Proposal: Create an Extensible Input System

[istareatscreens]

Issue:

• Current version only supports AdxController. It would be nice to be able to support any controller API easily or Input device. Furthermore, with a less coupled system it will allow for easier refinement/extension of the input system for better performance.

Proposal:

• Create an IOManager that takes connection Objects e.g. AdxTouchPanel that extend a specific DeviceInterface that are decoupled from the project itself. IOManager will hold all active connected devices and manage their interaction via EventPattern (callbacks). Writes are done in a generic way by device type with generic operation specifications
• Create DeviceInterface that specifies specific connection properties intrinsic to all devices, e.g. HID, IO4, COM and handles interpretation of input data from the device. As well as has baked in commands to send to the device (e.g. make button 1 turn red)
• Create ConnectionInterface that specifies the generic initial connection logic, polling loop/interrupt. E.g. Generic COM, HID or IO4 input output handling. It would be passed a concrete DeviceInterface object via IOManager to initialize connection. Optional: Make the input system a package with a separate unity project for controller input development e.g. implementing DeviceInterface concrete classes Optional: Setup a plugin interface for loading concrete implementations of DeviceInterfaces from DLL

Engineering Notes:

DeviceInterface would include:

• Connection Properties - (ConnectionTypeEnum (IO4, HID, COM), baudrate....)
• Bootstrap <- execute connection write operations
• ReadData : private - Use Callbacks injected into IOManager to send events (decoupling event handling from device)
• ExecuteWrite(EnumFunction) <- Execute specific write operations. E.g. Turn LED red, can be DeviceType specific

IOManager would include:

• Map < DeviceType : ConnectioInterface >
• Callbacks < DeviceType : (OperationEnum, EventTargetEnum, EventActionEnum): void > // where EventTargetEnum would be A1, EventActionEnum would be something like On, Off
• ConnectDevice
• DisconnectDevice
• ErrorCallbacks e.g. register events on device connection errors or failures to connect

ConnectionInterface would include (mainly holds the boilerplate logic for handling the connection and shuttling input data to the concrete DeviceInterface):

• Disconnect
• Connect
• Write
• Read

Comments:

I have already written an extremely rough POC version of this system so I would like to gauge your interest in said project before I invest time into it. If you are interested I would likely need some assistance integrating it into your project.

If you aren't interested in such an implementation feel free to delete this issue I will not take offense

[LeZi9916]

good proposal but we wont put effort into implementing it for the time being, and you are welcome to submit new changes

[LingFeng-bbben]

Great!! In case you wanna some info about the light control method on the big iPod, I can email you the files.

[winooxx]

Sounds good if you don't mind sharing your POC? I'm looking to upgrade the old Unity Input Manager to the new Input System to better accommodate more controllers.

[istareatscreens]

Thank you for your responses and support :)

Sounds good if you don't mind sharing your POC? I'm looking to upgrade the old Unity Input Manager to the new Input System to better accommodate more controllers.

I will spend this weekend refining my POC and post a link to it then. There is a lot I need to change so it fits the proposal more closely.

Great!! In case you wanna some info about the light control method on the big iPod, I can email you the files.

Maybe not right away but in the near future this would be super helpful thanks

Update (2024-09-15):

Made progress on it this weekend but didn't end up finishing. Will hopefully have a POC in the next couple of days. Sorry for the delay.

[LingFeng-bbben]

https://github.com/Sucareto/Mai2Touch/tree/main This should be helpful

[istareatscreens]

Hey so I haven't really complete the POC it is still very much a WIP.

That being said I have the rough untested structure down, I will keep working on it and hopefully will have something that works by the end of the upcoming weekend. So you may want to hold off until then to view it but the general idea is there I think.

I still need to:

• add an event system to handle disconnects or errors
• write the IOManager
• write the ConnectionFactory
• setup HID and IO4 inputs, and finish writing the logic for touch input.
• finish setting up the test environment.
• Test the code and optimize

It is taking longer because I just basically started over from scratch since my original POC was too different from the proposal.

Also, I don't care about ownership of this code or credit. So when I am finished if you want to re-upload the repo or I can combine it with this project I would be totally fine with that. Given you are still interested after viewing the code.

Unity Package (Actual code) https://github.com/istareatscreens/MychIO Test environment (Unity Project that uses the package) https://github.com/istareatscreens/MychIODev

[winooxx]

Don't worry about it. We all appreciate and value your hard work.

[istareatscreens]

Hey just an update, I got the touch panel reading efficiently. I am now working on HID/IO4 support for button ring and soon the LEDs.

(Edited because I saw you posted LED information :) )

I am going to push to have something that can be integrated soon.

Thank you for your patience.