I notice at first date I get my Surface RT that it didn't use regular trick as magnetic switch. But until now I didn't get how it work. Is it mechanic to detect in foldable area, accelerometer or gyroscope in it?
hisoft said:
I notice at first date I get my Surface RT that it didn't use regular trick as magnetic switch. But until now I didn't get how it work. Is it mechanic to detect in foldable area, accelerometer or gyroscope in it?
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I tried t work this one out myself, and I came to two conclusions,
1. There is a magnet on the left wrist rest. ( this could also keep the cover from opening)
2. Near the connector, there is a little notch in the design of the cover, and I believe this could be a trigger point for the keyboard, I imagine it's like two metal connector touching to provide power to the cover.
These are just theories, if I am wrong I would like to know how this works.
Dane
Magnet based switching would not have worked in certain configurations such as if you prop your surface up on the kickstand to watch a movie and flip the keyboard underneath out of the way, in this setup the keys would be face down and liable to cause input but you dont want them to. The notch would also likely be unreliable for this reason also.
Instead it has been confirmed by microsoft somewhere that there is actually a second accelerometer in the keyboard base (no gyroscope or magnetometer though) which can be used to determine the angle of the keyboard alone, combined with the angle reported by the tablet accelerometer you can work out if the keyboard is in a position in which it can be used or whether to dim the backlight etc. It would also be incredibly easy for MS to integrate this into their existing system, they keyboard and touchpad are both i2c devices, most accelerometers on the market support i2c, all windows 8 tablets to meet certification must use i2c sensors, i2c devices can be daisy chained so a tablet only needs one i2c "port" on its CPU and you can daisy chain a ridiculous number of devices off of it, I think by default 255 but you can then have i2c expanders ontop of that. Dead easy to daisy chain a cheap accelerometer off of the i2c bus already in that cover.
If there is indeed a magnet, this alone could well be used as a more reliable screen lock than accelerometer data alone though, it may well be used for that. Accelerometers by nature are quite noisy and return alot of dodgy data so if you only used accelerometer data for locking the screen in which the 2 sensors report that the keyboard is open at a 15 degree angle and it wont lock for instance. A magnet would also be compatible with 3rd party folio cases.
There's a magnet (you can find it with a little trouble using anything sufficiently magnetic) but it's very weak. It can't even be properly said to hold the cover closed. Given the accelerometer in the keyboard, I'm not entirely sure why they bothered.
GoodDayToDie said:
There's a magnet (you can find it with a little trouble using anything sufficiently magnetic) but it's very weak. It can't even be properly said to hold the cover closed. Given the accelerometer in the keyboard, I'm not entirely sure why they bothered.
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accelerometers are highly noisy sensors. Most apps and such using them filter a range of 10 inputs out into 1 and use that as a more realistic average. Even then it wont be 100% correct and with 2 sensors each with their own inaccuracy, which is also amplified when the tablet is moving your likely to have a scenario where the tablet thinks its keyboard is not fully closed, unlocks itself and starts draining a teeny bit of battery in your bag as you ride the subway to work and the train is hurtling around a corner or something.
With a bit of filtering they are probably clean enough sensors that you could fairly reliably detect the screen being closed but there is still that chance of it over-riding itself.
Also the magnet means that 3rd party companies can make a leather folio case with a magnet in it for instance
OK. Thank Dane Reynolds, SixSixSevenSeven and GoodDayToDie for information. I didn't notice before that cover have magnet (except for it connector). I don't even think the will place it in the middle of cover. Now I checked and found it. I can use regular magnet to turn screen on and off in it area. Then I think it only regular magnetic switch that only work when cover were connected. (because the cover cannot turn screen on or off when connector didn't connect) Maybe this is for power saver by avoid calculate accelerometer data all the time even when in sleep mode.
