Author Topic: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works (Read 122,103 times)

nudone · « **Reply #75 on:** September 20, 2011, 08:28 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.

Ath · « **Reply #76 on:** September 20, 2011, 09:04 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.

nudone · « **Reply #77 on:** September 20, 2011, 10:30 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.

cranioscopical · « **Reply #78 on:** September 21, 2011, 02:18 AM »

Quote from: nudone on September 20, 2011, 08:28 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.

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).

nudone · « **Reply #79 on:** September 25, 2011, 11:31 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?

Ath · « **Reply #80 on:** September 25, 2011, 12:32 PM »

Quote from: nudone on September 25, 2011, 11:31 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.

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:

And a bit less dimmed:

(Screenshots from NASA/JPL-Caltech Windows 7 Hidden Universe theme)

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

nudone · « **Reply #81 on:** September 25, 2011, 12:44 PM »

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.

Ath · « **Reply #82 on:** September 25, 2011, 02:06 PM »

Quote from: nudone on September 25, 2011, 12:44 PM

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).

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

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

MIMO:

Iiyama:

nudone · « **Reply #83 on:** September 25, 2011, 02:18 PM »

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.

Ath · « **Reply #84 on:** September 25, 2011, 02:47 PM »

With a full red button (0xFF0000) it really looks more like orange, I just made a photo of that as well:

Ath · « **Reply #85 on:** September 25, 2011, 02:56 PM »

And the same image photographed from my Iiyama screen: (without the annotations)

nudone · « **Reply #86 on:** September 25, 2011, 03:18 PM »

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.

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.

nudone · « **Reply #87 on:** September 25, 2011, 03:26 PM »

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.

Ath · « **Reply #88 on:** September 25, 2011, 03:49 PM »

Quote from: nudone on September 25, 2011, 03:18 PM

Here's an example of the "metro" Photoshop layout

That's looking good

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

cranioscopical · « **Reply #89 on:** September 25, 2011, 03:51 PM »

Quote from: nudone on September 25, 2011, 11:31 AM

Anyone else with the MIMO noticed such terrible colour production on the touchscreen?

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.

[attach]

Ath · « **Reply #90 on:** September 25, 2011, 03:57 PM »

Quote from: cranioscopical on September 25, 2011, 03:51 PM

This Pantone chart on my MIMO might as well be from a different range compared to what shows on the others.

But yes, that's confirmed

cranioscopical · « **Reply #91 on:** September 25, 2011, 04:03 PM »

Nice work, Ath and Nudone

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…

Ath · « **Reply #92 on:** September 25, 2011, 04:11 PM »

Quote from: nudone on September 25, 2011, 03:18 PM

but now I realise I really do need 40 buttons (or even more).

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

cranioscopical · « **Reply #93 on:** September 25, 2011, 05:47 PM »

Quote from: Ath on September 25, 2011, 04:11 PM

It's even possible that the touch-foil is interfering with the proper color-display

Foiled again!

wraith808 · « **Reply #94 on:** September 25, 2011, 06:10 PM »

Well, thanks for your reports- I was very close to buying one of my own. I still might, but I also might wait.

nudone · « **Reply #95 on:** September 25, 2011, 06:39 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.

nudone · « **Reply #96 on:** September 25, 2011, 06:44 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.

Ath · « **Reply #97 on:** September 25, 2011, 06:52 PM »

Quote from: nudone on September 25, 2011, 06:39 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.

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

Workaround for now could be to (also) drag the color selection dialog to the MIMO

Ath · « **Reply #98 on:** September 25, 2011, 06:53 PM »

Quote from: nudone on September 25, 2011, 06:44 PM

as the shorter things I tried didn't work

That's because of the Command separation character being a '^' by default

Ath · « **Reply #99 on:** September 25, 2011, 06:54 PM »

Quote from: nudone on September 25, 2011, 06:39 PM

with the colours

I kinda love it how we keep mixing the use of the US and UK version of color and colour