domodoro

Distributed pomodoro architecture running on EventMachine.

Domodoro uses a pub/sub approach to send scheduled pomodoro events (such as 'start working' or 'pomodoro break') to a number of subscribers simultaneously.

The subscriber (i.e. the domodoro client) receives those events and triggers an appropriate alarm/notification (via Growl for example).

The idea behind this is that synchronized pomodoros between coworkers are a win, but difficult to implement with traditional software, because of the following reasons:

• Using local pomodoro timers/software makes pomodoro cycles unsynced between different coworkers, so that one may have a pomodoro break while others are still working and that may put at risk their ability to focus.

• Using a global pomodoro (for example, alarms for the entire office) does annoy the hell out of whoever does'nt want/can't benefit from pomodoro cycles at a particular moment.

• Plus, the "alarms for the entire office" does not work with coworkers that may not be in the office (telecommuting workers for example).

Solution: a pub/sub architecture where a centralized publisher (the domodoro server) broadcasts pomodoro events to whoever wants to subscribe to them, so whoever wants to stay synced, can, and who doesn't, can stay out of it.

This gem is tested with MRI versions 1.8.7 and 1.9.2, Rubinius versions 1.2.4 and 2.0.0pre, and ruby-head.

$ gem install domodoro

In the server machine:

$ domodoro serve [port]

Each of the clients that want to connect must do this:

$ domodoro join [ip of the server machine] [port]

The clients will receive notifications via sound/growl (configurable in a ~/.domodororc file).

• Sound notifications use afplay, which ships by default with OSX. If you're not using OSX, try to install the afplay program manually or... send a patch to make it work with your OS :)

By default, both sound and visual notifications are displayed on each event. If you want to configure this, create a file in your home directory named .domodororc with some YAML configuration:

$ touch ~/.domodororc
$ echo "visual: true" >> ~/.domodororc
$ echo "sound: false" >> ~/.domodororc

Inside the server machine, to configure the pomodoro schedule, create a ~/.domodororc file with YAML configuration (the values provided below are those that will be used by default if you don't specify them):

server:
  pomodoro_duration: 25  # in minutes
  pomodoro_break: 5      # in minutes
  long_break_after: 4    # pomodoros

  day_start: "08:30"
  day_end: "16:30"

  lunch_time: "13:00"
  lunch_duration: 30     # in minutes

Copyright (c) 2011 Josep M. Bach. Released under the MIT license.