Well, it's a combo of accelerometer and the magnet. They both don't have the same function. As far as I know, usually magnets are used to turn the screen on and off and then the accelerometer is probably used for the keyboard and stuff. The only reason I can say that the magnets don't work without connecting is that it's a really tiny magnet, but an electromagnet maybe. Anyways, that's just my take on it. I didn't do any research or anything so yeah.
Related
can the G1 calculate surface area of a point touching it? or would it be possible to do that? it seems like it could work, but i'm not sure lol or else i wouldn't be asking this.
the reason i'm asking this is, we can make apps that emulate "pressure" so if someone barely taps the phone, it will have less surface area, and if someone presses the phone hard, it will have more surface area, there could be A LOT of things done with it
Don't see why not being it has been shown to be able to handle multi-touch. I agree though... would have many possible applications
yeah it could be used for games and such where u could see how fast you can match the weight on a weighing scale of some sort. i'm just saying it should be easy since we've seen multitouch on the phone. this would have an extra benefit over the iphone.
People are always asking for scales on touch screen devices and never get them.
Or finger painting with pressure driven line width or opacity!
Lieu10ant said:
yeah it could be used for games and such where u could see how fast you can match the weight on a weighing scale of some sort. i'm just saying it should be easy since we've seen multitouch on the phone. this would have an extra benefit over the iphone.
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The scale idea wouldn't work on a capacitive screen. The sensor detects the area being touched and then approximates the center. The idea of a "pressure sensor" would have to adjust based on variances from the initial contact. My thumb would make a much bigger initial contact than my pinkey, that doesn't mean I'd be pushing any harder.
but it is basically inferred that everyone will be using their thumbs for these types of apps so it wouldn't matter. but HEY guess what? its basically proven that the G1 CAN infact determine "pressure"!! i've had this app for a while now, but i just recently opened it up again to mess with it, and to my surprise, i noticed that the app could tell how much "pressure" i was puttin on the screen. now i dont know if its actual pressure its calculating, or if its the surface area it is calculating, but it sure as hell knows the difference between a light, medium, and hard press.
the app is called BouncingBall in the games section (it would definately be the last place i would see a pressure sensitive app lol) it may seem like such a dull app (no offence) but it really is a great concept. try it out. you just click the screen, and a ball appears where you tapped the screen, and depending on how hard you tap the screen, the size of the balls differentiate. and i know it isn't a "how long you held the screen" type of thing, because i pressed the screen pretty hard a couple times very quickly. like a quick hard jab with my thumb lol. and the ball that was created was large. but anyways, test it out.
I'm not sure if pressure data is made available/enabled in Android, but the synaptics touchscreen and driver definitely do support pressure detection. Check out the driver in git:
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=ke...drivers/input/touchscreen/synaptics_i2c_rmi.c
and search for ABS_PRESSURE. Technically it's a misnomer as capacitive sensors don't deform or directly measure pressure in any way. "Pressure" is actually the change in capacitance as a finger (or any other object) approaches the touchscreen. It is used by the driver to determine thresholds for which the touchscreen should signal the system finger_down and finger_up events. Since no contact is needed to measure a capacitance change, the sensor may actually report a change in "pressure" even before the finger has touched the screen.
Still, I don't think this would be a very good idea for use as a user input. One reason is that everyone's physiology is different. My thumb lightly touching the screen may give a value of 10, whereas your thumb lightly touching the screen could give a value of 20. Another reason is that I don't think it would be very wise to encourage users to be liberally applying pressure to the screen.
So I was thinking about the issue of palm wrap. I think the implementation of it would be fairly simple. This would probably require root access, but I digress.
You would basically disregard any input happening within 1/8" - 1/4" on the border of the screen. Well not any inputs, but any prolonged inputs. Like the inputs that happen when your fingers hang off the edge of the screen, or the palm of your hand grazing the screen when you try to press something with your thumb.
There are very few programs that use the full screen, especially near the edges. If there are it would just be a matter of putting the anti-registration on hold when the app is in the foreground.
