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Main Area and Open Discussion => Living Room => Topic started by: nudone on September 05, 2011, 04:09 AM

Title: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 05, 2011, 04:09 AM: Ath's WinButtons: http://ath.dcmembers.com/wb/pages/software/winbuttons.php and a 7" MYMO Touchscreen are now part of my system - AND IT ALL WORKS perfectly.

Okay, there are slight issues but they aren't worth mentioning just yet; it works better than I could have hoped for within a few minutes of setup.

THIS REALLY IS THE ULTIMATE TOUSCREEN + PC setup. (Potentially, at least; this is still early days.)

I've already said to Ath that I think this could easily make the iPad look prehistoric in comparison. Imagine the combined power of your computer setup and the ability to have a super multi-purpose "magic" keyboard that changes to every one of your program requirements. WinButtons makes touchscreens genuinely useful to your average user - that's amazing - that's a first. (It's blowing my mind just thinking of what's possible - even without considering the serious business market - imagine if Adobe or Microsoft were selling a universal touchscreen device. Oh, I'll shut up as I'm getting carried away.)

Here are a couple of photos. Not a great deal to look at as I've only just had all this working for about 10 minutes (yes, it works straight out of the box). I'll try and do a video demonstration when I've set up all my buttons and programs.

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WinButtons with custom 40 button layout on MYMO 7" touchscreen. I shall be moving the touchscreen down so that it doesn't get in the way of the the 30" center screen. (On the left screen is the WinButtons template in edit mode.)

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Close-up of the 40 button layout. Sorry for the poor quality (I need to buy proper a camera). The four buttons in the top left are graphics - just for testing.

Oh, just a quick description of what actually happens when using all this stuff:

1) A program has focus, say, Photoshop for example.

2) The touchscreen displays a specific set of buttons related to the above program (in focus).

3) Hitting the touchscreen buttons trigger macros or, more simply, just hotkey shortcuts already built into Photoshop.

4) Moving Photoshop (or whatever) out of focus, i.e. to focus desktop or Explorer, makes another Button layout appear on the touchscreen. This layout has its own set of custom triggers/buttons and appearance.

What's the point?

a) No need to remember hotkey shortcuts as they'll be displayed as buttons on the touchscreen (nice graphic buttons will help this).

b) No need to remember which macro key on a fancy keyboard relates to which function. (I've got around 30 macro keys on my MS Sidewinder keyboard and I can't remember which key is which.)

c) It's like Star Trek but without having to wait a hundred years for the technology to arrive. (This isn't rocket science, something like WinButtons and a touchscreen should have been on the market a few years ago.)

More posts on the project to follow, I'm sure...
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: mouser on September 05, 2011, 04:12 AM: Love it! keep the posts and pictures and updates coming.

Nudone has a history of coming up with great ideas so he is worth listening to when he says something is useful.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 05, 2011, 04:54 AM: This makes me a happy person with a warm feeling inside today (and some more days this week) :-* and that's just because you are so happy with the result :D

It's looking great, though touch-screen placement does indeed need some tweaking :)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: jgpaiva on September 05, 2011, 04:59 AM: That looks great!
I'm looking forward to see how this project goes.

I'd also like to know how this setting compares to Optimus Maximus keyboard (http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/) (or something simpler).

Nudone has a history of coming up with great ideas so he is worth listening to when he says something is useful.
-mouser (September 05, 2011, 04:12 AM)
I agree 100% :Thmbsup:
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 05, 2011, 05:15 AM: Unfortunately, I have some "real" work to do for a deadline this week, which means I won't be able to dedicate as much time as I'd like to this project. I'm sure I won't be able to resist keep testing new touchscreen operations out though.

Regarding the Optimus Maximus keyboard, DC member timns (Tim, of Head in the Clouds online comic fame), bought an Optimus keyboard and gave up using it as it was a terrible device to use for "serious" work. It looked nice, as you would expect, but for someone that needs a "work" keyboard, he had to stop using it as it was so annoying. Maybe I shouldn't have said that as he gave it away as a prize during the DC fundraiser. So, for light use, the Optimus looks pretty and will impress and I'm sure it serves it's purpose well for displaying "reminders" as graphic icons on the keys. But if you want to do a lot of typing - stick with a "real" keyboard.

I know timns was also very keen to try using a touchscreen - but he was waiting for me to be the guinea pig and risk buying something that may be useless; knowing that there wasn't any good software to use with one (there really isn't).

But, now we have WinButtons and it really does seem quite revolutionary to me at the moment.

(Ath will be able to join in the fun too but it looks like his touchscreen won't arrive until the end of this month; about 25 days away.)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nosh on September 05, 2011, 06:34 AM: Great work, Ath! :up:

I'll try and do a video demonstration when I've set up all my buttons and programs.

I was hoping for a video demo but thought it would be too much to ask for, before I read that.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: jgpaiva on September 05, 2011, 10:11 AM: Regarding the Optimus Maximus keyboard, DC member timns (Tim, of Head in the Clouds online comic fame), bought an Optimus keyboard and gave up using it as it was a terrible device to use for "serious" work.
-nudone (September 05, 2011, 05:15 AM)
Ok, I knew it was offered in a recent giveaway but didn't know why.

Your photos and descriptions got me really interested in this :)
I haven't been following the development of winbuttons, but does it support "menus"? Drawer-line collections of buttons, for example. I could see that as a neat addition to your "touchscreen console". To be fair, I'm only thinking visually it would be nice, I'm not sure how useful it'd be.

I can see a lot of potential in this idea, but right now I'd really like to see some use for it, for example you drawing cody on photoshop using it :P

A few practical questions:
Which hand do you find more useful to use the touchscreen?
How about in terms of precision, do you find the touchscreen as accurate as the iPad, for example?
Have you tried placing it on the left of the keyboard, laying on the table?
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 05, 2011, 10:19 AM: but does it support "menus"? Drawer-line collections of buttons, for example.
-jgpaiva (September 05, 2011, 10:11 AM)

Please have a look at the first screenshot in the WinButtons release-thread (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=25167.msg240037#msg240037), it's showing a 3-level menu, and the 2nd screenshot shows a 2-level menu. It's simply a secondary instance of WB, positioned relative to the button that started it. It needs either <Esc> pressed or a dedicated button that closes that single instance (or the border displayed, with the default Windows close button), so that might need some improvement in implementation. Feature requests are welcome, ofcourse :)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: jgpaiva on September 05, 2011, 10:37 AM: Please have a look at the first screenshot in the WinButtons release-thread (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=25167.msg240037#msg240037), it's showing a 3-level menu, and the 2nd screenshot shows a 2-level menu. It's simply a secondary instance of WB, positioned relative to the button that started it. It needs either <Esc> pressed or a dedicated button that closes that single instance (or the border displayed, with the default Windows close button), so that might need some improvement in implementation. Feature requests are welcome, ofcourse :)
-Ath (September 05, 2011, 10:19 AM)
Cool :D Maybe the button to open the second instance could be a toggable button? This way it could open the submenu when you press it (and then stay in a "pressed" state), and close it when you press it again (returning to the "normal" state).

Also, the "aero" transparent look on the background of the toolbar would look awesome, IMHO. I've recently posted on DC how to add this to AHK (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=27709.msg259916#msg259916), but I don't know how to do it in autoit. I think in terms of looks it is a major improvement easy to achieve with only a few lines of code.

PS: notice that I'm just saying stuff I think looks good, don't take it as serious feature requests or anything because (unfortunately) I've moved to mac and can't really give my opinion from a user's point of view, only as an external observer :P
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 05, 2011, 10:59 AM: A few practical questions:
a) Which hand do you find more useful to use the touchscreen?
b) How about in terms of precision, do you find the touchscreen as accurate as the iPad, for example?
c) Have you tried placing it on the left of the keyboard, laying on the table?
-jgpaiva (September 05, 2011, 10:11 AM)

I've got a whole list of ideas that could "improve" WinButtons but I'll wait to reveal them until I've tested everything out with the current version.

Just to answer your questions though:

a) I use mouse in right hand, which means touchscreen seems better suited to left hand use. I'm using the touchscreen like a keyboard extension - so, it just seems right to keep my right hand on the mouse.

b) The touchscreen isn't as responsive as the iPad. But, my machine isn't exactly cutting edge; maybe when I get a faster pc things will be more responsive on the touchscreen. Note: there are several settings to adjust sensitivity on the touchscreen using the utility that came with it - not really looked into this yet.

c) I don't think I'll be putting it on the left of the keyboard as that means more distance for my eyes to travel, which is why I've put it under the main screen (and above the keyboard). I'm staring at the screen and don't look at my keyboard when I type, so putting the touchscreen as close to the main screen seems to be the right thing to do. timns said he wanted to try the touchscreen, flat on table, left of keyboard like you suggested. Which, makes me wonder is this a preference for people that don't touch-type (i.e. if you look at the keyboard whilst typing, maybe the touchscreen is better placed next to the keyboard).

As for drawing with the touchscreen, I wonder if there's some confusion as to what I'm using it for. I'll only be using the touchscreen as a glorified keyboard. I'll have different "key" or button layouts and sizes depending on which program I'm using. So, I'm not actually drawing on the touchscreen - I just prod the "keys" on it.

The amazing thing, for me, is that the buttons will have nice graphics on them to indicate what their functions are - which then means I don't need to remember keyboard shortcuts for all the different editing programs. To be useful, the whole touchscreen/button interface has to be as idiot friendly as possible. And that means nice big buttons/keys with nice graphics on them; things that are instantly recognisable when you glance at the screen for a fraction of a second. If the touchscreen was really, really, responsive you could even, probably, get away without having to look at the screen at all - then use it like a real keyboard extension - maybe this is possible even now if careful.

