Visi vs VisiGenie and touch

[AndrewJ]

I'm having a play with VisiGenie for the first time and I think I may have run into a limitation of that environment. I want to be able to touch an LEDDigit and have a keyboard displayed. In the past, I've done this with a 4Duino and the SPE environment so I have a reasonable understanding of how it *could* be achieved (at least with SPE!) In fact, I've moved to a GEN4 display plus Arduino Mega because I just ran out of memory for what I need.

With VisiGenie because the display code is written automatically, I am relying on exposed events to hook onto. These don't seem to exist and scanning this forum it seems I have one choice: upgrade to Workshop Pro to have access to the 'Magic' widgets. Is that right?

The other approach would be to switch to Visi: that development flow seems similar to what I have been used to with the 4Duino, albeit using the 4DGL language rather than Arduino C. Obviously, then, I'd also have to write the code that interfaces the display to the Arduino I have and I couldn't rely on the geniearduino.h library without reproducing the Diablo16 side of the serial comms. Frankly, rather than do that it would be easier to pay for the PRO version!!

Apart from doing everything from scratch in Designer, have I missed any other approaches with VisiGenie or Visi?

[ademdeojee]

Hi Andrew,

I am assuming you have the Arduino Adaptor for communication between your display and your Arduino. If this is the case, a project like this could be very easily achieved through ViSi-Genie (non-pro).

With ViSi-Genie, there is a built in communication protocol similar to the SPE environment which allows your Arduino to receive events from the display and send commands to adjust widgets. This involves the inclusion of the ViSi-Genie Arduino Library. If you would like to learn how this protocol works, you can have a look section 3 of the ViSi-Genie Reference Manual and look at the function documentation on the GitHub repository (linked above). I also recommend you look at these App Notes to begin working with the interface.

In your particular case, you would need to design a program where there is a button on top of the LedDigits or if that does not work, you may have to add a button next to the LedDigits. Once the button is pressed, you will configure the display an event message to the Arduino. Then, you can program the Arduino to interpret this message and switch to a form where the Keyboard is displayed.

Let me know if you need more information and good luck,
Adem

[AndrewJ]

Thanks Adam - I've got those docs and have been going through them. I don't want a button next to the digits but want to touch enable the digits either (a) directly; or (b) by determining the touched region and cross-referencing to the digits position to see which where touched. I couldn't find any sort of event for 'touched' on widgets but I did find another post on the forum where someone wanted to do something similar.

Using an 'invisible' button on top of the digits would work of course, I hadn't thought about that so I'll give it a try.

[ademdeojee]

Hi Andrew,

Unlike SPE, the ViSi-Genie events are limited in the way that widgets such as LedDigits can only send events when their value is changed. This means there is no touch detection built into the widget. Additionally, there is no touch detect region on ViSi-Genie, unless you have Genie Magic, which includes Magic touch. So the best way to have touch on your digits would be to use the 'invisible' button method, you just have to make sure that the digits are always displayed on top of the button which would be the same color as your background. You can either set the button to report message on touch, and let the Arduino switch forms to the form with a keyboard, or you could program the button to switch forms directly, and then the display can report that the form has been switched.

Feel free to update me on how it goes,
Adem