Related
Having written StylusLock I wanted an additional lock/unlock method. Although StylusLock works great, I wanted some extra features:
* to have it possible to lock and unlock "one handed". The StylusLock approach cannot be done "one handed", e.g. on a bike.
* Also some people do not like to operate with the StylusLock (always).
* The combination with this new CapacitiveFingerLock and existing StylusLock will suit more people.
* And sometimes people will use the Stylus, so they will get the right behaviour depended on the usage pattern
* Still the goal is to let it consume almost no CPU and battery and KISS to operate
I discovered with StylusLock that when the TouchPanel and Hardware keys are locked, still the Zoom function works in e.g. Opera.
You can try yourself, using StylusLock:
1. Start Opera
2. Lock the Touch Diamond or Touch Pro with StylusLock
3. TouchPanel and all hardware keys are locked
4. Try to Zoom in/Zoom out in Opera, this still works with the NavWheel
5. Also the Ok button seems to react
I figured out via Scott Seligman and Koushik Dutta how to programmatically access the Capacative Touchpads. You can read also more here: [REF]Capacitive touchpad apps
So this idea is implemented in CapacativeFingerLock. But I am not using the NavWheel idea, but just uses the Capacative hardware area for locking/unlocking. The idea is again simple and clever. When you softly touch the area where the hardware keys are located (so do not press the keys, just gently touch them), the up/down and position area can be detected. I programmed that when the same area is touched gently 3 times within a second (without touching another area), the lock status is toggled.
I made a proof of concept program (just copy the exe inside the zip file attachment to your phone and just execute it), which shows how it is going to work. Just play around with softly touching the hardware panel, to see what happens.
If am working on integrating CapacativeFingerLock with StylusLock, to have a working "real locking" application. The Proof of Concept program just shows that it is possible.
Reserved for future use
Another one for future use.
very nice concept....now i noticed you posted a link of this thread in the wheel to unlock thread...would there be a way to possibly implement a config tool that lets you choose say, touch 3 times softly, or run your finger around the circle?
Malik05 said:
very nice concept....now i noticed you posted a link of this thread in the wheel to unlock thread...would there be a way to possibly implement a config tool that lets you choose say, touch 3 times softly, or run your finger around the circle?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In principle this can be done. But because the NavWheel is also used for other purposes (Zoom In/Out), I have chosen not to use the NavWheel, but the 3 times gently touching. In this way there is no interference with other existing applications.
I'll try that, it seems like no one cares aboyt the capacitive touch pad, it seems like an amazing thing that we've got that is so neglected. I hope to give some positive feedback later, but first I have some rom flashing to play with!
Thanks for the work, there must be so many possible implementations for this, I hope this is just the beginning of something much bigger.
How about a simple tap to launch app?
i went ahead and installed it, and it works very well...Will there be a (pretty) GUI to show that it was unlocked?
Also the diamond does have multi touch on that pad area, which enables a "trace" of the movement of your touch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3Owgcos_KY
Since the nav sensor wont be so ideal, how about sliding your finger from the top of the pad to the bottom (lets say, place your finger on the back button, and gently moving it down to initiate unlock, with a GUI on the screen following your movement, as you go closer to the bottom, the color changes from lets say, red, to green...with incremental color changes in between)
Instead of 3 taps, why not a swipe between the home and back keys, which seems much more natural.
Surur
surur said:
Instead of 3 taps, why not a swipe between the home and back keys, which seems much more natural.
Surur
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I imagine it is just harder to implement for a proof of concept.
Personally I think there are enough ways to lock the diamond, whether you swipe the screen or 1cm below it is not a revolution, but if swiping the capacitive touch pad could be made to launch desired apps from selected gestures, that would be a revolution, like dynamo3 or hibernate or even standby. I think a lot of people here would want that over another locking solution. Good will intended!
Just tried it.
This is very cool very very cool
Thanks for time invested in such a cool development.
surur said:
Instead of 3 taps, why not a swipe between the home and back keys, which seems much more natural.
Surur
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Swiping is not so easy one handed. Touching gently 3 times is much easier one handed, holding your Touch Diamond or Touch Pro firmly and touching with your thumb.
However, I can imagine other sort of applications which can use the swiping for other sort of operations. Both are possible with the programming API I made.
uniqueboy said:
I imagine it is just harder to implement for a proof of concept.
