Alarm clock that hooks into Windows Media Player

By Simon
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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phoobarnvaz

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Anyone know of an alarm clock for Windows 7/Vista that plays a playlist from Windows Media Player, and wakes the computer from sleep if needed?

The one I use which uses any media player you have as default is Citrus Alarm Clock. Am using it with 7100 x64 with no issues. Of all I could find...was the only one which did exactly what I wanted to.

The older version is free...while the newest is shareware. The reason for the shareware version is the author claims it doesn't work with anything but XP. This is false...except for the fade-in function.

Grand Master

Simon Veteran

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You mean you've never used the Task Scheduler? ;)

Nope :p I'm usually a Mac user, so honestly Windows is still foreign to me. I don't quite know how to tell Windows Media Player to open with a certain playlist, put it on shuffle, and start playing via a command.

And Citrus won't work, since most of my music isn't in one of wav, mp3, or wma. Mostly stuff downloaded from iTunes which Windows Media Player supports, but most applications don't. Would be perfect otherwise.

Grand Master

Calum Veteran

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You mean you've never used the Task Scheduler? ;)

Just use it in combination with the commandline: wmplayer /Playlist "<playlist name>"

where <playlist name> is the name of one of the playlists in WMP.

I messed around with the Task Scheduler once, but it didn't seem to work :/

Thank you for the help, do you know of a way to get this to work with iTunes, please?

By the way, Simon... sorry for asking questions in your thread :p I don't mean to hijack it or anything :p I'm sure you'll forgive me :innocent:

Grand Master

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Okay, Simon. I've been through the Task Manager and I think I've figured out how to set it up to open iTunes or a Windows Media player playlist and wake the computer up from sleep at any time and any day of the week, repeating it weekly etc.

Type "Task Scheduler" into the 'start' menu search. When the window appears, click on "Create Task" from the right sidebar. From there you can set options for the "General", "Triggers", "Actions", "Conditions" and "Settings". The setting to wake the computer up from 'sleep' mode is under the "Conditions" tab and it's a checkbox which states "Wake the computer to run the task". You can also select a program or file by clicking on "New..." under the "Actions" tab. I chose "iTunes.exe" from the "Program Files -> iTunes" directory. It should be similar for Windows Media Player. However, if you want a playlist to automattically play, instead of opening a program, set the action to open a file and choose a playlist file from the 'Playlists' folder in your "My Music" folder (situated in your "Music" library)

Now, as far as I am aware, that should work perfectly, but I'm not 100% sure. Give it a try :)

I hope that helps? :) and sorry for the lack of (well, none) screenshots :p

Grand Master

Simon Veteran

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Hmm... it works, but it won't wake the computer from sleep (I did tick that option).

Do I need to be in that low power sleep mode or something?

EDIT: Ahh, found the option. In advanced power options, allow wake timers. Testing it out now.

Grand Master

Simon Veteran

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Alright, so it's working now. Still, it's lacking a few things like a sleep button, and I can't seem to make it reshuffle the playlist every time.

Thanks a lot though, shakey_snake. Really helped out ;) Now I guess I need to work on my C# skills and make something useful.

Grand Master

shakey_snake

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Alright, so it's working now. Still, it's lacking a few things like a sleep button, and I can't seem to make it reshuffle the playlist every time.

Yeah, maybe my googling skills need work, but I can't seem to find a command line option for that either.

I can however recommend another player with a more robust set of commandline switches, which would work pretty simply out of the box for this use.

But that choice is yours :p

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