Pop-Up Knobs

[russ]

I was playing around with a way to make the small stacked knobs on the new baron panel easier for touch control. Here is a video I made a few days ago and didn't plan on posting but here it is. Not sure it us the answer but maybe it will stimulate so ideas or comments. This is kind of an on screen version of the idea I had about having a touch click on screen activate a single hardware knob where the input is made. The Air Manager Inter instrument Communication functions could send the strings for the commands/events to send to the sim for a clockwise or counter clockwise rotation of each knob as well as any push function to the raspi connected to the hardware knob. If it was a single knob either of the stacked knobs would operate the sim function.


A single stacked knob with a push button, like below, connected to a rasberry pi running Air Manager could be used to control almost all dials in the cockpit... with the feel of a real knob.

dualencoder.jpg (3.6 KiB) Viewed 2833 times

[JackZ]

You are full of resources Russ, that is a VERY clever way to design a really "touchscreen able" instrument!
I really like the idea of a semi-transparent background and the arrow pointing towards the dial currently being operated. Very ergonomic!

May I suggest a small improvement to it ? Aside to clicking outside the dial area to end the input sequence, the oversized button should also disapppear after a while if not being used/turned/pressed for a specified period of time, say 1 or two seconds.

Along Crashtender's library for buttons, the "graphic library" , knob acceleration and other generic functions published here to name a few (this is a cry for help!), this very concept, included in a generic "code library" of sort would be very useful to all gauges developpers.
If not ultimately to become an embedded function for example as an additional dial_add() parameter in AM, either way it's definitely something to be on the Wish List.
I definitely am thinking it would be worth starting to compile all these features and useful bits of code into a common additional "code library" of sort.
The "AM Lua plugin concept" I'm advocating is going a step further in the right direction IMHO!

The only major drawback I see at the moment is that this library needs to be put into a specific library folder for every gauge, that is not very efficient.
Corjan if you read me, I have a question for you:
Is there a way to tell LuaJit to get an additional library from a "central" repository folder, located for example in the AM folder, instead of having to create multiple instances of it?
Could using the \Air Manager\lua_libs folder be working? Thanks in advance


Great job Russ! I start believing you're a real Evangelist after all

Jacques

[JackZ]

Talking about knobs, there are hundreds of really nice Knobs that can be reused in SkinMan here:

http://www.g200kg.com/en/webknobman/gal ... =13&ty=&s=

These knob files can be downloaded as knob files to be imported by JknobMan to be later on exported in png format, or even better using the web exporter WebKnobman.
Jacques

[docjl]

Talking about knobs, there are hundreds of really nice Knobs that can be reused in SkinMan here:

Yes.... but never these you need !
For my last OVH, I've need to draw them.

[JackZ]

Of course jean-Luc, I wasn't explicitely referring to you, I already know you are a wizard of Skinman.

Was thinking of people not very familiar with SkinMan.

BTW KnobMan is a nice complement to SkinMan to create dial knobs with nice lighting effects

jacques

[russ]

Knobman can produce a "strip" of correctly lighted images(vertical or horizontal) with a user selected rotation of the knob between "frames". They are great for animating a knob rotation by merely moving the image in a viewport_rect from one frame to the next.

click to enlarge

You can use the Knobs Gallery to render these images for hundreds of already designed knobs(but most are not aviation style)

It is at: http://www.g200kg.com/en/webknobman/gal ... p=2&ty=&s=