS and has a beta mode camera dealio.

I thought you couldn't force GPS anymore without root... Hmm,

I don't want to force it from silent in a screechy "Here I am!" panties on fire sort of a way. Just if my family wanted to be sure they got my attention, they could bump themselves to the top of the line. Kinda like what Gris did, but without magical counting.

And I just remembered what else I wanted to add to the location (GPS & cell) response-- SSID if applicable. If I were totally hot shit, the coded SMS would take a pic if possible, and email that to me along with the location and networking info.

Wait--it would take time lapse shots. I don't need them emailed if they're ending up in Dropbox, so the key would be turn on every ten minutes when device is active photos using the front camera, maybe every ten of those one with the back.

And I can file that alongside the stories I never wrote, and pictures I haven't drawn...

I haven't worked out if Tasker works with Google Voice texts yet.

It can, if you enable Accessibility for Tasker. Basically, it can read notifications and check if they're from a particular app. I can send you my tasker script for it if you want (I've got a silent GPS email script that requires Python for android (not ideal, but works), and an announce script that plays Green Day really loud, both keyed by GV text)