Personally I think there are enough ways to lock the diamond, whether you swipe the screen or 1cm below it is not a revolution, but if swiping the capacitive touch pad could be made to launch desired apps from selected gestures, that would be a revolution, like dynamo3 or hibernate or even standby. I think a lot of people here would want that over another locking solution. Good will intended!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am going to share the source code. I have written it in C#. And others can get ideas and take over some of the source code for their own application. At the end we profit all of it.
ZuinigeRijder said:
I am going to share the source code. I have written it in C#. And others can get ideas and take over some of the source code for their own application. At the end we profit all of it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like your style, that is the the kind of development attitude that keeps here!
ZuinigeRijder said:
Swiping is not so easy one handed. Touching gently 3 times is much easier one handed, holding your Touch Diamond or Touch Pro firmly and touching with your thumb.
However, I can imagine other sort of applications which can use the swiping for other sort of operations. Both are possible with the programming API I made.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you are open to other ideas, I would love the area from the back to home key to be a scroll bar when the device is in landscape mode. Grabbing the narrow on-screen scroll bar can be tricky, and the Touch Pro lacks the scroll wheel of the HTC Kaiser.
Surur
Have been looking into this myself as well. The only code I found was managed C#. Do you think we can use this in our native C code? Looks promising though!
ZuinigeRijder said:
Having written StylusLock I wanted an additional lock/unlock method. Although StylusLock works great, I wanted some extra features:
* to have it possible to lock and unlock "one handed". The StylusLock approach cannot be done "one handed", e.g. on a bike.
* Also some people do not like to operate with the StylusLock (always).
* The combination with this new CapacitiveFingerLock and existing StylusLock will suit more people.
* And sometimes people will use the Stylus, so they will get the right behaviour depended on the usage pattern
* Still the goal is to let it consume almost no CPU and battery and KISS to operate
I discovered with StylusLock that when the TouchPanel and Hardware keys are locked, still the Zoom function works in e.g. Opera.
You can try yourself, using StylusLock:
1. Start Opera
2. Lock the Touch Diamond or Touch Pro with StylusLock
3. TouchPanel and all hardware keys are locked
4. Try to Zoom in/Zoom out in Opera, this still works with the NavWheel
5. Also the Ok button seems to react
I figured out via Scott Seligman and Koushik Dutta how to programmatically access the Capacative Touchpads. You can read also more here: [REF]Capacitive touchpad apps
So this idea is implemented in CapacativeFingerLock. But I am not using the NavWheel idea, but just uses the Capacative hardware area for locking/unlocking. The idea is again simple and clever. When you softly touch the area where the hardware keys are located (so do not press the keys, just gently touch them), the up/down and position area can be detected. I programmed that when the same area is touched gently 3 times within a second (without touching another area), the lock status is toggled.
I made a proof of concept program (just copy the exe inside the zip file attachment to your phone and just execute it), which shows how it is going to work. Just play around with softly touching the hardware panel, to see what happens.
If am working on integrating CapacativeFingerLock with StylusLock, to have a working "real locking" application. The Proof of Concept program just shows that it is possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A while ago I posted about the Windows Messages received by the form for capacitive touch events. Is that what you ended up using to figure out where on panel is being touched? Mind posting some code so I can add it to the Sensors assembly?
Great idea. Defienetly it will be my way of locking device. StylusLock works nice but can't be operated by one hand so its useless for me. SensorLock uses battery and i've drop my phone already unlocking it.
surur said:
If you are open to other ideas, I would love the area from the back to home key to be a scroll bar when the device is in landscape mode. Grabbing the narrow on-screen scroll bar can be tricky, and the Touch Pro lacks the scroll wheel of the HTC Kaiser.
Surur
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This can be surely done, programmatically. But I do not know if you can control the scrolling of other applications. The latter seems to me difficult?
Anyway, when a lot of applications are going to use gestures using the capacative areas, there will be going conflicts (different programs reacting differently on different gestures).
For the locking application I want to made, I see also some different gestures possibilities:
- 3 taps for locking/unlocking
- swipe left to right for Power off
- swipe right to left for starting a configured application
And I am sure I can come up with other gestures and actions....
drvdijk said:
Have been looking into this myself as well. The only code I found was managed C#. Do you think we can use this in our native C code? Looks promising though!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually I started with C++ and had also a working Proof Of Concept. However, because I am new to Windows Mobile Programming, I also wanted to use C# as next project. I have developed programs in a lot of languages (also in C++ and C#), but I like C# more. And I wanted to do this now for Windows Mobile, to get experience with this. Note that the C# sample is using only .NET 2.0, so you do not need .NET 3.5.