This is the beginning of the whole project though. There's really an entire universe of ways this could be used. Maybe Windows 10 will approach something like what I think WinButtons and a touchscreen can do.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: jgpaiva on September 05, 2011, 11:10 AM: c) I don't think I'll be putting it on the left of the keyboard as that means more distance for my eyes to travel, which is why I've put it under the main screen (and above the keyboard). I'm staring at the screen and don't look at my keyboard when I type, so putting the touchscreen as close to the main screen seems to be the right thing to do. timns said he wanted to try the touchscreen, flat on table, left of keyboard like you suggested. Which, makes me wonder is this a preference for people that don't touch-type (i.e. if you look at the keyboard whilst typing, maybe the touchscreen is better placed next to the keyboard).
-nudone (September 05, 2011, 10:59 AM)
Actually, I also write without looking at the keyboard, my idea was that it might be easier/faster for the eyes to travel down than for the left hand to travel a larger distance to the touchscreen. If the screen was being used as a "heads-up display" with no touch-screen capabilities, I would think like you.

As for drawing with the touchscreen, I wonder if there's some confusion as to what I'm using it for. I'll only be using the touchscreen as a glorified keyboard. I'll have different "key" or button layouts and sizes depending on which program I'm using. So, I'm not actually drawing on the touchscreen - I just prod the "keys" on it.
-nudone (September 05, 2011, 10:59 AM)
Yes, I understood that, I ment seeing it being used as a neat "toolbox" which you can touch to switch tools.

This is the beginning of the whole project though. There's really an entire universe of ways this could be used. Maybe Windows 10 will approach something like what I think WinButtons and a touchscreen can do.
-nudone (September 05, 2011, 10:59 AM)
I look forward to see you transport us into the future with this project, now I'm especially curious about your list of "improvements".
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 05, 2011, 11:35 AM: Ah, yes, I see.

Maybe I'll change the position of everything after I realise this isn't really the most efficient layout.

As for the improvements, they are only simple things that I'm confident Ath could implement without much trouble. Many are things we've all become used to over the years, like buttons changing their colour or "state" if they've been hit - but now I've thought about that I can see how that could be a problem in itself, unless everything worked 100% reliably.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: kyrathaba on September 05, 2011, 05:02 PM: Nice work, Ath! Thanks for the pics, nudone!
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 05, 2011, 08:53 PM: I know timns was also very keen to try using a touchscreen - but he was waiting for me to be the guinea pig
-nudone (September 05, 2011, 05:15 AM)
He's not the only one ;D :Thmbsup: ;D

Thanks for the narrative!
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 06, 2011, 06:48 AM: I've now got a "mImo" touchscreen plugged in to my machine. Yesterday it was a "mYmo" touchscreen. Yep, I ordered another screen to see if there are any differences between the two brands.

At the moment I'm unsure which I prefer, though, it seems that the MIMO has more options and better help file.

Crucially, the MIMO has an option to reposition the mouse cursor to its original position before the touchscreen was pressed. In other words, the touchscreen doesn't steal the pointer away from where you really need it on your main screen(s); so the touchscreen behaves like a touchscreen ought to work (in my opinion). I've not tested this option out for more than a few trials; it isn't perfect, so it might be proof yet that these types of touchscreens are still made by people that never use them.

The MYMO is meant to have a similar "don't move the mouse cursor" option but it doesn't work. (I will try again later.)

And, interestingly, the MIMO comes with a "Toolbar" creator. You wouldn't know this without digging around in the help as it's only enabled via a command line switch. I thought this was going to be the solution to everything as it provides more options than WinButtons has - BUT it doesn't work (have touchscreen makers not learnt anything from all the touchscreen phones and tablets that have been around for years - seems they are all living in another universe, ignorant of what a touchscreen device can really do).

The problem is that it looks like you are creating a "Toolbar" in the configuration panel but it never becomes visible anywhere on the screen (not on any screen). The help file doesn't explain why this is, it reads like the Toolbar should be visible instantly - so, again, I have to say WinButtons is the only program that provides any kind of useful touchscreen options available today. I'm quite astounded that the makers of MIMO have got a custom "toolbar" editor, then hidden it away, and then it doesn't work even when you manage to find it - I'm so annoyed by this kind of idiocy I'm on almost tempted to send both touchscreens back today and forget about the whole thing. WHAT AN ABSOLUTELY RETARDED INDUSTRY.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 06, 2011, 07:32 AM: Right. The MYMO is going back in the box and sent back to Amazon.

I thought I'd give it another try and see if I could make it respect the "don't move the mouse cursor" feature that comes with its own software control. It doesn't.

So, I thought maybe the MIMO software might work with the MYMO screen. It doesn't (and vice versa).

Maybe the MYMO would work on another computer setup. I assume it won't because of how poor these devices seem to be.

So, today's lesson is: don't by MYMO. (Which I'll have to mention in the Amazon review for this product.)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: kyrathaba on September 06, 2011, 07:46 AM: Wow! It's hard to believe those devices are that sorry! Sounds like the toolbar feature was in the experimental stage, and they started writing a help file for it, then decided it wasn't ready to include in the release, but forgot or neglected to remove the help file reference.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: jgpaiva on September 06, 2011, 08:16 AM: nudone: if that mouse thing isn't working reliably, I think it might be the kind of thing that AHK could easily do.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 06, 2011, 08:26 AM: nudone: if that mouse thing isn't working reliably, I think it might be the kind of thing that AHK could easily do.
-jgpaiva (September 06, 2011, 08:16 AM)

Ath has implemented a feature in WinButtons to try and stop the mouse cursor jumping to the touchscreen. It works a lot of the time but it's not 100%. Hard to say at the moment how often it fails - it's sporadic.

Perhaps with tweaking he'll get it to work perfectly, if not, then it looks like a MIMO screen and their software is required, though, as I said, that isn't perfect either (it doesn't quite manage to hit the target so often places the cursor about 100px away from where it should be).

But, I have to say, the things I've seen you do with AutoHotKey (with DialogMove and GridMove) made me assume that "mouse cursor position memory" would be something achievable. Perhaps the 100% perfect is a little too much to ask for, I don't know how difficult these things are really.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: jgpaiva on September 06, 2011, 08:50 AM: Ath has implemented a feature in WinButtons to try and stop the mouse cursor jumping to the touchscreen. It works a lot of the time but it's not 100%. Hard to say at the moment how often it fails - it's sporadic.
-nudone (September 06, 2011, 08:26 AM)
Cool :D
Yeah, I think I may have been overly optimist with the "easily" part, getting this kind of stuff working with 100% reliability is hard (and even in GridMove I still find some glitches that I haven't managed to sort out). I'm sure ath will get it working great once he starts playing with a setup similar to yours ;)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 06, 2011, 08:50 AM: So, today's lesson is: don't by MYMO. (Which I'll have to mention in the Amazon review for this product.)
-nudone (September 06, 2011, 07:32 AM)

That's a useful lesson: I just ordered a 7" MIMO. Was tempted by the larger screens but...

Needless to say, I'm far too busy at the moment to do anything with it (isn't it always the way?) but I may be past that by the time it arrives here.

Dare I hope that you'll make available any Creative Suite templates you might build with WinButtons?

Oh, and @Ath, I shan't be sending one to you ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 06, 2011, 09:36 AM: I'm in the process of putting together the button templates, well, I've started on the Photoshop one.

If you've got a list of suggestions for which buttons and functions to use then I'll have a go at creating the templates. Or, I will provide the blank template that you can put your own icons into.

The basic template I'll upload later (this week). Which you could easily just insert text labels instead of icons on the buttons.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 06, 2011, 09:55 AM: Oh, and @Ath, I shan't be sending one to you ;D
-cranioscopical (September 06, 2011, 08:50 AM)
That's kind of a disappointment, but I'll survive ;D

I'm sure ath will get it working great once he starts playing with a setup similar to yours ;)
-jgpaiva (September 06, 2011, 08:50 AM)
I'm working on making the currently fixed buffer a bit more flexible, I'll probably release the update later this week.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: superboyac on September 06, 2011, 12:34 PM: This is totally awesome, nudone.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 06, 2011, 01:14 PM: This is totally awesome, nudone.
-superboyac (September 06, 2011, 12:34 PM)

It will be (hopefully).

Just thought I'd better mention something I've just realised regarding lying the touchscreen flat, as jgpaiva and timns had wondered about.

It's not really going to be possible because of the USB connection being at the back of the screen. On the MIMO the socket is in the very center and on the MYMO it's not far off.

Maybe there are (mini) USB connectors that are 90 degrees to the cable, so you'd almost be able lie the screen flat but you'd have to provide some clearance for the connector - or angle it or something.

On the MIMO, the stand would have to be removed somehow too. It doesn't look like it's designed to separate to me.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 06, 2011, 01:39 PM: Oh dear. This is going to take ages to try everything out.

I've now positioned the MIMO to the left of the keyboard and it seems like the right place for it, maybe it's just the novelty though.

I didn't want to do this originally because I'd put the keyboard's detachable number keypad on the left (this is what you can do with the MS Sidewinder keyboard). So, it didn't seem right to put the touchscreen on the left as well - it would be too far left.

But, I've removed the number keypad completely and put the touchscreen in its place. The touchscreen isn't lying flat (for reasons I mentioned above) but, on its stand, it looks and feels like it's at a good position and angle to use. Quite natural to take my left hand off the keyboard whilst typing and hit a button on the touchscreen - more natural than reaching to hit the touchscreen when it's behind the keyboard (in front of the main monitor).

The truth is I never used the Sidewinder's number keypad whilst it was on the left hand side. I was meant to be using it as a macro trigger keypad but could never remember which keys did which function, hence the reason for having a touchscreen to display what each key/button does.

I think I'll create a "generic" button template for WinButtons that will behave like a typical number keypad (with a few extra functions thrown in on the extra buttons). This can then act as the default button layout that displays when specific button groups aren't shown because their parent program doesn't have focus.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: tomos on September 06, 2011, 02:52 PM: still,
sounds like it's slowly getting there :up:
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 06, 2011, 05:39 PM: I published an update for WinButtons and WBE in this thread (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=25167.msg240037#msg240037), adding a configurable buffersize for the CursorRestore feature.

@nudone, I expect that setting CursorRestore to 'Regular', using WBE, should eliminate most of the 'missed mouse-cursor restores' you saw until now.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 07, 2011, 08:03 AM: Sorry, Ath, the latest update doesn't appear to be working well at all.

The new cursor memory feature doesn't seem to make any difference regardless of the setting it's on, i.e. the mouse cursor always jumps onto the button that has been hit and doesn't move back to its original location.

