Guy,
A very thoughtful perspective. It is indeed a very challenging user
interface to design. I'm sure that there will be dozens of solutions
that work on iOS and Android. Building Bluetooth into a radio and
allowing full control through it would be the gateway that needs opening.
I favor a touch enabled flat panel connected directly into the radio's
microprocessor. Everything I've done so far shows that the latency
through the serial port is a usability inhibitor. It's never going to
feel natural until it is updating visual objects within a few
milliseconds. What I'm envisioning is something like 20 to 30 objects
that are completely customizable for size, color, function and
location. The user could develop a particular layout and save it. Each
band and mode can be a different layout.
And then there is the interactive voice interface with commands like "go
to fourteen zero seven zero mode PSK", "send CQ", "answer K0DXV" or
"load contest configuration three". Might be handy to be able to just
tell you radio what to do and watch the interface change to accommodate you.
I expect that 10 years from now I'll walk into the kitchen in the
morning and say "Mr. Coffee - Make a large regular coffee". My coffee
maker will say "Right away" and the beans will start grinding. I'll
then take my coffee into the shack and say "K5 on" and a marvelous radio
will come to life...
73, Doug -- K0DXV
The real key is going to be the degree of customization available.
On 9/4/2015 3:25 PM, Guy Olinger K2AV wrote:
There will always be those that try concepts in places they have never been
used. But touchscreens have been around for a long time and a lot is known
about them. The all time great defining application for them is in
restaurants for wait staff to enter your food selection.
Repetitive operations using touchscreens require physical use research
which includes designing a mounting scheme that does not produce
physical strain under normal operation.
Normal accuracy of touch point taps has to be accommodated in screen apps.
Large tap points that appear and vanish with an appropriate logic produce
the great workplace improvements. E.g. the wait staff screens.
The stuff behind successful touchscreen apps is mind boggling, often
involving years even now decades of incremental research and program
changes. This touchscreen editor I'm using right now on my smartphone is
one such.
Any one of the list of must-do's ignored and the app is likely doomed.
Touchscreen radio? Not wishing anyone bad luck but they've bitten off quite
a piece of work. Radio ops are very repetitive in contests.
You'll never sell me a pure touch radio for contesting. Maybe a talky with
the form factor of my iPhone 6+ with a Bluetooth linked manual control and
separate Bluetooth linked amp/transmitter.
The obvious (to me anyway) touch interface is to use a smart phone app that
can also run on a tablet. Most people have already bought it and will
replace it when it breaks for dozens of unrelated needs. Don't have to
embed that cost and development into the radio. Let me use my house wifi or
Bluetooth to link to my K3. The K3 change is to provide the interface. An
internal board that listens to wifi and Bluetooth. All single chip stuff
these days.
Will be interesting to see what survives of touchscreen radio when the
latest and greatest crowd has lost interest and moved on.
73, Guy K2AV
On Friday, September 4, 2015, Bill Stravinsky via Elecraft <
[email protected]
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>> wrote:
Not sure why I needed to know about an Icom 7300 and am guessing it has a
touchscreen. Leave the touchscreens
to the smart phones, IMHO. If I had a smartphone I wouldn't have a
problem with its touchscreen. I have 3 laptops and have mice for all of
them, can't stand touchpads either. Radios should have knobs, buttons, and
switches.
I feel confident that Elecraft wouldn't go there. Let Icom and whomever
else make a radio with a touch screen.
73Bill K3WJV
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