You can find a C++ sensortest program, which was available on Scott's weblog:
http://scottandmichelle.net/scott/cestuff/sensortest.zip
ZuinigeRijder said:
This can be surely done, programmatically. But I do not know if you can control the scrolling of other applications. The latter seems to me difficult?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dont know if you can manipulate the scroll bar of another application directly (though this would be ideal) but at the least maybe a page down keystroke could be sent to the active window.
Surur
We all know that multitouch is capable on the popular G1 and myTouch. Now I was wondering if adding such a feature onto the virtual keyboard is a can-do. All for the sake of exponentially increasing text insertion speed.
I don't see a reason to use multitouch for text input. What should happen if you enter 2 keys at the same time?
MarcLandis said:
I don't see a reason to use multitouch for text input. What should happen if you enter 2 keys at the same time?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the point of multi-touch on the vk is to increase the speed of texting meaning u can press a key directly after another without fear of the keys not registering. it really helps when holding the phone sideways because when text i start texting too fast and keys dont register correctly. thats y im still partial to the hard keyboard.
MarcLandis said:
I don't see a reason to use multitouch for text input. What should happen if you enter 2 keys at the same time?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reason for multi-touch is simple... take a look at the iPhone, if you hit one key and then before releasing it hit another it registers both hits. So that way you can type much quicker! Try this on the android/htc/better keyboards and you'll see that if you hit two keys at the same time, it will register a key that is almost always half-way in between the two.
However, I think Google is having a hard-time coding for not simultaneous taps but for timing. Meaning that if you hit both the 'K' and the 'N' keys at the same time while trying to type the word 'KNOW', the software not only has to recognize that 2 keys were hit; but has to resolve which one was hit first or was likely meant to be hit first. So that way, it can say
"hey, he hit the 'K' and the 'N' at virtually the same time; BUT, because he hit the 'K' .00002 seconds before the 'N' I'll put register and display the 'K' before the 'N'"
Multi-touch in the browser is probably not easy to code for but it certainly is much easier than the keyboard because pinching only requires the software to recognize that two fingers are on the screen, not that one was there before the other.
But, I think Google needs to work on the usability of the keyboard first. The screen-size on the magic and keyboard might restrict them somewhat but damn the virtual keyboard layout is verry bad... I always hit the "M" key when trying to hit the "DELETE" key.. And why not auto-popup the keyboard when you enter messaging? and why is there the "smiley" key in messaging? WASTE OF SPACE?!?
I thought the HTC keyboard sorta-of had multi-touch support, no?
How does one "sorta" have multi-touch support?
I would love to see this. My biggest problem is not registering a space in between words because I hit it too quickly and then the autocorrect can't fix the issue. Maybe a 3rd party keyboard developer would be interested in incorporating this into their app?
I believe better keyboard has multi touch.
exile20 said:
I believe better keyboard has multi touch.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does not, unfortunately.
TonyDeez said:
How does one "sorta" have multi-touch support?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think I only got it working with the bottom row of keys.
I can't fathom how one would get the Dream/Magic (G1/myTouch3G) to have a fully functional multitouch keyboard. The multitouch capacity of these devices is hackish to say the least; if the horizontal or vertical coordinates of the touched points coincide to within a rather wide range (comparatively speaking) then the device is incapable of registering more than one touch -- and it wouldn't necessarily be /either/ of the points originally touched.
That would seem to me to be a game-breaker.
Unless I misunderstand? Perhaps the Droid or Cliq are different.
IConrad01 said:
The multitouch capacity of these devices is hackish to say the least; if the horizontal or vertical coordinates of the touched points coincide to within a rather wide range (comparatively speaking) then the device is incapable of registering more than one touch -- and it wouldn't necessarily be /either/ of the points originally touched.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Reading this got me curious so I went back to Luke Hutchison's blog posts on the matter and played around with his multitouch demo apps here and it looks like there are indeed problems. I then found this post which explains his observations on the matter.
Even with these limitations, though, it's hard to say if there would be much of an issue. I think this "rather wide range" you speak of is small enough. The QWERTY keyboard layout was designed to spread out keys to minimize "jams" of neighboring keys. This works in our favor, making the distance between possible close-to-simultaneous keypresses rather large on average. If I play with the virtual keyboard a little bit, I notice that if my fingers are hitting neighboring keys I don't have problems with simultaneous presses because I have to move my first finger out of the way to make room for the second. I do have unusually large fingers, but give it a try yourself.
Who knows though...it may indeed be too inaccurate.
Also, it looks like there's a similar thread to this one over here.
