A graphical countdown timer for lightning talk presenters and hosts.

Author

Christopher Arndt

Version

0.1b

License

GPL v2

Quicklinks

• Download latest trunk code as a Zip Archive
• Browse Subversion source code repository​
• Check out Subversion repository:

svn co svn://svn.chrisarndt.de/projects/ltt/trunk ltt

Overview

Lightning Talk Timer (LTT) displays a countdown timer in a big window (or fullscreen mode) in big white numbers on a black background. When started (SPACE key) it starts counting down from the given duration (default: 5 min.) to 0:00. When the countdown timer reaches a certain remaining duration (default: 30 seconds), the timer display changes color to give a visible warning about the impending expiration of the countdown period.

The behaviour and look of the program can be customized through many command line options or by changing default values at the start of the script.

Requirements

Lighnung Talk Timer is based on pygame and is compatible with Python 2.7. Python 3.2+ support has not been tested.

Installation

Lightning Talk Timer is structured as a self-contained application bundle. Currently it is only available from a Subversion repository. To use it, install PyGame >= 1.9.1 and check out LTT from the repository and run the main.py script located in the top directory:

$ svn checkout svn://svn.chrisarndt.de/projects/ltt/trunk ltt
$ ./ltt/main.py

You can also get a Zip archive of the source code with the Trac source code browser (see link above).

Invocation

usage: main.py [OPTIONS] [SECONDS]

Lightning Talk Timer

positional arguments:
  SECONDS               Duration of countdown timer in seconds (default: 300s)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose         Print debugging info to standard output.
  -f, --fullscreen      Start in fullscreen mode (press 'f' to toggle).
  -W PX, --width PX     Width of display in pixels (default: 1600px).
  -H PX, --height PX    Height of display in pixels (default: 900px).
  -F NAME, --font NAME  Name/path of timer display font (default:
                        'tuffy.ttf').
  -r FPS, --fps FPS     Max. display frames per second (default: 100fps).
  -S PX, --size PX      Size of timer display font (default: (display
                        height/3)px ).

The actual default width and height of the display depend on your actual screen resolution. The horizontal size is equal to the screen width within a maximum of up to 1080 pixels. The vertical resolution is the horizontal resolution multiplied by the screen aspect ration (e.g. 1.6 for 16:10 screens).

Keyboard Commands

SPACE

When timer is stopped: start countdown

When timer is running: pause countdown

When timer is paused: resume countdown

RETURN

When timer is stopped: start countdown

When timer is running/paused: reset countdown

q, ESCAPE

Quit program (without prompting)

f

Toggle fullscreen mode

The following commands only have an effect when the timer is stopped:

+ (plus)

Increase countdown timer by 10 seconds

Shift-+ (Shift and plus)

Increase countdown timer by 1 second

Ctrl-+ (Control and plus)

Increase countdown timer by 1 minute

Ctrl-Shift-+ (Control and Shift and plus)

Increase countdown timer by 10 minute1

- (minus/dash)

Decrease countdown timer by 10 seconds

Shift-- (Shift and minus/dash)

Decrease countdown timer by 1 second

Ctrl-- (Control and minus/dash)

Decrease countdown timer by 1 minute

Ctrl-Shift-- (Control and Shift and minus/dash)

Decrease countdown timer by 10 minute1

The maximum countdown duration is 999 minutes, 59 seconds and the minimum 1 second.

Bugs and Limitations

Fullscreen mode currently does not work correctly with multiple displays due to problems with the SDL 1.2 library used by !PyGame. I'm currently researching a solution.