You could even create a setting for "fat" fingers and "slim" fingers. The fatter the finger, the further out you would disregard inputs from there.
The caveat being that you have to have it running on the system level. Now that google has finally added multi touch support on their apps, I wouldn't be surprised if you have access to input information on the system level.
(I know jack about making programs on adroid, but the rum is helping my mind think)
What do you guys think?
I haven't had palm wrap problems since I bought my seidio innocase. Adds a little beef to the unit as a whole (just a little, nothing major) but keeps my palm off the edges of the screen.
i like this idea simply because I do not want to buy any sort of case for the phone
Good idea my friend.
Just out of curiosity, does everyone here hold there phone in one hand and use the other to input anything? Because I can't see any palmwrap problem unless I do this.
I almost exclusively use my nexus with one hand doing inputs with my thumb if I'm not in landscape mode and I've never had any problems with palm wrap (I might be misunderstanding the concept completely though, so feel free to correct me).
I guess it depends on the length of your fingers the base of my thumb is what mostly affects one handed use for me.
JHaste said:
i like this idea simply because I do not want to buy any sort of case for the phone
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[off-topic] That is 'not' a good road to follow...get one of the soft cases or atleast the skins that you dont even notice it (personally I bought THIS and its amazing, has amazing 'grip' and it fits perfectly, unnoticeable).
[/off-topic]
I dont seem to have this problem either. But it could be helpful to others with bigger hands maybe?
I have this problem sometimes and it is annoying as heck. I don't even think you need to go to all that trouble to fix it. I think just enabling multitouch on the dexktop might fix it. Don't know how difficult that would be though.
Hey everyone,
I'm not sure how many of you are aware of this product but I just found it on sale at Canadian Tire here in Canada and I'm very impressed. It's just so convenient.. I can't believe I haven't seen this before. I am amazed by it, honestly.
http://www.tetrax.com/us
Look at the XWAY and FIXWAY primarily. I purchased the XWAY at Canadian Tire for $30 (regular $50). A little expensive compared to what I am used to, but I am very happy with it so far.
The reasons I like this solution:
Works with any type of device
Sturdy and secure. Even holds me 5" GPS (though I prefer to use Google Navigation )
Allows for the keyboard to be open on most (if not all) qwerty phones
Allows for portrait and landscape rotation
Is not visible when device is on the mount
Is very small and unobtrusive when device is not on the mount
There are no clips or snaps to fiddle with, just slide off the device
You can use this with 4 devices out-of-the-box as it comes with 4 different sized magnetic pads for your devices
This does not introduce a magnetic field to yoru device (the magnet is broken into 4 and arranged intelligently)
The negative things I've discovered about this solution:
You need a magnetic pad on each device you want to use
The XWAY can be accidentally pulled off the vent if you yank the device straight off of mount instead of sliding it off
Depending on your car vents, the angle that the device is pointed might not be ideal
I will post pix tomorrow if anyone is interested! The site has quite a few to look at until then.
Here's some pix!
I don't have photos of it in the car quite yet. I'll try to get some tomorrow morning.
Today I found the FIXWAY at BestBuy and decided that I might like that better since it can be positioned in a better spot in my car. My cars vents are not ideal since the steering wheel covers part of the screen when mounted there. However, even so, the XWAY has been by far the best car mount I've ever seen or used. The FIXWAY should be even better (for my particular car).
I also discovered that the FIXWAY doesn't actually get fixed to the car itself as I thought, but instead it uses a square magnet which you fix to your car. It actually comes with 2 of these in case you want to use this in 2 cars. Like the metal button that you stick to the phone, the square metal that goes on the car has 3M adhesive on the back. It's super strong, works great.
Anyway here's some photos of both the XWAY and FIXWAY I took in my living room.
Very interesting. But, in my feeling, the lack is that we can't orientate the phone ...