The trouble, as I understand it, is that you could not touch two points on the same horizontal "read" line of the device, at the same time. You could probably do top row and bottom row as multitouch, but not middle row and anything else. (Assuming three rows total.)
It's not just about touching two keys simultaneously but that if the same capacitors are triggered horizontally, then the device will read this as one -- confused -- input. And if the same capacitors are triggered horizontally, the same will occur.
It is my understanding that the Motorola Milestone's Eclair keyboard is multi-touch. Can anyone confirm that?
i can conform that there is a multi-touch keyboard. Ive actually tested it out. They rebuild the keyboard and made capable of it. I think its called HTC VK keyboard. And yes i can press 2 keys at the same time too.
I have a t mobile Touch pro 2, love the keyboard but i would rather go back to android. Its almost new if anyone is interested let me know in a pm. thanks.
If I'm not mistaken, the HTC Keyboard on the hero has multitouch.
ajones7279 said:
If I'm not mistaken, the HTC Keyboard on the hero has multitouch.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sorry but you are mistaken. the hero does not even have real multitouch in the driver. one finger gives a small dot, while a second finger would increase the dot size that is reported from the driver, the bigger the distance between fingers the bigger the dot size. this way the pinch-to-zoom works, but it does not actually detect a second touch.
you can see this with various application that show the touch graphically, for example cracked screen or steamy window.
Then I stand corrected. Just relaying something I heard. But doesn't mulititouch have to be written into the program? Like how Picsay had multitouch on the Droid whereas other apps didn't? Just throwing things out there.
kendong2 said:
sorry but you are mistaken. the hero does not even have real multitouch in the driver. one finger gives a small dot, while a second finger would increase the dot size that is reported from the driver, the bigger the distance between fingers the bigger the dot size. this way the pinch-to-zoom works, but it does not actually detect a second touch.
you can see this with various application that show the touch graphically, for example cracked screen or steamy window.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dunno about the Hero, but the Eris definitely does have it.
Also- multitouch DOES have to be coded into the application. The driver isn't important at all if the application itself only supports one input.
Interesting new tweet by cyanogen:
@paracycle multitouch is built into keyboardview on eclair. i've backported this for the next CM-4.2 release.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i've searched for ways to open up other rotation angles as well as autorotation for any and all apps under the sun. most people suggest bsbtweaks and it really does do the job, but only rotates to the allowed 270degrees angle (thats -90degrees). effectively, it just adds the window class to the list of window classes that the built in HTC g-sensor mechanism will give respect to.
so i looked some more and found "changescreen" to fit the bill. after setting up exceptions, it works quite well to allow all other applications (except for the exceptions which include sense) to rotate to 90degrees, 180degrees (this looks way cool some times!), and the usual 270degrees.
HOWEVER, the point of this new thread is to discuss something that seems to be quite an attractive option if it can be made to work 100%. i've noticed that the onscreen landscape keyboard is MUCH more usable in the 90degrees rotation. this is because those damned cursor keys take up 0.5 inch of space that is balanced out by the hardware keys on the other side, thus placing the rest of the keyboard SQUARELY in the middle of your thumbs! contrast this with the experience on the default 270degrees rotation where the cursor keys and hardware keys end up on the same side, forcing the user to stretch out the right hand thumb to reach the middle of the keyboard.
the amazing thing is that keyboard really works 99% properly in the 90degrees orientation. the 1% catch? the little preview squares that appear while tapping a key seem to be using a buggy rotation matrix when the screen is in this angle! effectively, this makes the preview squares upside down and on the wrong side of the center line of the keyboard!
so for me, TWO things would make life much sweeter on the HD2:
1. keyboard preview squares should appear right side up and on the correct area near the tapped key in 90degree rotation.
2. i would also like to DISABLE the 270degree rotation altogether and force the HTC g-sensor mechanism to think that the 90degree rotation is DEFAULT. i know i can achieve this partially using "changescreen" but sense will still rotate ONLY in the 270degree direction in the album and music tab. with this tweak, one can rely on the built in mechanism and also be able to enjoy the keyboard in the more comfortable 90degree rotation.
any 1337 h4x0r222 with some 1337 suggestions/tweaks?
some updates...
first, there is another anomaly i didn't notice before pertaining to the thumb friendly scroller that pops up when touching a scroll bar. this popup scroller is also being drawn upside down and on the wrong side of the screen in 90degree rotation.
other updates include:
1. tried toggling HKLM\System\GDI\Rotation\LandscapeMode from 0 to 4, followed by soft reset, no joy!
