Voice memo and side button

[treosophy]

Okay, I'm thinking this must be a stupid question because no one else seems to be asking it. Either that or I'm not searching correctly.

One of the things I've loved about Windows branded PDA's is the ability to do quick voice recordings, via a hardware button.

For some reason, I seem to have lost that ability to do so with my 700wx (Sprint). The button I'd like to assign this ability to is the left side button (under the volume controls). Unfortunately, I don't see a "Record" or "Voice Memo" option when I try to do this in the Button assignment control panel app.

Am I the only one missing this functionality or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,
nthnsum

[treosophy]

Okay, 16 views and not one response. Maybe I'm a dinosaur and no one really uses this functionality? Come on, somebody chime in!

[comiken205]

Hey treosophy,

I would like to help, but I have the 700p. On the P, you use the side button for memo recording. Have you tried Welcome to Palm, Inc., formerly palmOne - Select a Destination yet

[billyman]

I'd like to have a shortcut to this feature, but like you, have had no luck. Right now if I want to record a voice memo I have to open Notes, then click "Menu", then "View Recording Toolbar".

It would be nice to assign a button the start & stop the recording.

[Kimmy]

You could try Audacity Personal DVR for PPC v1.00 Here Andrew has written a review about the software.

[cathys]

Originally Posted by treosophy

Okay, 16 views and not one response. Maybe I'm a dinosaur and no one really uses this functionality? Come on, somebody chime in!

My first post and I hope you find it helpful. Not quite a straight forward fix but I use it as a workaround. If you go into notes you can select menu and check the view recording bar so it automatically comes up as soon as you go into notes. You can then go to Start->Settings->Buttons and choose Notes as the program that starts when you hit the side button. My default was the media player and I changed it to Notes. Now I hit the side button and notes comes up with the recording bar displayed. I then have to select the record button but it's down to 2 steps at least.

Cathy

[treosophy]

Cathy, thanks for your response. I have investigated this solution before, but I am unable to make the recording toolbar stick. When I g into Menu and check that option, the recording toolbar indeed appears. However, when I close Notes, the next time I reopen it, the toolbar does not come up by default. I suspect that you're probably keeping Notes active, which might not be a bad idea. From what I can tell, the app doesn't take up a huge chunk of memory. So, maybe I'll give that a try for a sec.

Kimmy, thanks for the Audacity suggestion. I downloaded it last night and will be trying it out over the next several days. I used mVoice for a while, and it was great because you could set up one-button recording. But, it took FOREVER to launch.

[cathys]

You are correct - I just checked and it shows up in running programs. Didn't realize that. I guess I don't know how to exit out of things completely because it shows some other stuff too and the only way I could clear was to stop the program through the task manager and then it reset the record bar .

This is one of several issues I'm running across with this phone that will take some getting used too.

Cathy

[MightyMark]

I have wanted the same thing. I am a developer, but I haven't yet developed anything for Windows Mobile 5 (I got my Treo 700wx just a couple months ago) Anyway, I'm going to make an app that I can have open when I push the side button, and when it opens, it starts recording, so that then I can just push the off button or something and it will save the recording as recordingX where X is some number that increments. Then i can go back in and listen to those recordings and delete them when I'm done.

But I haven't gotten around to doing it yet. :-(

[treosophy]

Mighty Mark, if/when you do develop that app, please contact me ASAP! I'm willing to beta test - whatever it takes. Despite it's limitations, this phone is as close as I've gotten to PDA Heaven and I've owned literally 2 dozen PDA's dating back to the Psion 3c and first Palm Pilot.

FYI, I was able to make one-button recording work, using the front "Windows" hardware button. Since trying to change the function over to the side button, I have not been able to make it work again, regardless of the button.

I followed some of the feedback at this forum:
Cingular ROM users: PTT function hacked! - Page 8 - xda-developers

Also, this was a very helpful post:
I'm trying to make my 700w's side button behave like the PocketPC Voice Recorder button in that you press and hold it at anytime to begin recording and release it to stop.
I have been able to get the notes app to open with the recording toolbar present by tweaking the hard button's registry settings to launch hotvoice.exe
According to the registry settings on the 2003 devices the command to make this work is hotvoice.exe -b, but no matter what syntax i use in the WM5 registry, i can't get it to accept the -b argument.
The 2003 format is
"\"\\windows\hotvoice.exe" -b" but that doesn't work