I guess it depends how your car's dashboard is angled. Mine faces me just fine and the videos I've seen it seems like most work out fine
And for rotation, you can rotate it any which way before or after your phone is mounted.
I have had the xway for about 2 months now and I love it. If you are attaching it to the vents their is really no reason to have to angle the phone. I agree that if you have some weird vent configuration it may be an issue.
check this - Toyota Avensis
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=9979403&postcount=74
hudy said:
check this - Toyota Avensis
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=9979403&postcount=74
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Click to collapse
Wow I guess I didn't so the best job at reading through that thread! I even posted a link from there to here on page 11. Good pix though! Thanks
Here are some pix of the FIXWAY in the car without the phone on it (all I had to take the pix was the phone). One of these days I'll remember to bring out the camera..
Oh, and good news... It seems that you can actually angle/tilt the phone with the FIXWAY. It must be the shape of the magnet or something, and the fact that the 'X' is rubber, I am able to tilt it and it holds in place. Not a lot, but enough that I was able to cut down on some glare on the drive home
That's pretty cool, And I actually lik the blob on the back of the phone
Seconded Mac, but I would have to take my soft shell off...........................
Did your DZ battery door come stock with the wording "With Google" on it ?
Smartenup said:
Seconded Mac, but I would have to take my soft shell off...........................
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Click to collapse
It should stick to any shell/case just fine I would think?
For some years I use some velcro (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velcro). The soft side on my phone, lighter. The hard side on the dash.
Costs almost nothing. Works very well, except in the summer when it is very hot (than the glue gets sticky)
AZ2ENVY said:
Did your DZ battery door come stock with the wording "With Google" on it ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mine did
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA Premium App
FINALLY took some photos.
I am still very much in love with this thing. My whole family has'em now, which is awesome because whenever I drive any of their cars I'm set
Is it weird that it reminds me of a tie fighter?
Thanks for the recommendation and all the pictures. Difficult to find a mount that doesn't interfere with the camera and/or volume buttons.
Heya folks..
We are talking about software all day long but...how well do you know your device physically speaking? For example I have no idea where, on which sides, are placed variuous antennas! Knowing such things could give us an idea on how to place and manage our devices in order to get better gps signal, wifi signal and stuffs like this. Someone that knows??
Another question is about the screen...It's capacitive, meaning finger only activated. But can we say that is similar to laptop's touchpad? Because on touchpad you can use the negative pole of a battery instead of your finger. And if you use an AA or AAA battery you'll have more precision.
One thing that bothers me on capacitive screens is that it functions only with a certain contact surface between your finger and the screen. And this surface is rather big for drawing - yes I know, O3D it's not made for drawing but still, and for certain games like Link or ConstructX, in which you must see what's under the finger and you must have precision. On this matter : resistive 1 capacitive 0
Do you know any solutionthat can give a 1 mm surface point so I can do things better. I must say that the real principle on which capacitive screen works I don't know it... Wait, google search... http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=touch-screens-redefine-the-market&thumbs=horizontal&photo_id=DC213CD9-A5B7-8F67-777113C8AC5D167D
So in theory can't get a smaller surface beyond the grid's size formed by the electrodes' intersections. Any idea?
Thanks and have a pleasant Sunday...
Hope this helps: http://www.mediafire.com/view/?c6yvr41nbyurvb2
Ok thanks
pandaball said:
Hope this helps: http://www.mediafire.com/view/?c6yvr41nbyurvb2
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Click to collapse
As far as I can tell... the GPS antenna / in fact I think that this is universal for all GPS, Wifi, Bluetooth, is a little metal cube placed at the upper left corner of the phone, between the USB port and the headphones' jack. So the position has no importance upright or in landscape mode
Hi,
I've found on my Note 10.1 that the accuracy of the S-Pen gets worse near the edges of the display. At the very edges it's off by about 1 mm or slightly more. I can't say it's really caused any problems but I'm wondering if this is normal and if there's any method to better calibrate it?