2. tried toggling HKLM\System\GDI\Rotation\LandscapeFixed from 1 to 0, followed by soft reset...the right handed and left handed options in Screen under Settings->System become available but the g-sensor autorotate doesn't seem to respect the choice set here, so no joy!
The touch input in this device is so bad i have to use my stylus pen to browse webs(i can never touch the back page button on google chrome instead it touches the forward page button instead),close programs(touch the top of the screen and pulling it down never works), opening the charm bar(swiping my finger from the right of the screen to the left never works too).
I tried calibrating it by searching calibrate on the charm bar's search feature but they doesn't work as well.
Any way to fix this? Its getting so annoying because i can't use the touch screen feature at all because its not precise.
thekiller99 said:
The touch input in this device is so bad i have to use my stylus pen to browse webs(i can never touch the back page button on google chrome instead it touches the forward page button instead),close programs(touch the top of the screen and pulling it down never works), opening the charm bar(swiping my finger from the right of the screen to the left never works too).
I tried calibrating it by searching calibrate on the charm bar's search feature but they doesn't work as well.
Any way to fix this? Its getting so annoying because i can't use the touch screen feature at all because its not precise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dont have one myself, but I played with one at Frys, and I gotta say I didnt see any of these issues at all! Maybe you got a bad one???
thekiller99 said:
The touch input in this device is so bad i have to use my stylus pen to browse webs(i can never touch the back page button on google chrome instead it touches the forward page button instead),close programs(touch the top of the screen and pulling it down never works), opening the charm bar(swiping my finger from the right of the screen to the left never works too).
I tried calibrating it by searching calibrate on the charm bar's search feature but they doesn't work as well.
Any way to fix this? Its getting so annoying because i can't use the touch screen feature at all because its not precise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Make sure your navigation gestures start from the black bezel of the Vaio then onto the touchscreen. You can use the calibration tool, change pen and touch settings, and change double clicking of objects to single tap to make the experience better. I'm not sure if the registry change to make touch more responsive for surface rt applies to your Intel tablet.
I'm with @vinscuzzy on this one... generally speaking I detest Sony products, but this sounds like a defective unit more than anything else. I'm not sure what you mean by "calibration doesn't work as well" (grammar, people: it conveys meaning). but if you can't fix this yourself, I would definitely suggest you take it back to wherever you got it.
When i use the calibration settings whenever i try to touch the cross it shows the input to be slightly on the right. i can't even close apps or use the multitasking. Closing tabs is hard or even clicking on links on google isn't accurate at all.
I bought this machine overseas and it isn't even out in my country so replacing it is too much of a hassle.
I almost considered it. But found there is a problem with the drivers, especially with Photoshop supposedly MS and Sony are using a specific driver but its not compatible with certain apps that use a different format of driver like Photoshop for touch.
The driver developers as far as I'm aware via googling don't seem interested in fixing this issue due to cost and/or it being niche market. Maybe try other software, I hope you don't have faulty system
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium HD app
I'm setting up a tradeshow display for my company, we're using 3 Nexus 10s in a bent 36"x36" panel. They'll just be looping video, though interactivity may be added to one of them later on. Before I got the Nexus 10s I tested some apps on my Note II that disable the touchscreen because I wanted to prevent anyone from interfering with the looping video.
Unfortunately, I've come to find that while those apps will disable interacting with the main content, it doesn't prevent the Home/Back/etc buttons from working on the bottom bar on the Nexus 10. Additionally, it seems to prevent the video from going completely full screen, leaving the Home/Back/etc icon bar up.
Does anyone have any ideas on how I might truly disable the touchscreen once I have video going? Even if it meant requiring a full reboot to restore touch, that would be fine with me, for the most part we'd just set it and forget it. Some way to just crash or disable the touch screen driver? I'm not rooted right now, but I can be if that's what it takes.
Otherwise we'll end up going with clear acrylic overlays with magnets in them for quick access to the screen,that approach is just generally uglier though, and I'd love to avoid it.
Thanks for any suggestions.
what about this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2266402
then use your existing disable touch program from there?
chaosdefinesorder said:
what about this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2266402
then use your existing disable touch program from there?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perfect, this is exactly what I was looking for. I ended up using a similar app called full!screen that allowed me to specify two touch areas but then make the icons for those tiny/transparent. BSPlayer has a lock so that casual interaction with the device won't do much. From there I can probably fully lock the touchscreen and have it only unlock with a triple tape or messing with a hardware button (only the operator will have access to the buttons, it's mounted inside an enclosure).
You're a hero, chaos. Many thanks to you.