There is also a strange layout problem. My Photoshop specific "group" of buttons now is offset to the left by about 200 pixels and the background is bright orange - it was black before the udpate.

There also seems to be a problem with the buttons remembering their label names, though, this was happening with the previous version too.

The cursor memory isn't something I think you should spend much time on to be honest, as the MIMO software takes care of all that and works everytime (it's just a bit inaccurate sometimes).

I'm going to keep working with the previous version of WBE for the moment.

edit:
An old problem, in that I've had it from the beginning, is getting the keyboard combinations to work correctly. Maybe this is a problem with AutoIt or it is likely just to be me not understanding the syntax properly. I wonder if this could also be creating problems for how WinButtons works, i.e. I have keyboard shortcuts that require characters like "#" and ";" which, I guess, could be confused by AutoIt's own interpretations.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 07, 2011, 08:10 AM: One, thought and question: are the old .wbuc button templates compatible with the updates of WinButtonsEdit?

It's going to be a long process of having to recreate all the templates everytime if so.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 07, 2011, 10:15 AM: The new cursor memory feature doesn't seem to make any difference regardless of the setting it's on
-nudone (September 07, 2011, 08:03 AM)
Setting the CursorRestore buffer to Small should give the same buffersize as the previous version, but I also tweaked the buffer-fill-code to try to be a bit more efficient. Might be I messed up something :-[

There is also a strange layout problem.
-nudone (September 07, 2011, 08:03 AM)
Could you PM or e-mail me that layout file, so I can have a look at it?

I have noticed that, even though I firmly press the keys to compile the AutoIt3 source, it sometimes produces a bad/partly corrupted .exe, so I should probably do some more quality assurance before packing stuff into the zip-file. :huh:
I'll re-compile later today, and upload again (can't ftp from work).

One, thought and question: are the old .wbuc button templates compatible with the updates of WinButtonsEdit?

It's going to be a long process of having to recreate all the templates everytime if so.
-nudone (September 07, 2011, 08:10 AM)
The file-format has been backward compatible from day one, I only added settings (and sections) that are not interpreted by older versions of WinButtons but they do no harm. And ofcourse the default extension changed from .ini to .wbuc, some time ago, but it does work with .ini files equally well.
When unpacking my zip-file, just get the *.exe and *.readme.txt files. Unzip *.au3 if you want the source, all other files are hardly ever changed and meant as examples for new users.

For the keyboard shortcut keys I'm working on built-in support for WB, to avoid the load-time of WinSendKeys, and the AutoIt3 'rules' can be found here (http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/appendix/SendKeys.htm). Anything you can Send(), you can use with WB (though WinSendKeys can do a bit more, like mouse-clicks).
The WB built-in Send function will get a new command (not '-send'), so that would require a 1-time change to your .wbuc file(s). :-\
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 07, 2011, 10:35 AM: Okay, sounds good.

I think I'll create a new basic set of buttons to test things with until you've had chance to test everything out yourself with the touchscreen.

I'll email you the template I've been using until now.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 07, 2011, 12:52 PM: I'm now using the previous version of WinButtonEdit (when "Restore cursor after button" was first included to it) and have just created a 4 x 3 button template.

All seemed find but on reopening the template inside WBE the "Photoshop" group I've created has lost all the button labels - and, the background has change to red for this group only.

As this is the first task I've done since extracting this version of WinButtons (today) it appears that the fault has been there all along. I'm going to proceed and put all the labels in again and hopefully they stick. I'll report back what happens...

edit:
I forgot to mention the odd bit about this: when running the related .wbuc as a live set of buttons, they labels appear, plus the background color is black, so all appears correct. So, somehow WBE isn't reading the contents of the .wbuc file when it is edited.

another edit:
I better just clarify what I said "labels" but in WBE these are the "Captions".
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 07, 2011, 01:18 PM: Okay, maybe I'm just not understanding what each feature is in the editor. What is the "Caption" for? I've renamed the buttons just using their "Name" - which makes sense and I probably should have not used "Captions" anyway.

The background color of the group appears to be working correctly now too. I've placed "#" inside {} which is being used with one of the hotkey commands, which now makes the button work correctly - but I wonder if this was, perhaps, making the editor go funny with the background color. I see that # is intepreted as Winkey by AutoIt unless it is used like {#} so I'm guess this could have been the problem.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 07, 2011, 01:19 PM: A point of attention:
If WinButtons or WinButtonEdit have a current file that is not named WinButtons.wbuc or WinButtons.ini, they try to read any missing Settings values from WinButtons.wbuc or .ini (dependent on/same as the extension of the current file).
So if you have said file in the current directory while editing, but not in the actual directory where WinButtons is reading the current file, behavior will be different. (there is a corresponding remark in the WinButtons.readme.txt file about this)

And a small tip: WBE offers to run the current file with WinButtons from the 'File/Run WinButtons with current file Ctrl-R' menuitem, for a quick 'Real World' test :)

The cause for losing all Captions is not clear to me, I've never seen that happen before :'(, I'll investigate.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 07, 2011, 01:24 PM: What is the "Caption" for?
-nudone (September 07, 2011, 01:18 PM)

It can be used to have a button without text or image, just color, or to have a dynamically updated caption (displaying time for instance, see the examples for condition<n> in the WinButtons.Readme.txt file)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 07, 2011, 01:40 PM: I see. I've kept all files inside the same folder whilst editing and running them so that shouldn't be the cause of my troubles. Perhaps the default values where I've not specified something are doing things I wasn't expecting - I'll have to look.

I see I wasn't using the "Caption" correctly then.

One thing I'd like to point out that appears to be working very well is that the, original, "Restore cursor after button" feature provides a very nice "cosmetic" solution to MIMO's software failings.

MIMO's utility is correctly locking the mouse cursor on the main monitor when a buttons is hit on the touchscreen BUT it doesn't stop the cursor icon from appearing momentarily under your finger when you press the touchscreen.

BUT, using the "Restore cursor after button" of WinButtons at the same time, does prevent the mouse icon from appearing on the touchscreen.

In other words, a combination of both functions creates the mouse cursor movement and appearance you'd expect, i.e. you never see the cursor appear on the touchscreen. :Thmbsup:
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 07, 2011, 01:48 PM: One thing I'd like to point out that appears to be working very well is that the, original, "Restore cursor after button" feature provides a very nice "cosmetic" solution to MIMO's software failings.
-nudone (September 07, 2011, 01:40 PM)
Hmm, I'll probably revert to that method then, and see if the performance improvement I did, is also useful.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 07, 2011, 01:50 PM: Just another quick "tip" for anyone else going down this route of getting a MIMO.

I've been saying how well it worked with the freeze/memory/lock mouse cursor thing when hitting a button. Well, I've just seen it not work.

This looks like it's a delay issue, so you have to give the system time to put the mouse cursor back to its original location. I think the delay must vary too.

Now, those of you with modern machines probably won't even notice and everything will work instantly - so, no problem for you.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 07, 2011, 02:04 PM: You know what. My moods may be dangerously erratic when it comes to working with this computer (and the problems I create for myself on it) BUT...

This touchscreen system is working f a n t a s t i c a l l y even in these early stages.

I'm swapping between different modes and features in Photoshop like it's all a natural part of the hardware and software. Adobe are going to wonder why they bothered making their iPad apps when they see what this can do.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 07, 2011, 02:21 PM: There is also a strange layout problem. My Photoshop specific "group" of buttons now is offset to the left by about 200 pixels and the background is bright orange - it was black before the udpate.
-nudone (September 07, 2011, 08:03 AM)
Both these settings I found in the Group settings for the Photoshop group. Select the group or one of the buttons of that group, then select the 'Group parameters' tab. The setting for Left is -135 (close enough to 200 :P), and the background is set to red (0xff0000), but that might look like orange on the touchscreen, compared to your high-quality 30" monitor. On my medium-fi 26" Iiyama, it's a tad pink between the (black) buttons, and glowing reddish orange if I disable one button:

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

Edit:
Oh, and how to correct the strange behavior: Set Left to 0 (or empty), and change the color if you need/want that (it looks just fine IMHO, a nice contrast from the 'default' buttongroup)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 07, 2011, 02:26 PM: This touchscreen system is working f a n t a s t i c a l l y even in these early stages.
-nudone (September 07, 2011, 02:04 PM)
I can hardly wait for mine to arrive :greenclp:
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 07, 2011, 04:48 PM: Hmm, that's interesting about the specific group settings - as I never set them like that. Everything is meant to be using the global colours and position.

I'll keep checking things like that to see if there's a noticeable pattern to how I've caused it.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 08, 2011, 03:56 AM: Warning: anyone thinking of buying a touchscreen should be prepared for wasting plenty of time rebooting, wiggling the USB cables, unplugging and reconnecting the USB cables, rebooting, banging head on keyboard, rebooting, banging touchscreen on desk, unplugging and reconnecting USB cables, holding mouse in front of face like a microphone and shouting "Just WORK" into it rather like John Cleese shouting at the dead parrot.

So, not only do touchscreens come with totally useless software, they are unreliable too. Fine when they eventually decide to recognise that they are plugged into a computer but until then they like to play dead.

No wonder people don't bother with all this crap. I'm amazed at how backward technology can be. Quote from Touchscreen pioneer "I've invented this brillliant touchscreen display - only one problem - it doesn't work."
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 08, 2011, 05:28 AM: ^+1

Quote from Touchscreen pioneer "I've invented this brillliant touchscreen display - only one problem - it doesn't work."
-nudone (September 08, 2011, 03:56 AM)
;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: urlwolf on September 08, 2011, 02:24 PM: I got an exopc (http://exopc.com). The touch screen is sort of ok. I wonder if it could be used as a remote controller for another pc...
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 08, 2011, 02:37 PM: Looks nice. I'm sure it could control another PC, the iPad can, so it's more a case of someone writing the software for it - which makes me just assume that you currently can't control a pc with it.

The touchscreen world is built upon the promise of what can be and then waiting for Apple to do it instead and then pretend they haven't - and then wait a few years to see if Apple are still doing it, then go out of business because no one bought your radicle touchscreen device.

