Two Proposed Enhancements

gtj0

I'd like to propose 2 enhancements...

I'm used to "process control" colors telling me what current states are and I always get confused by seeing the current temp buttons always being red. How about green if the temp is within 1% of the target, yellow if it's between say 3% and 1% and red if it's more than 3%?

The number of macros on the control page also seems a little small at 4, especially when 2 of them (for me anyway) are ATX ON and ATX OFF. I was thinking that, if the screen width is >= 800 and there's enough room after the heaters/tools are drawn, display 2 columns of 4 and populate rows first so if you have paired macros, like ATX ON and ATX OFF, they show next to each other. Now this does presuppose that the macro names are short enough so maybe a setup button for "Compact Macros" or something could be added so no one is forced to use the new layout.

Actually, I suppose there could be a button to select the temp color scheme as well.

Thoughts? If these make sense to folks, I actually have time to make the changes and give @dc42 github pull requests for them.

Dougal1957

@gtj0 but what if you have 5 or even 6 tools defined with there own heaters then you run out of available space!

dc42

Yes the issue is space when there are a lot of tool heaters. I plan to change the display so that only the temperatures of the current tool are displayed on the Control page, and the others are accessible on another page or on a popup.

gtj0

Yeah, if there's no space, there's no space and the macros are the lowest priority with or without my change.

@dc42 should I wait for your re-work or just check for the available space and draw as many columns as will fit?

dc42

It's likely to be several months before I have time to make those changes, so I suggest you go ahead.

gtj0

Here are some screen shots of the new colors...

Temps are green when they're within 1% of either the active or standby temp (whichever state the heater is in).
If the heater is in active state, the active set temp will be green and the standby temp will be grey. If the heater is in standby state, the reverse will be shown. If the heater is off, both set temps will be grey and the actual temp will have the default background.

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Temps are yellow if they are within 3% of the set temp but > 1%.
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And red if they are >3%.
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I'm open to dark theme colors. Here's what I have set now...
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Also, right now the trigger points are 1% and 3%. Should they be different? Should they be absolutes instead (>1 deg, >5 deg)?
Different for bed and tools?

I really don't want to create a bunch of configuration settings if I can help it so agreeing on colors and trigger points would help a lot.

gtj0

@dc42 : I sent you a pull request for the temperature color changes.

gtj0

Here's an updated dark-theme screenshot. The colors look a bit better.
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Qdeathstar

Looks pretty sweet.

Phaedrux

Is 3% too large of a range for high temp printing? If I'm printing polycarbonate at 310c that's almost 10 degrees variance.

A percentage based scale will vary with printing temp creating a non linear scale. I think most heaters in a PID loop are probably going to be pretty tight throughout the range of temps, so perhaps absolute degrees would be better?

My temps are usually within 3c, anything more than that would be notable. So maybe an absolute range of <2c for green, and maybe 2-5c for yellow, >6c for red?

Ideally people would be able to configure their own ranges, but that's not likely trivial to implement.

I'm all about at-a-glance information, so having some responsive colour coding would be nice. Great work by the way!

gtj0

@qdeathstar Thanks!

@Phaedrux Yeah I was thinking more about. I'm going to change it to <= 2C for green <=5 for yellow and >5 for red.

I'll post a binary for the 5i/7i shortly. I can build the others but I can't test them and I don't want anybody's panel getting messed up. I'll leave those for @dc42's release.

gtj0

Here's an unofficial bin file for the 5i/7i.
https://github.com/gtjoseph/PanelDueFirmware/blob/master-bin/Release-5.0i-7.0i/PanelDueFirmware-5.0i-7.0i.bin

Here's where I'm doing the work...
https://github.com/gtjoseph/PanelDueFirmware/tree/master

Phaedrux

I'd test it on a 7" v2 panel due if you provided the build.

mloidl

Hi @gtj0,

Installed it on my 4.3 PanelDue and it looks very promising.
I've not done prints so far, but already changed some temperatures.

Hopefully your change is part of the next version.

wilriker

@gtj0 Great work! I do not (yet) own a PanelDue but I also support the idea of having colors represent specific states.
Also I am a very big fan of dark themes, so again.

You mentioned PanelDue 5i. Where can I get the integrated version with 5"? I know I heard of this once but I cannot find it anymore.

gtj0

@phaedrux https://github.com/gtjoseph/PanelDueFirmware/blob/master-bin/Release-7.0/PanelDueFirmware-v2-7.0.bin

@mloidl Thanks for testing

@wilriker Thanks! Unfortunately, I'm not sure where the 5i can be obtained from, sorry.

T3P3Tony

@gtj0 @wilriker not yet released but designed. Same as the 7i just in the 5 LCD size.

gtj0

I just pushed a pull request up to @dc42 for the multiple macro columns. Here's a pic of how it looks...
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There can now be 2 columns of 4, 1 column of 4 or none at all depending on the number of tools.

David, there are now 6 commits in that pull request.

gtj0

Just FYI... I pushed another commit up to @dc42 to fix some issues in the width and columns calculations. The the maximum number of columns is now 4 and I added a setup button so you can select between auto calculating the number of columns and setting them explicitly to 0 - 4.

@dc42 : Any idea when you'll be able to look at that pull request? It now has 7 commits in it.

dc42

@gtj0 said in Two Proposed Enhancements:

@dc42 : Any idea when you'll be able to look at that pull request? It now has 7 commits in it.

Hard to say, because I am working to tight deadlines for the TCT show.