Ice Tube GPS Mod

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jarchie
 
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Re: Ice Tube GPS Mod

Post by jarchie »

ukewarrior wrote:With wbp and jarchie's help, I now have all three of my clocks running.
Awesome! I'll look forward to the video. :-)

I didn't think of this before, but if you are switching among different firmwares, you can change the button scheme in xmas back to the Adafruit scheme, but that's a compile-time option. I managed to convince myself that button functionality is a hardware option that belonged in config.h, but there are also good arguments that this is a user preference and belongs in the menus. But if the menus had an option for Adafruit/xmas buttons, users might change it without knowing the alternative button scheme--that could happen by accident or if they just wanted to try the option to see what it did. But after changing the button scheme, users would need to figure out a different button scheme to change the option back. Or worse yet, they might think the clock was broken. Not ideal. So I'm not happy with that particular option being compile-time, but I would be equally unhappy with that option being in the menus.

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phild13
 
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Re: Ice Tube GPS Mod

Post by phild13 »

I think you should leave your firmwares button function style as a compile time option. I really like your way of using the buttons. I think it is much better than the standard Adafruit button operation. Yours is much more intuitive and easier to remember. Heck, even I can remember it. :)

I would agree that it could cause issues for end users if the option is put into a menu.

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jarchie
 
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Re: Ice Tube GPS Mod

Post by jarchie »

PhilD13 wrote:I think you should leave your firmwares button function style as a compile time option.
Thank you for the feedback. After thinking about this for a while, I agree. Although I'm not happy with the button style being a compile-time option, I do think it would be worse as a menu-configurable option. So I'll stay with the lesser of two evils.

And xmas is geared toward hackers who are comfortable with complexity. There are lots of compile-time and menu-configurable options, and requiring users to recompile xmas to customize certain options seems consistent with that.

Besides, there are already superb alternative firmwares without extensive compile-time options, my two favorites being written by Jeremy Fitzhardinge (jgsf) and William Phelps (wbp). Those are both fantastic choices for anyone who prefers an intermediate level of complexity, features, and hardware support (i.e., somewhere between the official firmware and xmas). Jeremy's firmware is the simpler of the two.

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jarchie
 
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Re: Ice Tube GPS Mod

Post by jarchie »

jarchie wrote:I'm not aware of open hardware projects with that tube, but I have seen some prebuilt designs on eBay. I do know that William has done some work on another awesome VFD clock. Perhaps he will chime in.
Okay... so.... The comment above was my not-so-subtle attempt to get William back into this discussion, but right now, I'm pretty sure I've offended him beyond remedy. I do apologize for that, especially because he has helped numerous users on the Adafruit forums and certainly done his bit in open firmware development. I have the greatest respect for William.

Regardless of my behavior, William's work is definitely worth a look. In a personal correspondence, he described writing a (the?) firmware for the Akafugu VFD. I've seen that project, and it it is definitely worth checking out!

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