I'm sure in a few years time tablets and touchscreens (and smart phones) will do everything you can imagine regarding pc interfaces.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 08, 2011, 03:06 PM: I got an exopc (http://exopc.com). The touch screen is sort of ok. I wonder if it could be used as a remote controller for another pc...
-urlwolf (September 08, 2011, 02:24 PM)
That thing is running Windows 7 :o Guess some sort of RDP/VNC/etc connection could, but that's not really convenient.

I've been thinking about some sort of (web)services 'interface' (for WinButtons), so I can use my remote Windows, Android or iOs device to display the UI, and have the service app send/execute the commands on the host. Couldn't get that to work easily (found a presumably dead Android project on Google code) so I kinda abandoned that, waiting for someone to re-ignite the idea. Would require a 'redo' in something different from AutoIt3 (again, it's on the todo-list), like the host in .NET and the frontend/UI in Java or HTML5+javascript.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: wraith808 on September 08, 2011, 03:08 PM: I got an exopc (http://exopc.com). The touch screen is sort of ok. I wonder if it could be used as a remote controller for another pc...
-urlwolf (September 08, 2011, 02:24 PM)

I'd not heard of that before... how is it? And how much is it?
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Stoic Joker on September 08, 2011, 03:51 PM: I got an exopc (http://exopc.com). The touch screen is sort of ok. I wonder if it could be used as a remote controller for another pc...
-urlwolf (September 08, 2011, 02:24 PM)

I'd not heard of that before... how is it? And how much is it?
-wraith808 (September 08, 2011, 03:08 PM)

Not sure, but the devices page also lists a Motion Computing CL900 ... And those start at around $2,000

Correction - Two more clicks found this:$699 (http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/en_US/buy/pageType.product/externalRefID.EC722AD1)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: wraith808 on September 08, 2011, 04:34 PM: ^ I saw that, but I wasn't sure if he got a better price on it, and his experiences. But thanks. :) And, I wonder if his experiences with this were better than yours with the HP hardware.

I found a couple of impressions on it, and it does seem promising...

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/30/exopc-slate-hands-on/

http://blog.laptopmag.com/exopc-slate-hands-on-the-windows-7-tablet-weve-been-waiting-for

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/27/exopc-slate-review/

http://makingwindowseasy.com/2011/03/03/hands-on-exopc-slate-review/

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/exopc-slate-913878/review
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: urlwolf on September 09, 2011, 03:00 AM: It's a tablet that can actually replace your netbook. I like it better because I would have used an external keyboard anyway, and on this form factor you can use portrait mode, which is better for coding.

It indeed does what a win7 box would do. As a touch OS it kind of sucks. I could not get it to do the automatic flipping when changing orientation. Forget about smooth scroll, pinch zoom, etc. The OS is waiting for the second click, so all the touch operations really suck compared to an ipad. But you can get real work done on this one. And use a real browser. And play HD video. I'd say it's a winner. I got it for free in intel's AppUp event. The meego OS it came with was prealpha. All attendants I know have installed something else.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 09, 2011, 03:47 AM: Just another "tip" for anyone considering getting a MIMO (or similar).

The problem I mentioned before about the touchscreen not being recognised and having to disconnect and reconnect it several times appear to be related to the boot process.

Maybe there's just too much going on my machine on startup, too many monitors trying to work themselves out or something, who knows.

Anyway, the solution is to leave the touchscreen disconnected until everything else has finished loading in. I would assume this kind of problem won't manifest itself on the vast majority of setups.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 09, 2011, 01:12 PM: I've run out of time and hardly had chance to have a proper go at getting WinButtons and the MIMO setup correctly.

I'm now away for 9 days so I'm hoping that by the time I get back Ath will have found every problem there is and resolved them all too :D

Good luck with it all...
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 09, 2011, 02:24 PM: I've received the MIMO Touchscreen, as ordered by nudone, today.

I've been a kid in a toy-shop ever since I unpacked it, it's soooo nice :-*

Like reported by nudone, it works like a charm. I didn't release a new WinButtons version yet, but I've improved a few things already (last night), and I can now have a numeric keypad that sends it's digits and other keys to the active application 8)

Made a few (not so sharp) pictures, to show what my first setup is.
It'll probably change a bit in the coming weeks, but I think I like it to be rather close to the keyboard, to be both easily viewable and hand-reachable.

This is the main screen, the MIMO and the keyboard (there's a second screen to the left of the main screen, but not on the photo)
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

And here's the layout nudone sent me, that I messed up for my own purpose, having a second layout of a numeric keypad (in green) on top of it. Just hidden under the NumPad Off button there's a NumPad On button, positioned exactly on top of each other. (The touchscreen is free-standing here, but I use it like in the other photo, resting on top of the keyboard)
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

I keep on thanking nudone for giving me this superduper gadget, but it's so awfully nice :D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 09, 2011, 02:30 PM: Hm, that first picture hardly shows how I've positioned the screen on top of my keyboard:

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 09, 2011, 03:20 PM: Excellent. I'm glad it's working as there were plenty of reasons to think it might not.

Looking forward to see what you come up with. I'm feeling jealous already.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: superboyac on September 09, 2011, 04:37 PM: This is the future right here, I'm loving it!
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 09, 2011, 04:52 PM: Oh, and if you might also get a MIMO, do get the drivers from the MIMOmonitors support pages (http://www.mimomonitors.com/pages/customer-support), don't use the CD-ROM delivered ones, these are a bit out of date, at least on the CD I got. The updates improve the overall behavior of the screen and the touchpanel.

And be prepared to some heavy screen on/off flashing and resolution changes during installation of the display-link drivers :o but it all works afterwards :up:
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 10, 2011, 09:54 PM: do get the drivers from the MIMOmonitors support pages...
-Ath (September 09, 2011, 04:52 PM)
Thanks for the tip, Ath :Thmbsup:
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 11, 2011, 01:34 PM: I've released a WinButtons update today (here (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=25167.msg261513#msg261513) for who missed it), and just for the heck of it, I turned Off the 'return mouse to previous location after touching the touch-screen' option 8) (conveniently called 'Anchor mouse' in the settings' Properties page, AFAICS) (I turned it on earlier, to work in a configuration closely like nudone), to see if my CursorRestore feature works as designed, and I can report after about 1/2 day of use, it just 'feels right' (but I may be biased, though I try to avoid that).
I have not had the urge to turn that option back on in the touch-screen driver yet, so I guess it should work with most other touch-screens equally well, even if they don't offer a similar setting. Unless ofcourse their driver insists on moving the mouse to the touch-screen any time you bring your finger close to it :down:
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 14, 2011, 09:24 AM: My MIMO Touch2 arrived here yesterday. So, I hooked it up this morning.

I can see I'm going to have some fun. It blue-screens my new W7 box faster than I can say 'knife'. I know 'cos I was saying "that's not very knife" at the time (or some shorter, pithy words with roughly the same meaning).

No doubt there's a way round it, if not I'll try it on another machine here (though I want it on my main machine where it might actually be useful). Clearly, it's time now to set it aside and play a video game instead ;D

Watch this space --> <-- ::)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 14, 2011, 02:17 PM: Oh dear. Hopefully just a "typical" driver issue. I have faith you'll get it to work, just not in the straightforward way we'd all expect. (Like I mentioned before, I have to connect the mimo after everything else has finished loading in - but I'm sure this wasn't the case with the mymo - that just worked, but the software wasn't so good; which might not matter anyway now that Ath has modified things since.)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 14, 2011, 04:36 PM: Oh dear. Hopefully just a "typical" driver issue.
-nudone (September 14, 2011, 02:17 PM)
Yes, thanks. Just took another swing at it and now I'm replying to you from the MIMO screen. Now, where did I put that copy of WinButtons...
:Thmbsup:
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 15, 2011, 01:44 AM: I have to connect the mimo after everything else has finished loading in
-nudone (September 14, 2011, 02:17 PM)
Haven't seen that behavior here, but I do notice the horrendous flashing of the screen when connecting the MIMO to a running system, because of the DisplayLink drivers 'configuring stuff the right way'. If I leave the MIMO connected I don't see the flickering, not even during system startup or login. The systems I have used it on so far are rather high-end, considering current state of hardware, and Win7.
I assume you got the latest drivers from the MIMO & DisplayLink site?

Just took another swing at it and now I'm replying to you from the MIMO screen.
-cranioscopical (September 14, 2011, 04:36 PM)
Glad you rebooted just often enough to get it right :D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 15, 2011, 10:53 AM: Glad you rebooted just often enough to get it right :D
-Ath (September 15, 2011, 01:44 AM)

I see your point ;D

At the moment I'm still floundering.

MIMO is monitor 3 and is somehow paired with monitor 1, thus any touch on the MIMO reults in 'tablet' input to monitor 1.
For example with 'numkeypad' active on MIMO, touching the buttons (or should I say hammering — the 'touch' isn't quite what I expected) gives tablet input on monitor 1.
MIMO is set to 'extend my desktop...' not to mirror #1
I think that the Displaylink drivers are thwarted by something (probably me).
The best thing is to rip out the drivers and go again.

I didn't expect 2 USB connectors on the MIMO. Just one powers it perfectly well on my box.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 15, 2011, 11:05 AM: I'll be honest and admit I didn't try the latest drivers; I'll try them when I get back.

Is anyone using the mimo with win7 64 bit? Just wondering if that's going to be a problem when I move from 32 bit.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Stoic Joker on September 15, 2011, 11:41 AM: Not quite the same thing... But I had a client last week that had a Win7 x64 machine and an external video adapter that used the DisplayLink drivers. I had to DL the latest from their site to get it running, but it worked just fine.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 15, 2011, 01:31 PM: MIMO is monitor 3 and is somehow paired with monitor 1, thus any touch on the MIMO reults in 'tablet' input to monitor 1.
-cranioscopical (September 15, 2011, 10:53 AM)
Oh, yeah, the driver does have the quirk of setting the wrong default monitor as the touch-related monitor, you'll have to correct that like this:
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

The circled label-like control is actually a button that lets you select the monitor (3) that has the touch-capability.
Not sure if I also had to correct that with the original drivers, but seeing it misbehave in this version, I guess I did.

