Xbox control: Feature requests and ideas

[alanbuckley]

Features requested or conceived:

• A framework to navigate between actively controlled modules (using one controller to control the features of one module at a time)
• Use of the back and start button to serve as measurement start and interrupt keys within the context of an active measurement module
• Use of bumpers to switch between tabs in the GUI
• Use of triggers to zoom in and out within an active dock widget. 

Features in progress:

• Pair parent and child measurement routines. Interrupting a parent measurement routine will also interrupt child measurement routines such as the Xbox controller readout.
• Enabling Xbox hardware component auto loading upon app initialization.

Features implemented:

• Using buttons to select or jump to active widgets within a module
• Using left stick to pan through field of view within a viewBox
• Using right stick to adjust the ROI or cursor within a viewBox

If these features are well implemented at some point, we'll have a much easier time navigating through the software and quickly eyeballing calibration attempts. Using the mouse to interact with widgets has been problematic to some degree.

[alanbuckley]

Auger microscope user interface development (Update: 4/7/16)

Remember: the xbox hardware and measurement modules must be connected and started respectively as a prerequisite to any of these features.

Features implemented:

• Active modules: Currently selected tab or measurement (by mouse or otherwise) marks the active module. Pressing left or right bumpers will switch tabs in the UI, thereby switching control to that module. This allows for rapid switching between measurement windows.
  
• xbox_controller hardware component auto-loading.
• Universal controls: 
• left and right bumpers, (LB),(RB), change the active tab and its measurement routine.
• (Back) and (Start) buttons interrupt and start active (selected) measurement routines.
• Module specific controls:
• Once the measurement routine is actively selected and then started by the (Start) button, or by mouse right-click, that module will start reading values off of the xbox measurement module.
• There will be dock items with hotkey descriptions in their labels (if updated). After starting the measurement, these hotkeys will allow a user to quickly jump between dock items, making the selected dock item active, thereby gaining control of its contents with the xbox controller.
• Left stick pans the visible area inside the viewBox
• Right stick moves the ROI or cursor.
• Discarded features:

• Pair parent and child measurement routines

• No longer necessary, however, connecting xbox_controller hardware component and then starting the xbcontrol_mc module must be done as a first step before the controller can be used in the app.

All of the above features have been implemented.

[alanbuckley]

Requested features (Auger):

• Focus wobble
  
• Wobble amplitude

Requested features in general:

Expansion of xbox controller module to include keyboard F series hotkeys in its pygame/pyqtgraph based polling routine.

This can also be done through Qt key bindings which have the benefit of being installed into a potential module menu bar.

Fulfilled requests (Auger):

• Xbox triggers allow for zoom capabilities within active dockWidget (cursor centered)
• Aperture align dockWidget
  
• Proportional crosshair ROI sensitivity
• (for purposes of fine and coarse adjustment)
• When zoomed in, the cursor should move at a reasonable rate for the given viewbox range.
• Reduction of size/removal of auto-scaling for all fields showing array quantities (SEM dockWidget)