xAP on the Joggler

[chris_j_hunter]

Looks good - have you experimented with button sizes, to find what's reliable / SWMBO-friendly ?

Chris

[g8kmh]

Looks good - have you experimented with button sizes, to find what's reliable / SWMBO-friendly ?

No, so far this is an engineering exercise! The 60x60 and 120x120 work fine. Smaller than that is an issue.

Lehane

[Kevin]

Based on that screenshot there's something wrong with my 'red' button - Those bulb icons should be the same size . I think it's due to the 9 slice scaling which was aimed at keeping the corners square but behaved really weirdly. - I thought I'd corrrected them but must have missed the red....

K

[Kevin]

Apologies for the delay in a nice dimming option on the Joggler - I've been battling (and lost) with Flash's inbuilt slider but hope a a solution is just around the corner.

How would people most like to implement dimming - are there suggestions ?

I can offer these... any more ?

1)You click on a button and a pop up appears with a slider graphic.

2) You press and hold a button and it starts to dim/bright until releases - ie a long press. A quick press still acts as a toggle.

3) As currently you can use a slider set up as 'use.last.device' which will always dim/bright/show the level of the last device addressed by a button press. This has the slight niggle that the button press causes a state toggle.

K

[chris_j_hunter]

how about implementing it like an electric car-window - length of press determines whether it moves while pressing or goes all the way, with a second press stopping it if it's going all the way ... and maybe a quick double press meaning fade them out, we're going out ?

PS: wonder if it would be possible to use HTML5 rather than Flash, which can be less than perfect ?

[martynwendon]

Apologies for the delay in a nice dimming option on the Joggler - I've been battling (and lost) with Flash's inbuilt slider but hope a a solution is just around the corner.

How would people most like to implement dimming - are there suggestions ?

I can offer these... any more ?

1)You click on a button and a pop up appears with a slider graphic.

2) You press and hold a button and it starts to dim/bright until releases - ie a long press. A quick press still acts as a toggle.

3) As currently you can use a slider set up as 'use.last.device' which will always dim/bright/show the level of the last device addressed by a button press. This has the slight niggle that the button press causes a state toggle.

K

My vote would be for option 1 - but could the slider be similar to how the volume slider works in the O2 music app? So you have a slider that you can "slide" but also plus / minus buttons that you can push and hold? Maybe on & off buttons at each end too?

Something like:

OFF -- |||||||||||||||||||||||||| ++ ON

An option to have the pop-up horizontal or vertical would be cool too!


Martyn

[Kevin]

PS: wonder if it would be possible to use HTML5 rather than Flash, which can be less than perfect ?

.... except it wouldn't run on the Joggler :-(

K

[BodgeIT]

My preference would be 2.
Quick press toggle long press slide, I assuming there would need to be 2 buttons, one up one down?

[Kevin]

My preference would be 2.
Quick press toggle long press slide, I assuming there would need to be 2 buttons, one up one down?

Most dimmer switches only use one button - first long press starts to brighten - a second press to dim - and they remember their last direction.

K

[Kevin]

I have previously engaged in a long battle with the Flash slider component - and it won as can be seen by my current abysmal offering :-( . I'm hopeful of having a better graphic soon and then I'll revisit option 1) again.

ITMT I have implemented option 2. Any long press and hold over 400mS starts a dim or bright ramp and I have played with timings that work well for me but will be configurable in the XML to suit whatever technology of xAP dimmers you have. The key is to set dim steps and number of messages per second that provide realtime feedback from the light. If your technology is slow to react (eg X10) this approach will likely not be very satisfactory at all although you'll have only 16 levels.

For me using C-Bus I'm finding that 10 level changes per second (100mS timer) allows reaction realtime i.e. the light has reacted and the Joggler updated the level before the next xAP command is sent. This means that when you take your finger off the button it stops where it is. I am using 2% level changes so 5 secs for 0-100%. IDRAtek and IHC both seem happy at this speed and I suspect DMX and Dynalite will be too but I suspect other systems - say RF or X10 based , will need to be slower.

Actually with C-Bus this isn't the way to do this at all. What should happen is that the long press issues a 'start ramp over 5 secs' command and then the release cancels it, which uses only 2 xAP commands instead of maybe 50 ! It is also a much smoother ramp using 256 step levels. So I'll look at implementing such a mechanism for those lighting systems that support ramp and ramp cancel commands.

K