Is anyone using the mimo with win7 64 bit? Just wondering if that's going to be a problem when I move from 32 bit.
-nudone (September 15, 2011, 11:05 AM)
Yup, works just very fine over here :D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 15, 2011, 01:35 PM: an external video adapter that used the DisplayLink drivers
-Stoic Joker (September 15, 2011, 11:41 AM)
Seeing the advertisements on their site, it looks like they are used a lot with the Digital school-boards lots of school are already or starting to use, providing the combination of projector display and touch- or hand-pointer- input.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 15, 2011, 03:43 PM: I'll be honest and admit I didn't try the latest drivers; I'll try them when I get back.

Is anyone using the mimo with win7 64 bit? Just wondering if that's going to be a problem when I move from 32 bit.
-nudone (September 15, 2011, 11:05 AM)

That's what I have.

So far I've not tried very hard. I just finished setting up and tweaking a new W7 machine that needs to suit my work style (which isn't really the W7 way). My appetite for munching on this is therefore somewhat dulled :-[

I am using the latest drivers from DisplayLink.

I was pretty sure I'd covered that button, Ath, but then I was pretty sure that today is Friday (it's Thursday here).
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 15, 2011, 03:48 PM: And did you calibrate it too? Or did the driver just mess up that setting after the first connect?
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 15, 2011, 03:49 PM: Oh, but it's not Friday yet (about one hour to go to finish up Thursday) :P
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 15, 2011, 06:13 PM: Connected and working.

As you know, the DisplayLink driver on the installation CD won't work on W7-64, so I had downloaded the latest from DisplayLink's site (though I discovered also that w7 will 'go fetch' that like a good ~~dog~~ O/S, without intervention).

I had also dl'd the latest touch stuff from MIMO and installed that. BUT I just couldn't get the thing to calibrate properly.

So, I ripped it all out again, rebooted, and applied the latest DisplayLink driver (again) and then the touch software from the CD — NOT the updated version. That version looks very different, but it works right away. The whole thing took about 10 minutes — including uninstalling, reinstalling, and calibration.

When I have the patience I'll replace the touch software with what I downloaded and see if that now works for me (though I can't see that it would offer any advantage).

I'm beginning to realize that any enterprise that I undertake is going to suffer from some fool doing the wrong thing :-[ ;D ;D ;D

Tomorrow I can play with WinButtons. Obviously, right now, at least some of what I touch on the MIMO screen occurs on the MIMO screen — not at all the point of my having one.

For me, the logical place for the MIMO is in the middle of my keyboard where it's equally accessible to ~~any of my three~~ either hand.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 16, 2011, 01:12 AM: the logical place for the MIMO is in the middle of my keyboard
-cranioscopical (September 15, 2011, 06:13 PM)

Yeah that feels right, I've been thinking of using ducktape to firmly attach the mimo to my keyboard so if I move that around, the mimo moves with it, and I always have it within hands-reach. I expect it to get a bit clunky though.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 20, 2011, 03:28 AM: Just thought I'd mention that using the latest drivers for the MIMO make no difference to my boot problems. The touchscreen is recognised after the driver is first installed and the machine rebooted but rebooting after that and the screen pretends it isn't connected. Which means I have to boot up without the screen attached - then plug it in.

Not too inconvenient I admit but I'll add this problem to the list of why touchscreens are still completely useless for wide appeal.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 20, 2011, 04:04 AM: I think that the driver added a significant delay in my boot process, but I'll have to un-install to confirm that. I'll probably do that sometime in the coming weeks, just to know for sure that this driver is causing the heavy HD grinding at boot, after boot-up the system works just as before. I can keep the screen connected during boot and it works just fine, as reported before.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 20, 2011, 05:30 AM: Just to confuse matters, or maybe even clarify them, I've just rebooted and the MIMO was recognised correctly during startup. This appears to be because I've disconnected an external USB hard drive - which I can leave unplugged until I really need it.

Ath, as for the speed of boot process it, takes quite a while on my machine so I've not noticed if the driver has slowed things down or not. It seems about the same, i.e. it hasn't become dramatically slower.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 20, 2011, 09:18 PM: Just thought I'd mention that using the latest drivers for the MIMO make no difference to my boot problems. The touchscreen is recognised after the driver is first installed and the machine rebooted but rebooting after that and the screen pretends it isn't connected. Which means I have to boot up without the screen attached - then plug it in.

Not too inconvenient I admit but I'll add this problem to the list of why touchscreens are still completely useless for wide appeal.
-nudone (September 20, 2011, 03:28 AM)

I'm happy to say that there is no such problem here. Just a quick cut to black... so fast that it hardly registers. Reboot always picks up the MIMO (unless I've turned it off, obviously).
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 25, 2011, 06:31 AM: I'm still having trouble with the MIMO being recognised at startup - I'll just have to accept that and hope it changes when I upgrade the machine at some point.

One thing that I'm not sure is a general defect or just specific to my touchscreen is the colour accuracy.

I wasn't expecting it to be a brilliant monitor but it's not even close to being simply "good". All colours seem to be fine except for RED which never appears as anything better than ORANGE.

Honestly, there is no way anyone could describe the colour it produces for red as "red".

Anyone else with the MIMO noticed such terrible colour production on the touchscreen?
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 07:32 AM: I wasn't expecting it to be a brilliant monitor but it's not even close to being simply "good". All colours seem to be fine except for RED which never appears as anything better than ORANGE.
-nudone (September 25, 2011, 06:31 AM)

I can confirm that. With a somewhat complex colored background it's kinda Ok, but with the standard boxed colors like the new Metro-like setup that will be used more in the near future, it's not really good enough.
It is also very dependent on the viewing angle.

Example that has quite lame colors:
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

And a bit less dimmed:
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(Screenshots from NASA/JPL-Caltech Windows 7 Hidden Universe theme)
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Guess your statement about the general (un)usability of touch-screens will stay valid for some time to come :( unless there's a real market for WinButtons ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 25, 2011, 07:44 AM: Hmm, it doesn't appear that the MIMO responds to any kind of colour correction controls either (maybe I've just not found the right way to do it though).

The unforgivable thing is that these touchscreens are far too expensive for what they are. Even a crap smartphone screen has better colour reproduction, well, even my years old Pocket PC has infinitely better colour reproduction - simply because it can produce red quite easily.

There's just no excuse for how crap these touchscreens are. How hard is it to display red. PATHETIC.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 09:06 AM: Hmm, it doesn't appear that the MIMO responds to any kind of colour correction controls either (maybe I've just not found the right way to do it though).
-nudone (September 25, 2011, 07:44 AM)

I have been unable to find those controls too, there are only 2 brightness buttons (+ and -) on the left side, but that shifts from barely usable to rather unusable (dark). The option in the driver that says 'Advanced Configuration...' just opens the Windows display settings :o

Tried to make good photos of the MIMO and my not very good Iiyama screen, but like before they're not great.
The MIMO colors are a bit dull, though brightness is at the highest level, the Iiyama colors are acceptable for the non-Graphics person I am ;D

MIMO:
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

Iiyama:
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Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 25, 2011, 09:18 AM: Well, your photo of the MIMO screen makes it look like you've got "red" showing on there. There's no way a photo of my touchscreen would look anything close to that.

BUT, that's when viewing your photos on my main screen, the HP with a very wide colour gamut - the screen makes reds look oversaturated when compared with "normal" screens. The two Dell 2007fp screens either side do make your photos seem more "orange" but still not as much as the MIMO does.

I'm now wondering if the MIMO is having it's colour adjusted when it shouldn't. I've set all my screens up using a Sypder3Elite calibration unit except for the MIMO. The touchscreen is too small to run the calibration software.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 09:47 AM: With a full red button (0xFF0000) it really looks more like orange, I just made a photo of that as well:

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 09:56 AM: And the same image photographed from my Iiyama screen: (without the annotations)

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 25, 2011, 10:18 AM: Right. It does look orange. Looks like that just has to be accepted, what a pity (if I ever find time I'll see if there's some way to calibrate the touchscreen differently; I really can't see any good reason why it is so poor - "touch enabled" doesn't equate to "crap colours").

Anyway, it's a long process but I'm starting to put together proper WinButton layouts. I've just put a 30 button layout together, believing that 40 buttons was way too many, but now I realise I really do need 40 buttons (or even more).

Here's an example of the "metro" Photoshop layout - which I'll have to change to add more buttons to. Oh well. I've got Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Premiere layouts to do in a similar style (colours changed to match Adobe's icon colour scheme). After that I'll record and upload the video I said I'd do, demonstrating how things work.

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

edit:
may as well attach the actual WinButton template too if anyone want to try it. Some of the buttons won't work unless you create the very same keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 25, 2011, 10:26 AM: p.s.

Just thought I'd say that I'll start creating buttons with graphics inside when I've decided what buttons I'll always be using. I'll exchange a lot of the text labels for graphics so that the buttons are more "intuitive" to use.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 10:49 AM: Here's an example of the "metro" Photoshop layout
-nudone (September 25, 2011, 10:18 AM)
That's looking good :up:
Must say that the purple is more like blue on the MIMO, but that's the same lack of red displayed, I assume.

The advantage of the "metro" design is the spacing between the buttons, so you can drag the preview to the mimo for testing ('Allow Window Movable' should be checked for that to work) and a quick color comparison.

I know how time-consuming setting up a lot of buttons can be, so I'm thinking about the workflow of WBE, and how to improve that. Especially the new parameters for the images are hacked in, so I'll probably better create a separate screen just for setting that up nicely.

OT:
I see you're using "{ctrldown} s {ctrlup}" to send in fact "^s" to Photoshop. If you change the Command separator (Global parameters) to something like &, you can use "^s" for the WinSendKeys performed -send command. It'll save you some typing, and the command will execute a few-hundred milliseconds faster 8)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 25, 2011, 10:51 AM: Anyone else with the MIMO noticed such terrible colour production on the touchscreen?
-nudone (September 25, 2011, 06:31 AM)
Yeah, it's diabolical. This Pantone chart on my MIMO might as well be from a different range compared to what shows on the others. Reds shift to brown (too much green?) I haven't looked for a MIMO calibration program.

