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thx1200
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Joined: 01 December 2007
Posts: 133
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| Posted: 15 April 2009 at 9:03pm | IP Logged
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It's finally here! A PocketPlayer plugin that will take advantage of your HTC Touch Diamond or Pro's wide assortment of silly sensors.
I present to you, gen_HTCSensors.dll. So far, all it does is implement the nav/zoom/scroll wheel.
GEEK SPEAK: This is more complicated than it should be because PocketPlayer and HTC both use the same window message codes. Thankfully, the WParam and LParam are different enough that I can differentiate between what is PocketPlayer and what is HTC.
Features
- The virtual wheel becomes an audio scrub wheel! Rotating your finger around the scroll/zoom wheel will skip forward or back by five seconds per "tick." A "tick" is approximately 1/8 of a turn (roughly 45 degrees). Clockwise is forward and counter-clockwise is backward.
Future Features?
- Customize scrub wheel speed and action?
- Any ideas for the G-sensor?
- Any ideas for the light sensor?
- Any ideas for the stylus in/out sensor?
Download
V2: http://www.avianwaves.com/tech/tools/pocketplayer/gen_htcsen sors2.zip
V1: http://www.avianwaves.com/tech/tools/pocketplayer/gen_htcsen sors.zip
Installation
Extract the DLL in the zip to your PocketPlayer installation folder.
Bug Reports
Please reply to this thread.
Notes
A half-turn around the wheel is approx 5 seconds (may be as much as 10, depending on your wheel). A full turn should be closer to 20-30 seconds.
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Robrecht
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Joined: 09 October 2006
Location: Belgium
Posts: 55
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| Posted: 16 April 2009 at 7:10am | IP Logged
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Brilliant project!!!
I already use the virtual wheel for scrubbing but that
took some non-user-friendly tweaking, so I'd love to see
it in a dedicated plugin.
Using the capacitive pad in other ways than just the
wheel is a great idea too. The light sensor might be used
to determine if the device is in your pocket or not,
preventing accidental 'capacitive pad' actions?
For the G-sensor: how about briefly flicking/tilting the
device left or right to skip back or forward? That would
be a handy way to avoid using the Thouch Diamond/Pro's
awkward buttons. And a longer shake to (de)activate
shuffle!
Just brainstorming here -- no idea how feasible the
implementation would be...
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defaria
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Joined: 01 April 2007
Location: United States
Posts: 112
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| Posted: 17 April 2009 at 4:15pm | IP Logged
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I think the G-sensor should sense when the HTC is moved abruptly and introduce a skip into the audio playback! Just like the old days with CD players and jogging! 
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thx1200
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Joined: 01 December 2007
Posts: 133
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| Posted: 17 April 2009 at 4:36pm | IP Logged
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Shoot. Who needs to program that? HTC phones already skip every five minutes on their own!! lol. ;-)
Can't wait to get my bluetooth receiver installed in my car so I don't have to hear that anymore!
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thx1200
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Joined: 01 December 2007
Posts: 133
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| Posted: 17 April 2009 at 4:39pm | IP Logged
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On a more serious note, I was thinking the G-Sensor will have one use, at least. I am going to add the option to mute when the phone is flipped face down. :-)
Personally, I'll never use it, but that option seems to be available in every other g-enabled app. lol
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thx1200
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Posts: 133
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| Posted: 17 April 2009 at 11:26pm | IP Logged
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I just spent all tonight trying to get gestures to work. I couldn't get it to work reliably. It would only work maybe 50% of the time at best. So I decided to download the HTC nav-pad debugging tool and found out why. The pad is really not ready for prime time. It detects presses just fine. It detects the wheel reasonably well (more on that later). It detects if you are close to or touching the center button wonderfully. It detects where your finger is on the pad... pretty badly. Actually, it's pretty innaccurate, but not too bad for gestures. The biggest problem is that the "KeyUp" variable is not updated reliably. So, most of the time, gestures just don't work at all because there's no way to know when you lifted your finger! This is probably why no official HTC apps use the capacitive pad. It might even be why the capacitive pad is gone altogether on the newer HTC phones (except for the ridiculously silly "zoom strip" on the D2 and TP2).
I remember reading about some piece of software that allowed you to map system functions to capacitive gestures a while back. I also remember lousy reviews of it. Now I know why! No fault of their own -- the pad itself just... sucks. Yet another HTC shortcoming. They have so many. I really have a love-hate relationship with this phone. It's like a really hot girlfriend who is always picking fights with you. lol.
On the bright side, I've got the wheel working better! I will have a new version uploaded shortly. I've discovered that the wheel sends messages logarithmically (sort of). So I've tried to compensate and take advantage of that.
Previously, this plugin would FF/Rew by five seconds on every "tick." First, what is new is that I ignore the first tick altogether (because that frequently happens by just touching and releasing your finger, even if you don't move it -- silly, I know). If you rotate your finger around the wheel halfway, it will FF or Rew by five seconds. If you move your finger around in a full circle, it will FF or Rew by 20 seconds (see how it's not linear?). Now, if you keep going, you'll get a rate of about 20-30 seconds per turn. If you do a quarter turn or less, nothing will happen. This prevents a lot of accidental scrubbing when trying to touch the center button or any of the other buttons. Hope you like it!
Unless somebody wants "mute on facedown" I think this might be it for this project. I like the scrub. I really do. It was worthwhile for me to code that. But if I can't do gestures (which I was really hoping I could), I don't really see anything else useful. What could the light sensor and g-sensor possibly be useful for in pocket player? Well, if somebody has an idea, please post it!
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Robrecht
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Joined: 09 October 2006
Location: Belgium
Posts: 55
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| Posted: 20 April 2009 at 3:30am | IP Logged
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Too bad... But thanks for the sophisticated scrub
function!
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Topic: [Plugin] *NEW* HTC Sensors
