Computer automation

If you own an Android phone, you probably have heard of Tasker which automates certain tasks when certain contexts are met.
It puzzles me why I have never before heard of the concept. Windows has Task Scheduler which has similar functions but seemingly is restricted to time-based contexts.

Have I been missing something? A quick glance through Google results yielded only 2 commercial/sharewares: MJTNET and RoboTask.
Is this easily feasible via scripting and thus does not warrant dedicated softwares?

What are some of these "certain contexts" that are not time-related?

What are some of these "certain contexts" that are not time-related?

For a phone, certain readings (wifi signal strength, location, battery, etc), events (screen unlocked/locked, opening some apps, hardware changes such as device input, etc) or states (is wifi connected? is the keyboard slid out?).

All that combined with basic logic (if/else, loops, recursive) and I'm happy.

Anyone?

This sounds really interesting... but a lot like programming. Couldn't you just write a quick script in Python or something and have it run on startup?

What exactly are you trying to automate? If it's just something to maybe kill off certain services or start new ones you can make batch (.bat) scripts for that. You'd probably have to link that in with the task scheduler sometime to automate the execution part though.

This sounds really interesting... but a lot like programming. Couldn't you just write a quick script in Python or something and have it run on startup?

That's the point. I can, but not a lot of people can... I'm looking for a full-fledged automation program with fool-proof (okay, maybe this is a little too much) UI, wide range of functionality (beside just time-based contexts) and free (or maybe for a small fee, like $10) like Tasker offers.

What contexts?

A phone has only limited 'events' to listen for. A PC can do pretty much anything, so without knowing what sort of specific things you're wanting a scheduler to be able to listen for your request is just really really vague.

"I want an app that does everything" isn't a realistic request

That depends on the provider, does it not? I'm not looking for a do-it-all automater, I'm only looking for something more versatile than Windows' Task Scheduler.

That depends on the provider, does it not? I'm not looking for a do-it-all automater, I'm only looking for something more versatile than Windows' Task Scheduler.

You could use AutoHotKey to do what you're looking for. For example:

Code:

IfWinExist, DoEverything.txt
{
  WinActivate, DoEverything.txt
  WinWaitActive, DoEverything.txt
}

You can also do key bindings and event scheduling.

I've written a data entry GUI app in AutoHotKey and it's quite powerful. The GUI creation is simply an abstraction from the Win32 API. The language style is a mix between Visual Basic and C.

or AutoIT, but since he's not looking for something specific there are hundreds of thousands of event related schedulers out there depending on what sort of events he wants to wait for.

'more versatile' is still useless. Anything can be considered more versatile than a time only scheduler but if one doesn't know what sort of things you're looking for trying to point you in any direction is futile. Hell, SQL Server Agent can respond to time, service startup, system startup and CPU idle conditions but it's hardly worth noting if none of that is relevant to what you want. Without knowing what you want to be able to do with it there is no way to answer you that isn't just throwing random names and hoping one satisfies your unstated objectives.