[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

While colour matters on the main screens, I don't much care about the MIMO in this regard — for my purchase, display quality wasn't a significant criterion.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 10:57 AM: This Pantone chart on my MIMO might as well be from a different range compared to what shows on the others.
-cranioscopical (September 25, 2011, 10:51 AM)
;D ;D
But yes, that's confirmed :(
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 25, 2011, 11:03 AM: Nice work, Ath and Nudone :up: :up: :up:

I'm becoming a little frustrated by this whole exercise. When I played the dumb user for Ath in the early WinButtons daze (well, it was no act) I had a handle on things to some extent. Then a bunch of other stuff came along, in the middle of which I bought the MIMO, and this whole adventure has had to be moved to a back burner. I'd rather be a contributor than a spectator but…
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 11:11 AM: but now I realise I really do need 40 buttons (or even more).
-nudone (September 25, 2011, 10:18 AM)

After you add graphics to each button, it would be feasible to trim down the size of the buttons, as the resistive touch foil on the MIMO, registers touch equally well from my fingernails as from a full finger-touch.

It's even possible that the touch-foil is interfering with the proper color-display we've been discussing here, but I won't be ripping off the touch-foil just to try that out ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 25, 2011, 12:47 PM: It's even possible that the touch-foil is interfering with the proper color-display
-Ath (September 25, 2011, 11:11 AM)
Foiled again!
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: wraith808 on September 25, 2011, 01:10 PM: Well, thanks for your reports- I was very close to buying one of my own. I still might, but I also might wait.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 25, 2011, 01:39 PM: It is a shame about the terrible colours on the MIMO, I too don't care too much about things like that - if they are slight - but not being able to produce anything close to red is enough to say MIMO screens are simply defective. It does restrict a lot of possibilities when trying to be clever and make colour coded buttons. But what can we do other than to return the screens to Amazon.

The more important question is whether other touchscreen models have the same limitation, and if not I'd like to know which they are - then this MIMO would be sent straight back and labelled unfit for purpose. That's not going to happen though is it.

As for WinButtons, it would be great to have an easier way to set the buttons up but I'm still amazed by how it's possible even now.

There's still lots of experimentation to regarding the "right" number of buttons to use. I think I'll be changing my mind on that one for a good while yet.

P.s.
I am creating the button layouts whilst the template is on the MIMO, I just haven't spent a lot of time with the colours.

This is probably impossible to do, Ath: could the editor be made so that the colours can be updated live with a slider control (or windows colour dialog panel); something that would let you see the colours change whilst the template is is on the MIMO. If not I think I will try creating a mock-up of the buttons in Photoshop first.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 25, 2011, 01:44 PM: Forgot to say, thanks for the tip about the key commands. I've done it the long hand version as the shorter things I tried didn't work - but I'll try it again and let you know what happens.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 01:52 PM: Ath: could the editor be made so that the colours can be updated live with a slider control (or windows colour dialog panel); something that would let you see the colours change whilst the template is is on the MIMO.
-nudone (September 25, 2011, 01:39 PM)
I'll see what I can do, don't know if the color selection dialog has some kind of callback capability that I can hook into. Putting up a slider control would probably mean I have to create a custom color selection dialog, what I'd like to avoid :huh:
Workaround for now could be to (also) drag the color selection dialog to the MIMO 8)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 01:53 PM: as the shorter things I tried didn't work
-nudone (September 25, 2011, 01:44 PM)
That's because of the Command separation character being a '^' by default
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 01:54 PM: with the colours
-nudone (September 25, 2011, 01:39 PM)

I kinda love it how we keep mixing the use of the US and UK version of color and colour ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on September 25, 2011, 04:21 PM: Maybe the MIMO only works with color and I keep using colour. ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on September 25, 2011, 04:36 PM: Maybe the MIMO only works with color and I keep using colour. ;D
-nudone (September 25, 2011, 04:21 PM)
So we'll have to relocate to the US of A (or at least North America) to get it working properly; hey, cranioscopical, we might become neighbors ;D ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on September 25, 2011, 05:09 PM: I kinda love it how we keep mixing the use of the US and UK version of color and colour ;D
-Ath (September 25, 2011, 01:54 PM)
Do me a favor, knock it off! ;)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 05, 2011, 02:57 AM: For the record: I've decided to stop using the MIMO touchscreen (and therefore Winbuttons too).

I've had enough of the device's inability to connect properly. I'd been persevering with it ever since it arrived but it's gone too far now.

(Please don't make any suggestions about how to make it work correctly. I've tried the latest drivers and they make the same amount of difference as the other drivers I've tried, i.e. zero difference. I've tried several USB hubs, powered and non powered and all of the ports on the motherboard.)

Today, not only would it refuse to connect but it has now made one of my screens forget all it's colour calibration settings (because my machine now thinks it's a completely different monitor, one that has never been calibrated). This means I've got to waste twenty minutes calibrating the screen all over again. This is not a new pointless routine I wan't to get into.

I've also decided that I can remember and access the hotkeys (in Photoshop, etc.) quicker than I can locate a button on the touchscreen - so the whole touchscreen idea is flawed (for me, at least).

I did consider this touchscreen stuff an experiment that may fail and so it has; maybe not for the right reasons but if the device doesn't want to play nicely then it can just go and die. One positive conclusion is that I know never to buy another touchscreen again, nor to try and use an iPad in a similar way. I've now realised that my keyboard with all its extra macro keys is going to be the better system - even if that is simply because it works immediately on startup.

I may find a use for the MIMO with my Wacom Cintiq based machine. That said, if it doesn't work first time I'm going to run outside and see how far I can throw the touchscreen and watch it smash as it lands on the nice hard concrete. Which will be the most satisfying thing I can do with the unfit for purpose device. (Maybe I should just see if Amazon will give me a refund.)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: superboyac on December 07, 2011, 10:35 AM: nudone, did you try using different USB ports?
Ha! Just kidding...don't you hate that??

I'm also souring on a lot of this touch stuff. I've now spent considerable time with every tablet on the market, tried the latest smartphones, I have a Wacom, etc. Touch technology is simply mediocre. It's convenient for certain applications, even preferable, especially for simple things like browsing the web at a coffee shop, or simple applications that require just a handful of controls (ereaders, reading in general). But as a general interface, it's just mediocre.
The mechanical precision and ease of the mouse is still the best, it's that perfect balance of digital and mechanical. We all know how much better it feels to plug in a mouse to your laptop. It's always, "ah! much better!".

This reminds me also of the degradation of audio quality now that cellphones are the predominant communication tool. Back when phones were landlines, the audio quality through that copper connection was excellent. i remember being a teenager and being able to whisper quietly in the phone, and every breath, every little sound was crystal clear. Now, we have to yell through our shitty plastic earpieces, or through our fancy screen phones with awful mics, and who knows how much quality is in those wireless transmissions. All that technology, and in the end, the very basic use of the phone (talking) can be viewed at having gone backwards, quality-wise. I have to concentrate so much more now with cell phones just to be able to listen and hear things properly. I hate it. I don't even like talking that much anymore because of that specifically.

I'm never one to hold onto old-fashioned technology for nostalgia's sake, but these last few years, I am becoming that way it seems. Maybe it's just me, but I respond much better to mechanical technology that digital. I like gears, metal parts, levers, buttons...mechanical devices feel much more human. There's something very unsatisfying about touchscreens, wireless anythings. If you remove the convenience they offer and just think about how it feels to you, you'll feel how unsatisfying it is.

Bobby Fischer's last words were:
"Nothing is as healing as the human touch."

I would agree. The more we move away from that with our technology, the less satisfying it will be to use. I'm sure things will be much more convenient and progressive, but we're going to lose that feel-goodedness about it.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 07, 2011, 12:04 PM: I think your issue with the sound quality on cellphones is going to be down to the noise cancellation that they'll all be using. I don't know this for sure, it would just make sense that this is built-in these days. Plus, I wouldn't be too surprised if mobile phones only send audio when the sound reaches above a certain level (or is that simply noise cancellation again).

As for touchscreens, yep, they are pretty crap at the moment. I imagine they will remain so for another 10 years - until flexible and "softtouch" screens are available (or whenever that will be).

I've an iPad and that seems about the best touchscreen at the moment. Maybe they should all be named something other than "touch", perhaps "heavythumbprodscreens".
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Renegade on December 07, 2011, 12:14 PM: As for touchscreens, yep, they are pretty crap at the moment. I imagine they will remain so for another 10 years - until flexible and "softtouch" screens are available (or whenever that will be).
-nudone (December 07, 2011, 12:04 PM)

Ahem...

;)

You don't need to understand Korean to get the point there, but they're already here. :D

What would you call a display that's like paper? Displayper~! :) (Bought the domain a while back.)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Stoic Joker on December 07, 2011, 12:23 PM: Maybe it's just me, but I respond much better to mechanical technology that digital. I like gears, metal parts, levers, buttons...mechanical devices feel much more human.
-superboyac (December 07, 2011, 10:35 AM)

ME TOO ME TOO ME TOO!!! ...I was truly amazing how relaxing it was the first time I went out work on my bike after screwing with this IT shit for months on end. I'd been a mechanic for years before getting into IT, and i'd let the bike sit for a few years. But it dawned on me one day that I truly missed the visceral, tactile sensation of being one with something. (At 100+mph you're either completely in sync with your mount...or about to die :)) I dare say the old girl has indeed saved my sanity.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 07, 2011, 12:23 PM: You don't need to understand Korean to get the point there, but they're already here.
-Renegade (December 07, 2011, 12:14 PM)

Oh, I've seen those, they're everywhere aren't they - I've got a giant one that I use as a shower curtain. (Well, maybe I will have by the time I die.)

