It would have been handy to have .....

[GarryFoster]

We've just completed switching over to 4D screens for one of our existing products using Visie Genie and should be shipping the first 12 out next week and I thought I'd post a couple of suggestions that would have fell into the "nice to have"category.

1. a form0 loaded report event , or program up and running and ready for input message.

2. A one touch only mode for the resistive touchscreen. IT would need to able to be toggled on and off by the host so that programs where the user draws on the screen could still be used.but kinda as follows.

Touchscreen basically has two states notouch and touched resulting in avalue.
with onetouchmode on the controller would only accept a new touch value after having returned to it's notouch state. (if that makes sense)

3.As I'm utlising the 30 way connector I have a growing pile of connection cables , An SD card in the box would have been more usefull.

4. A gasket or seal to make the mounting dust and damp proof ( would have bought those if you did em)

5. The speaker is a bit pointless, Ok I'm 54 and a bit deaf , speaker, buzzer connection , yes to get the sound outside the enclosure.

6.Don't tell me I can do it with visi or serial or whatever, It's too much work. Visie Genie was one of the main factors in making the decision to switch suppliers and I can't be the only person in the world thinking that.

PS Apart from the odd glitch it's a godsend and the support has been good too. Best software I never bought.

Cheers

Garry

[ESPsupport]

Thanks for your comments.
1. That's is an idea, as certain controllers/users/situations seem to have 'difficulty' working out when the display is ready. However, we need to consider the 'is anyone listening?' aspect and what happens if someone to start listening part way through the "I'm Ready" message. We will add that to the 'to do' list.
2. Sorry, I don't quite follow, especially in the context of Genie, perhaps a more detailed description. In Designer to wait for the next touch just implies a short do while touch loop before the do while not touched loop.
3. Again, don't follow.
4. I'll get someone else to comment
5. The speaker has 'always been there' and removing it is not really an option. You can disconnect it and use an external speaker, there is audio out you can use for an external amplifier, you can also toggle AUDIO_ENABLE programmatically if you want to use a buzzer. Also, the next Diablo has direct Piezo transducer drive capability.
6. Genie is designed to get simple apps running quickly, it can never be 'everything for everyone' or have the versatility of ViSi/Designer and there will always be things that can be done better on a different platform. We will always be adding new functionality to Genie and we are amazed at the uses and sheer number of forms that some people use in their Genie apps.

[James_4DSystems]

Hello Garry

Thanks again for the comments.

Which 4D Display product(s) are you using?

Questions 2 and 3 I also don't understand, can you clarify?
3 especially, not sure what the 30 way connector and SD card in a box mean together...
Are you saying you would like us to have supplied you a SD card? If so, that is what the Starter Kit (SK) are for, they come with programming adaptor and microSD card.

4 - We have been thinking about this, and it was brought up in conversation a few times over the last few years. The problem with resistive touch screens is you cannot press on the front of the display with much force at all, else it will trigger the touch. The resistive touch displays touch panel generally goes right to the edge, so having a seal in between, depending how its done, can cause false touches or permanent touches, which is not a good thing. What people have done in the past is use a membrane, which is kind of like a screen protector for a cellphone, but flexible and customised to the product they are building. It covers the screen but also out to the side and seals against the product, meaning ingress cannot get past the membrane and into the back side of the display. This however is something that needs to be customised to the product, and not something we could offer as a solution for everyone.
With capacitive touch or non touch displays, sure, you could use a seal.
Us tailoring something that is going to appeal to a wide range of installations/projects/customers is the tricky part, in order to make the development of that seal a viable product for us to design.
If you have suggestions, I would welcome to hear your thoughts.

I look forward to your reply

Kind Regards

[GarryFoster]

Hi James/Mark

The first part I bought was a SK-32PTU from Mouser ( for evaluation) This as expected came with a 5 way cable and programming adapter.after trying it I decided to change the 4x 3 screens on one of our machines (EDip 43a from Electronic assembly ) over to the ulcd-43pt. The major factor in deciding to make the change was the cost reduction but also the Visie Genie software which I thought would shorten the time to finished product. which it did.
For this I bought 1 ulcd-43pt for the development and 12 from Milford Instruments , in the uk for the production run. These all came with a 5 way cable which as you hopefullty can see from the attachment aren't used. it just had me wondering which would be the cheapest , the cable or the usd card., presumabley you buy losts of usd cards. bear in mind I'm only looking at this from my point of view , most users might prefer the cable,If it came to choice would have prefered the usd card.

RE: the seal , we currently use a 2mm wide double sided adhesive foam tape as a seal , it hasn't caused us any problems with old screens and comparing one to the other there dosen't appear be much of difference apart from the position of the connection tail.If I get to the stage where I'm using hundreds I would get a die cut foam gasket made just to speed up assembly.

RE: the one touch bit. I'll try to explain a bit more clearly, bear mind I'm not pretending to be an expert and I'm probably making too many assumtions. Ass you Me , yeah I know.

