Hello everyone,
Yesterday, two colleagues asked me if it was possible to set up and start a countdown timer at the begining of a form, that would sound a sound once the time had elapsed (for example to listen to birds songs during 15 minutes only)
Such a background question type does not exists so I imagine to use an external app.
I am a complete newbie about that 
I tried perapps multitimer (is known to have an intent API) and I achieve to launch the app but not to start any timer, with this intent :
ex:com.persapps.multitimer(action=start value=${duration_seconds})
external_timer.xlsx (189,7 Ko)
Android do have a clock app with a countdown but I cant' make it run too.
Does anyone have any idea or piece of solution ?
Thanks a lot !
1 Like
looking for a solution since my first post and curious (in a constructive way) about AI, I started to test for the first time a generative AI (Claude Sonnet 4.6 in adaptive mode), first to get advises...
After a very informative discussion (21 questions / answers) "I" built a small Timer APK that :
- is launched from ODK Collect with a variable (question) duration
- lets the enumerator fills the rest normally
- runs silently in the background
- shows a live countdown notification with progress bar (tested on Crosscall rugged phones)
- plays a 3-note sound and 3 soft vibration at the end
- can be cancelled by the enumerator with a "STOP" button in the notification
I am a complete newbie so I am not able to judge the efficiency nor the security of the code (at least 5 files) ...
1 Like
I don’t know of an app that can do this out of the box, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some open source clock apps support starting timers via an Intent. There is a standard intent for this (ACTION_SET_TIMER), but it requires the calling app to have extra permissions that Collect does not declare/request.
1 Like
Thanks Callum,
that's what I investigated and understood.
I can share, of course, but as it is, the files generated, to build this custom small app.