Displayper? Maybe. I assume we'll just be calling it e-paper when it arrives.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on December 07, 2011, 10:37 PM: I've an iPad and that seems about the best touchscreen at the moment. Maybe they should all be named something other than "touch", perhaps "heavythumbprodscreens".
-nudone (December 07, 2011, 12:04 PM)
That's in fact the difference between a Capacitive touch screen (that the iPad and most of the smartphones have) and a Resistive touch screen that the MIMO has, the technology diff explained in this Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 07, 2011, 10:52 PM: A lot of the cheaper Android Tablets use Resistive too. I've tried a few and you have to use a stylus (old bit of plastic) to get the best response from them.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on December 08, 2011, 10:35 AM: I've tried a few and you have to use a stylus (old bit of plastic) to get the best response from them.
-nudone (December 07, 2011, 10:52 PM)
My tablet is an old bit of plastic (Etch-a-Sketch). Every time I try a different web site I have to draw the page from scratch :o
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 08, 2011, 10:52 AM: Heheheh. Now that IS impressively old-school.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on December 08, 2011, 02:29 PM: Just installed the latest DisplayLink driver for my MIMO, and, after a whole lot of screen flashing (going on and off) 8), a reboot, and a re-recognition of the MIMO hardware, it works just fine. By the next reboot I'll know if still flashes so often during system startup.

This convinces me more that the MIMO owned by nudone is technically faulty in some way, as it prevents a reboot of the system when connected, and gives all kinds of troubles :'(

Every time I try a different web site I have to draw the page from scratch :o
-cranioscopical (December 08, 2011, 10:35 AM)
;D ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 08, 2011, 05:17 PM: I must have explained things badly. I can reboot fine, it just doesn't make any difference to the MIMO. I can never really predict what will be required to make the screen work.

To compound the problem, my new computer isn't perfect. It will bluescreen a few times a week. I thought leaving gmail or google reader open were the cause but that pattern was broken yesterday.

And so, I am really close to just thinking f*ck all this computer sh*t. If the problems get any worse I'm just going to call it quits and find another line of work. I haven't the will to send this new machine back, it took over a month to arrive, and I'm determined to run it after having to return the previous machine.

Anyway, I'll try again with the MIMO at the weekend, probably. But, honestly, I'd be happier if the pc would just stop bluescreening.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on December 08, 2011, 05:43 PM: I can reboot fine, it just doesn't make any difference to the MIMO. I can never really predict what will be required to make the screen work.
-nudone (December 08, 2011, 05:17 PM)
Ah, it might be my sloppy reading, but I didn't get that detail, sorry. But the net result is bad enough.

But, honestly, I'd be happier if the pc would just stop bluescreening.
-nudone (December 08, 2011, 05:17 PM)

You ~~might~~ need that bug to be taken out first, before investigating anything else. (Start with the memory modules)

If this second set of hardware (same company/shop, right?) is (nearly) as crappy as the first, then they have a QA issue, and you'd probably need to find another supplier.

It might be worth to investigate the qualities if the MIMO on the other system you talked about (with the Cintiq screen?), as it could turn out to be a faulty main-system after all.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 08, 2011, 06:03 PM: The new pc is from a different supplier, who tested the machine with a 24 hour over clock burn in before sending it; which makes me think I won't find any problems with it like bad ram.

The old AMD 4800 based machine never bluescreened but had the same issue with the MIMO. If things did get bad I'd go back to using that machine.

I think the MIMO has trouble because I've got two graphics cards. I'll test that theory out by removing one of the cards. But even if that is the problem, there is little I can do to rectify it. I'm definitely not going down the path of buying new graphics cards.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 08, 2011, 06:14 PM: Something I have noticed is that the MIMO properties state it is controlled by my secondary graphics card. This seems a bit odd to me as I'd expect it to state something like "displaylink" instead.

If these touchscreens really are controlled by the system gfx cards then that seems like an inherent flaw. My main gfx card is maxed out controlling a 30" monitor and the secondary card is running two 20" screens. Which, to me, indicates the MIMO hasn't the resources available to it.

But then, I've no idea how this displaylink stuff works.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 10, 2011, 09:04 AM: Okay, okay... OKAY!!! Whilst watching my computer boot-up over the next few days I shall also be punching myself in the face several times. This should be enough to prepare me for when everything goes wrong again.

Currently the MIMO is working. Yes. Yes, it is. I don't believe it's an hallucination (I do accept I might be so delirious I'm imagining everything - including typing this post).

So, why is it working?

1) I've updated the motherboard bios.

2) I've updated the DisplayLink driver (I say updated, but it is the same as one I installed before).

3) I've removed auto log on with my account. So the system pauses (at the logon screen) with only one monitor active until I log on.

I'm assuming the bios update has helped the most - but it could simply be the log on pause. Whatever, I don't wish to experiment to find out what it is - as it might all stop working again.

It's working better than ever. No flashing screens or USB failed connections. Oh, I've just remembered something that might be important:

4) The MIMO is connected to a USB port on one of the DELL 20" monitors (I assume this is a powered USB port). This is the port that was working before I started complaining at the beginning of this week. Also, the MIMO does NOT work when connected directly to the motherboard USB ports; this arrangement rolls into a cycle of USB dis/connect attempts.

Now, if i can get past the next week without any bluescreens I shall be absolutely euphoric.

I will also create some new WinButtons layouts. I first thought that 30 to 40 buttons would the right amount (or even more) but I now think it's way too many. Keeping layouts to around 20 buttons or less will, hopefully, be easier to remember.

Or, perhaps, it simply requires more training when using the larger button arrangements.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on December 10, 2011, 09:19 AM: Wow! At Last! Great :Thmbsup:

The MIMO is connected to a USB port on one of the DELL 20" monitors (I assume this is a powered USB port).
-nudone (December 10, 2011, 09:04 AM)
I do remember someone (a colleague I guess) saying that he could even power an iPad from one of those Dell ports (that iPad really needs a lot of power, exceeding the formal USB 2.0 specs, most Apple laptops have 1 port with extra power, AFAIK), so I guess it's a power issue, combined with that BIOS update, that fixes this.

I first thought that 30 to 40 buttons would the right amount (or even more) but I now think it's way too many. Keeping layouts to around 20 buttons or less will, hopefully, be easier to remember.
-nudone (December 10, 2011, 09:04 AM)
You can run several instances of WinButtons (by giving it a -f filename command-line parameter for a specific file, and -t xxx -l yyy for a specific desktop position) that are positioned side by side so you have quicker response when switching apps in a context-sensitive config (less buttons to redraw), and because of less screen updates, there's less distraction for the user.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 10, 2011, 09:26 AM: You can run several instances of WinButtons (by giving it a -f filename command-line parameter for a specific file, and -t xxx -l yyy for a specific desktop position) that are positioned side by side so you have quicker response when switching apps in a context-sensitive config (less buttons to redraw), and because of less screen updates, there's less distraction for the user.
-Ath (December 10, 2011, 09:19 AM)

Right, didn't know that. That sounds like a better way of switching layouts. I shall attempt that when I do the new layouts.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on December 10, 2011, 10:39 AM: I shall also be punching myself in the face several times.
-nudone (December 10, 2011, 09:04 AM)
Want some help with that? ;D

Currently the MIMO is working. Yes. Yes, it is.
Good news indeed.
Like yours, mine is running from a powered hub on a monitor. Did you ever try connecting both of its USB inputs?
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on December 10, 2011, 11:18 AM: Did you ever try connecting both of its USB inputs?
-cranioscopical (December 10, 2011, 10:39 AM)
The 7" model only has 1 input, and only 1 connector on each end of the cable (that are each in their sockets), for what I know, so, what both USB inputs? :o
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 10, 2011, 12:50 PM: The MYMO had two USB cables IIRC. So I was a bit surprised that the MIMO only had one. I think Chris has the 10 inch screen?..
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on December 11, 2011, 02:43 PM: The MYMO had two USB cables IIRC. So I was a bit surprised that the MIMO only had one. I think Chris has the 10 inch screen?..
-nudone (December 10, 2011, 12:50 PM)
No. The MIMO that I have is a 7", bought directly from the MIMO web site. It's a MIMO Touch2. It wants 1.0A from a USB connection and comes with a double-headed connector (I use only one with no problems).

I was going to buy the 10" but I'm glad that I did not. The 7" does all that I need without being too cumbersone.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 11, 2011, 08:34 PM: I see. Well, definitely only a single standard type cable on this MIMO. I wonder if there are any other differences with the "touch 2"?
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on December 11, 2011, 11:23 PM: I wonder if there are any other differences with the "touch 2"?
-nudone (December 11, 2011, 08:34 PM)
Well, one trifling way in which it differs from yours is that it works ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: 4wd on December 12, 2011, 03:50 AM: It wants 1.0A from a USB connection and comes with a double-headed connector (I use only one with no problems).
-cranioscopical (December 11, 2011, 02:43 PM)

Not trying to rain on your parade or anything but USB ports are only rated to provide 0.5-0.9A, (USB2-USB3).
The only way to get more from a USB3 port is if it is able to go into charging mode and that's done by shorting the D+ and D- data lines.

I'd rather have the inconvenience of the loss of a USB port for purely technical reasons than risk burning out whatever protection may be on the one I'm drawing too much current from and losing it anyway.

There is a reason why they provide that 'Y' cable. ;)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 12, 2011, 07:05 AM: I wonder if there are any other differences with the "touch 2"?
-nudone (December 11, 2011, 08:34 PM)
Well, one trifling way in which it differs from yours is that it works ;D
-cranioscopical (December 11, 2011, 11:23 PM)

Ah, but my MIMO now works perfectly, better than expected. I may even buy another just so I can have two perfectly working MIMOs.

And, as 4wd has pointed out, it sounds like you MIMO will soon not be working or, at least, your USB ports will be smoldering along with your burnt out motherboard. :P
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on December 12, 2011, 04:37 PM: Not trying to rain on your parade or anything but USB ports are only rated to provide 0.5-0.9A
-4wd (December 12, 2011, 03:50 AM)
I did wonder Y. Thanks for the warming, I'll play safe.

your USB ports will be smoldering along with your burnt out motherboard
-nudone
Yeah, but can yours cook breakfast? ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: 4wd on December 12, 2011, 07:10 PM: Some VIA chips were known for not providing enough power for the USB ports thereby causing all manner of strange weirdness in USB devices. Then again, some powered hubs may provide more than enough power to individual ports but unless the hub specs say it does who knows....the only thing you can really go by is the USB specs.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 17, 2011, 07:27 AM: This is just beyond pathetic now...