Assuming that like all transducers , the controller converts the resistances from the touchpanel to numerical values.
When no touches are being these values are Zero (for example only)
When a touch is "made" the values change and the coordinates of the touch are calculated.
When the touch is released the values change back to zero

currently if a touch is made on one part of the panel then a second somewhere else on the panel , the actual coordinates calculated would be as if single touch had been made at the midpoint between the two touches .

Ok so the touch panel is dumb but I don't think the controller has to be. so coding in english conversation it would go like this.

Controller .. I'm reading the panel and it's zero ,I don't have to deal with any touches I can put my feet up and crack open a tinnie.
Touch panel says..touch made ! the panel isn't zero any more !
Controller leaps into action , puts down said tinnie and starts to write down the new value
in the mean time another touch is made as well as the first and the value has changed.
Touch panel say .. oh oh I've been touched twice


Controller , being Australian says "hang on Mate I haven't done that one yet"and says to the panel , I'll do the first one but I aint doing another till you go back to zero and I've had another drink.

And there you have it , a Beer controlled smart touchpanel controller.

So all you need to do is convert my beery metaphor into C or whatever.

It isn't about fitting it into the context of Visie Genie , it would need to be coded in the firmware .and you would need to be able to turn the feature on and off which is just about setting a bit after all.

Ok so we can do that by going to capacitive , well , yes , can I have it the same price ? because my customer dosen't want to pay any more!

The trouble with Genie , for me anyway , is that now I've tryed it , I don't want to go back anymore than I'd want to go back from Windows 7 to DOS , (if you don't know what that is, ask your dads)

Cheers, Guy's , keep up the good work.

Garry

[James_4DSystems]

Hi Garry

That made me have a good chuckle. Nice reply.

DOS, yes don't worry, we both have used and do use DOS in depth so understood your analogy no worries. That said, DOS still has its uses. There are things you can do in DOS which you cannot do in windows, which very much follows in this analogy of ViSi-Genie and the likes of our other environments such as Designer and ViSi. There are a ton of things you can do in Designer and ViSi which you cannot do in ViSi-Genie. It all just comes down to which is the best fit for what you want to achieve. We are constantly developing Genie and adding new features, and a lot of work goes on to constantly improve it, however it is a long way off having all the features of the core language itself. It is just not feasible to implement everything in Genie.

What you have said about the resistive touch is fair and has been done before - you can find information about it on Google, however in practice it may not be quite as simple or work quite as well as it might seem, especially when dealing with controllers the size of Picaso. The 2nd touch could certainly be detected using this concept, but as to the accuracy of the 2nd touch, that is another story. This can be extended out to 3rd and more touches too, however you then require significant processing power to track these touches, removal of noise, outliers etc etc. Its just not feasible to do on a controller the size of Picaso unfortunately. Good suggestion, but sadly not really feasible with Picaso.

Thanks for the information you provided on the adhesive foam tape and your experience with this, also about die cut foam. Definitely something we could look into and see if there is a solution we could provide.

Regards

[James_4DSystems]

Oh and to answer your question about cable vs uSD card.
Considerable cost difference, the uSD cards are significantly more expensive than the cables, even at high volume. We provide the uSD cards in the SK only, along with the programming adaptors. They are designed for new customers who dont have either and need to start developing. If you need more cards after that, we sell them separately, as with the programming adaptors. And you can certainly click the RFQ button on the website to request better pricing for volume, if the cart doesn't provide you with pricing which meets your requirements.

Regards

[GarryFoster]

Hi James

I understand , I think , what you are saying about the second and third touches and keeping track of them but thats not what I'm trying to put across. The idea isn't to detect multiple touches but rather to ignore them as much as possible to negate the effects of accidental/incedental touches.

So , semi smart in as much as only one touch at one time acted on.

Cheers

Garry

[GarryFoster]

Hi
Ok I've had the odd bitch on this forum so credit where it's due , I now have to eat a huge slice of humble pie.

Ive moved on , gone beyond , grown in stature , ok enough of the metaphors , I've put in the effort , the time , the hair loss and started using visi.
It's like coming from the wilderness into the promised land. ( sorry back on the metaphors)

The multiple touch thingy .... sorted.
The genie protocol nightmare ... wrote my own
The Cables.. couldnt live without em. everything on my test bench is connected with chains of the cables. I even cut the Rx and TX lines on one , crossed them over and now I can see output from my avr host on the 4d terminal.

I keep them in a special tin , and guard them like Golem from lord of the rings

On my current project I've already more than halved the coding I would have had to on the AVR and I've a new one coming up where I'll save loads as the screen will be doing the I2c , the 1 wire , the counting and the relay switching and I'll just need to make a peripheral board.

can't say it's been easy though and I'm grateful for the support you guy's provide for the times when I ask numty questions.

Not saying I won't keep asking though.

Cheers

Garry