Entry of messages using rotary encoder

camilstaps / SODA-POP-source

Source of the SODA POP rig

GNU General Public License v3.0

3 stars 1 forks source link

Entry of messages using rotary encoder #9

Open vk3il opened 7 years ago

vk3il commented 7 years ago

This may not be practical but...I find it quite difficult to enter messages into the memory using the paddle - it's very easy to make a mistake and have to enter it multiple times to get it correct. Given the unit has a rotary encoder, could we use that to enter (or edit) messages. i.e select letter/number/punctuation with the encoder and use the encoder button to enter the character. Perhaps use one of the other buttons as a back space key.

Tricky bit is representing all the characters with 7 segment display. However if you use 2 digits, you can probably get a reasonable representation of most of them. Thoughts?

camilstaps commented 7 years ago

Joining two digits together in one character is not very clear, I think, but we could approximate all characters using one digit and add CW enunciation while rotating the encoder.

camilstaps commented 7 years ago

Would either or both of the following make it easier as well? It would be easier to implement than entering the messages with the rotary encoder.

Longer pauses before a character is considered done / before a word space is detected.
The possibility, using for example the RIT switch, to discard the last character (kind of like a back space). The unit could enunciate the last one or two characters before the removed character. So, when you want to enter cqcqcqde pd7lol it could be like: cqcqy (mistake) - press RIT, the rig enunciates q or cq, and you continue to enter cqde pd7lol.

vk3il commented 7 years ago

I think longer pauses would definitely help. I have found that it's not so much erroneous character entry itself, but rather where I don't leave quite enough space between characters or words, things get run together and for example the first letter of a new word ends up at the end of the previous word. Maybe make the pause lengths required customizable. Editing would be good too, but you don't actually know whether there's a problem with spacing until you play the message back for review. It would be good to be able to interrupt playback and edit rather than re-enter the whole message.

camilstaps commented 7 years ago

Just to check: have you seen that the display now flashes after a character space (and again after a word space) during message entry? I also had some issues with timing at first, but with that change (and increasing the time you have for entering) it became better.

But, it shouldn't take too much effort to increase this delay. Editing is possible but will take more effort to program.

vk3il commented 7 years ago

Had a play with the entry scheme again with the longer delays and flashes after letters and words and agree it's easier. Might be good to flash different things for letters and words to help remind which is which. Probably OK as is for now.