I've just started the machine up and the MIMO isn't working. This is after an entire week of it working perfectly.

You'll be glad to know I won't bother making any more posts about whether the MIMO works or not. My final word will simply be that...

The MIMO Touchscreens do not work DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON ONE.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on December 17, 2011, 10:39 AM: This is after an entire week of it working perfectly.
The MIMO Touchscreens do not work DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON ONE.
-nudone (December 17, 2011, 07:27 AM)
Since I know SFA about hardware I should probably stay quiet but...
(I, know, I know, you don't want to know)

Given that mine works just fine and yours is capable of running, could it be some other piece of software? Driver corruption?
I really do sympathize with your issues, have had plenty of my own but, judging by your own comments it seems possible that it might not be the MIMO.
Have you some other ~~sucker~~ friendly computer user who might try it out to verify?

You seem to be having such a run of bad luck with hardware that it's almost unbelievable (no unpleasantness intended — only commiseration).
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 17, 2011, 11:27 AM: I don't honestly believe it's the MIMO hardware itself. But what exactly I don't know and don't see how I can resolve.

DisplayLink drivers - maybe.

The OCZ ssd corrupting data perhaps (I've now learnt that this brand of ssd has problems that my machine is experiencing, i.e. the bluescreen and freezes).

Two internal graphics cards powering three monitors - this probably doesn't help the DisplayLink driver.

The whole system - just isn't stable maybe and I ought to reinstall everything.

I did make a change to the system last night so that is likely to be the reason why the MIMO doesn't work. I installed "ShareMouse" so that I could control a Mac Mini as if it were simply an extra monitor to my machine. This all worked perfectly last night - but I didn't reboot my PC whilst testing (I think).

I was going to try installing the DisplayLink driver (which I've now removed) but I don't know if it's worth all this trouble. I'll probably get it to work and then another week or month from now the MIMO will be playing up again.

I suppose I've got to try haven't I. Phuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh. Does this desire to fiddle about with computers never stop. If I wasn't trying to tweak everything all the time the whole lot would, probably, just work.

MIMO, here I come again...
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on December 17, 2011, 07:16 PM: With as much stuff as you have, I still believe that your safest bet is to have a redundant machine. It seems to me that you can't really afford to walk on the wild side when relying on only one machine for some bread and butter.

Did the two recent machines, one returned and one kept, have the same MoBo?

MIMO, here I come again...
-nudone (December 17, 2011, 11:27 AM)
Hey, an idea! Will this help? Replace the M's with G's ;D

Sorry :-[

;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 18, 2011, 04:11 AM: No, the previous, returned, machine had different hardware throughout (and a different supplier). The problem with that one was either dodgy sata sockets or the Crucial ssd.

I'm going to try to get the MIMO working again in a minute. If you hear someone screaming, it will probably be me.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 18, 2011, 05:49 AM: MIMO doesn't work after reinstalling the DisplayLink driver. It's getting worse if anything; flashing screens of solid colour and other rubbish. Swapping the USB ports just creates different problems.

Also, whilst typing out this post (well, the original version of this post) my machine bluescreened.

I'm going to have to just forget about all this for a while. I'm wasting way too much time on it all. It was fun for a while but, really, the most satisfaction I'd get out of all this hardware right now is by destroying it with a suitable solid heavy object - a steamroller would be perfect.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on December 18, 2011, 05:58 AM: Did you try a different USB cable?, as the one supplied could be broken or have a dodgy connection. :(
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 18, 2011, 06:05 AM: It could be the cable. I haven't tried another and I'm not going to either. Good suggestion but I'm not trying anything else now. The whole touchscreen idea is dead to me.

In fact, if anyone wishes to pay for the postage, they can have the MIMO. Let me know.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on December 18, 2011, 06:11 AM: In fact, if anyone wishes to pay for the postage, they can have the MIMO. Let me know.
-nudone (December 18, 2011, 06:05 AM)

If nobody else responds I'll take it, just to know if it works here like mine has since day 1: Flawless. (Besides the driver-quircks of flashing during initialization, ofcourse)
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 18, 2011, 06:28 AM: Oh, I'm sure it will work fine. I just don't think it will work reliably with multi gfx card and monitor setups - it was working fine for the past week until I installed ShareMouse. This seems to have sent the display part of my system beyond repair.

I'd restore a backup (before ShareMouse was installed) of my system to prove the point - except that Paragon won't work and recover my backups.

You may think I'm being defeatist, but when I look around the web with people having similar problems with bluescreens and similar hardware, the guaranteed solution appears to be to throw the whole lot in the dustbin and just buy all new hardware. Something I shall contemplate doing sometime next year - of course, none of that is guaranteed to work either.

I think the sane thing to do is just accept sometimes things are just incompatible. Or just aren't worth trying to fix as it will take too much messing about. All I need is for the computer to help me do my job each day. Nothing more than that. I could probably do all my work on an old 386 running Windows 95 - so, providing this computer does a little more than that, I'm doing well.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: 4wd on December 18, 2011, 06:52 AM: In fact, if anyone wishes to pay for the postage, they can have the MIMO. Let me know.
-nudone (December 18, 2011, 06:05 AM)

Me, me, me...errr....please!

Let me know postage to Oz if it hasn't gone already.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Ath on December 18, 2011, 06:53 AM: I googled a bit on mimo and multiple video cards, and finally found the issues you've been talking about. Should have done that earlier :-[

Your issues will eventually be solved once DisplayLink fixes their drivers to work with multiple (ATI) video adapters mounted in a system, and not earlier then that. They should be pun(i)shed for not providing properly working Windows 7 drivers for over 2 years now, as they where aware of the issues even before Windows 7 was released. >:(
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 18, 2011, 07:20 AM: Interesting. And not surprising. Though, I have two Nvidia cards - no doubt with the same issues as ATI.

I'm not too upset. I went into this (as I've said before) with the view that touchscreens may not work very well. Without WinButtons I'd still have to say that touchscreens are 100% totally and utterly useless - perhaps the MIMO manufactures share this view about their own products otherwise they might fix the inherent issues they have.

4wd and Ath, you will have to decide who should have the Touchscreen. I imagine the postage to Australia from the UK will be in the 30 to 40 pounds area. Is this something you'd be happy to pay, 4wd?
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 18, 2011, 07:37 AM: Rethink...

You'll have to forgive me for going back on my word.

Now that Ath has stated that there are known issues with multiple graphics card setups that means I could get the MIMO to work quite happily with a single card.

I think I should try the MIMO with my Wacom Cintiq before I decide that I cannot use it at all. Using it with that system is probably the best use for it.

Sorry to get anyone's hopes up for a free touchscreen. I hope you understand that I need to get the dammed thing working for myself before I do anything else with it - it will cheer me up to have it working with the Cintiq if nothing else.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: 4wd on December 18, 2011, 07:57 AM: Sorry to get anyone's hopes up for a free touchscreen. I hope you understand that I need to get the dammed thing working for myself before I do anything else with it - it will cheer me up to have it working with the Cintiq if nothing else.
-nudone (December 18, 2011, 07:37 AM)

No problem, I didn't have a specific use for it other than as a possible second monitor/input/system status device I could incorporate into my tower case somehow.

I'm always on the lookout for a bargain :D

But even better if you can get it working with your system, good luck!
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: wraith808 on December 18, 2011, 10:28 AM: In fact, if anyone wishes to pay for the postage, they can have the MIMO. Let me know.
-nudone (December 18, 2011, 06:05 AM)

~~I'd like it if anyone else doesn't. I was thinking about getting one, but the price has been a limitation.~~

Nevermind... a day late and a dollar short it appears...

Hope you get it working in any case!
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: mouser on December 18, 2011, 10:33 AM: You'll have to forgive me for going back on my word

Don't think of it as going back on your word, think of it simply as episode 156 of the "Watch Nudone Lose His Mind" show. I hear it's just been picked up for another season, and season one will be on dvd soon.

Someone please send nudone a few more of these little touchscreens and film him opening them up on christmas.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on December 18, 2011, 11:26 AM: think of it as going back on your word, think of it simply as episode 156 of the "Watch Nudone Lose His Mind" show
-mouser (December 18, 2011, 10:33 AM)
;D ;D ;D

It is some of the best entertainment around (the poor devil)!

Unless, that is, one happens to be having similar problems — then it's hard to muster a chuckle.

For example...
Can you say "server down"?
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Stoic Joker on December 18, 2011, 11:45 AM: For example... Can you say "server down"?
-cranioscopical (December 18, 2011, 11:26 AM)

Actually yes. I'm on the phone with a client who's edge router just went tits up (e.g. their Exchange server is "down").

But, muster a damn chuckle I will!
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: nudone on December 18, 2011, 01:23 PM: Perhaps I should start a video show. Is there a gap in the market for a show about reviewing technical gadgets that don't work or stop working after about 5 days. I could fill a whole season quite easily.

End of season spectacular would be just me (in a straight-jacket, in padded cell) attempting to hold a conversation with the new iPhone Siri.
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on December 18, 2011, 09:27 PM: a client who's edge router just went tits up
-Stoic Joker (December 18, 2011, 11:45 AM)
That's what you get for letting them be on the bleeding edge!
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: Stoic Joker on December 19, 2011, 07:45 AM: a client who's edge router just went tits up
-Stoic Joker (December 18, 2011, 11:45 AM)
That's what you get for letting them be on the bleeding edge!
-cranioscopical (December 18, 2011, 09:27 PM)

Well you're half right... They're right on the edge of a highway construction project, and the highway crew cut the fiber. Fortunately the local city owned fiber comes with grade A service. The head engineer came out and met us onsite within half an hour (on a Sunday!), and made arrangements to get the line crew out there shortly there after.

They are now officially my new favorite service provider!
Title: Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works
Post by: cranioscopical on December 19, 2011, 02:10 PM: They are now officially my new favorite service provider!
-Stoic Joker (December 19, 2011, 07:45 AM)
Quite impressive, especially when we have to contend in other areas with so many lumbering bureaucracies :Thmbsup:

You couldn't get that chap to nip over to nudone's place, I suppose. ;D