Do Profiles being "On" (but not satisfied by contexts) inherently use more resources than profiles that are "Off"?

[Tim Huang]

Could you please comment on the validity of this statement?

I am not sure if running too many profiles at the same time has an impact on Tasker's performance and the performance of the device. I am inclined to believe it does but I can't be certain. In order to avoid that, I'd rather have a profile run on a context, than have one that's running all the time.

[Bob Hansen]

From the Tasker User's Guide

Internally, Tasker does its best to keep power usage down. Following are some macro-strategies to achieve this.

Context Monitoring

When a profile contains multiple contexts, power is saved by only monitoring for changes in order of the least-power-hungry first. For example, in a profile with a Time and App context, Tasker will not decide that it needs to monitor for a changing application unless the Time context is active (because the profile cannot become active until both contexts are active).

Tasker rates contexts for power-hungriness in the following (ascending) order:

Other State

Day / Time

Calendar Entry State

Cell Near State

App

Network Location

Wifi Near State

GPS Location

Proximity Sensor / Gesture Event / Orientation State (accelerometer activation)

Items at the bottom of the list won't become eligible for monitoring until all items further up the list are active.

Display-Off Checks

When the display is off, all necessary 'active' checks (GPS/Net Location, Wifi Near, App) are done at the same time so that the device is awake for as short a time as possible. See Display Off Timings in Menu / Prefs / Monitor for the frequency and maximum duration of these checks.

[Tim Huang]

Interesting. So that means having one active profiles with, e.g.

P1:

Day / Time

Calendar Entry State

Cell Near State

Should be less power hungry than having 3 profiles all On?

P1:Day / Time
P2:Calendar Entry State
P3:Cell Near State

[Bob Hansen]

That's an interesting question. My initial thought was that they would use the same resources. But after further thought, I'm not so sure. It depends upon how tasker handles profiles with multiple contexts.

[Matt R]

It SHOULD definitely use less. How much less is less clear, though.

Matt

[Pent]

> Interesting. So that means having one active profiles with, e.g.
>
> P1:
> Day / Time
> Calendar Entry State
> Cell Near State
>
> Should be less power hungry than having 3 profiles all On?
>
> P1:Day / Time
> P2:Calendar Entry State
> P3:Cell Near State

Yes. In the first example, Tasker doesn't bother monitoring cell
towers unless the other 2
contexts are active. Cell near isn't very power hungry however, since
your phone is probably
always on anyway. It would make more difference for e.g. Wifi Near.

Pent

[ICWiener_]

Hi Pent, 

What about profiles that monitor a variable state (so top of the le list) but that check a monitored variable, such as %CELLID ? 

I'm asking because I'm working on a localisation project with cell ids that would turn on/off a profile with such a context so I was wondering : 

-are monitored variables subject to the same classification 

-are monitored variables still being monitored if profile is turned off, even if we call the monitored variable in a task somewhere else? 

Thanks

[Pent]

> -are monitored variables subject to the same classification

No, if you mentioned a monitored variable somewhere the monitoring
will be enabled

> -are monitored variables still being monitored if profile is turned off,

If it's disabled, no, shouldn't be.

> even if we call the monitored variable in a task somewhere else?

If the task is referred to anywhere by a widget or enabled profile,
monitoring will
be on.

But Cell monitoring takes hardly any power anyway.

Pent