I've been having the same issue, or at least I noticed it recently...
Does anyone know anything about this problem?
This has been bothering me a lot lately, especially since i use my Note for note taking. Bump in case someone knows the solution.
Sent from my GT-N8013 using xda premium
Here's the response from Samsung support:
Thank you for contacting Samsung Customer Care.
We understand that while using the S pen near edges it looses accuracy.
We are sorry to hear that.
Please try replacing the S pen tip to isolate and fix the issue.
It is not possible to calibrate the digitizer.
Thank you for contacting Samsung.
Kind regards,
Steve
Samsung Customer Care
http://www.samsung.com/ca
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I''''ve found the S-Pen (as viewed by enabling the hovering pointer) loses accuracy the closer to the edge of the screen the pen is used. At the edges it is off by at least 1 mm. About 1 cm in from the edges the accuracy is good.
Is this a defect in my unit or are they all like this? is there any way to recalibrate the digitizer to improve accuracy?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried changing the tip with both types of tips supplied with the tablet and as expected it had no effect. Note, also, how utterly useless Samsung email support is. The only way to reply is through a link which sends you to a contact form to submit a new email from scratch. There's no incident number or any way to establish continuity.
In any case, I happened to be at a Microsoft store yesterday and played a bit with Samsung's ACTIV (sp?) pro Windows 8 tablet which has the same s-pen as the Note 10.1. What I noticed immediately is it behaves exactly like my tablet: the digitizer loses accuracy both when tilting the pen and especially when the pen is near the edges of the display. The amount of inaccuracy is just about the same too, about 1 mm near the edge.
So I suspect this may be a limitation of the technology or at least the technology as it's being used by Samsung (I'm surprised Wacom's stuff is not more accurate). I'd be particularly interested if anyone is NOT seeing this.
It also seems silly that the display cannot be recalibrated or the driver does not support remapping. This seems like something that should be pretty easy to implement.
On the positive side, I can't say that I've experienced any real accuracy problems when in actual use. Probably I don't tend to write so close to the edge where it might be an issue. It's more an annoyance that the cursor doesn't quite match the tip. It's actually less annoying than having my hand trigger s-note's zoom or the notification drawer every time I try to write something.
Too bad, samsung support is horrible. For me this problem is pretty annoying since I tend to write until the VERY edge (just like I do in real paper), so I guess I'll have to change my habits lol.
P.S: It's good to know that is not my faulty tablet, but something "normal" in wacom devices...
nahuelarg86 said:
Too bad, samsung support is horrible. For me this problem is pretty annoying since I tend to write until the VERY edge (just like I do in real paper), so I guess I'll have to change my habits lol.
P.S: It's good to know that is not my faulty tablet, but something "normal" in wacom devices...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, it is annoying. I wonder if there's any dev we can convince to write a remapping layer to fix this issue.
tmagritte said:
Here's the response from Samsung support:
I tried changing the tip with both types of tips supplied with the tablet and as expected it had no effect. Note, also, how utterly useless Samsung email support is. The only way to reply is through a link which sends you to a contact form to submit a new email from scratch. There's no incident number or any way to establish continuity.
In any case, I happened to be at a Microsoft store yesterday and played a bit with Samsung's ACTIV (sp?) pro Windows 8 tablet which has the same s-pen as the Note 10.1. What I noticed immediately is it behaves exactly like my tablet: the digitizer loses accuracy both when tilting the pen and especially when the pen is near the edges of the display. The amount of inaccuracy is just about the same too, about 1 mm near the edge.
So I suspect this may be a limitation of the technology or at least the technology as it's being used by Samsung (I'm surprised Wacom's stuff is not more accurate). I'd be particularly interested if anyone is NOT seeing this.
It also seems silly that the display cannot be recalibrated or the driver does not support remapping. This seems like something that should be pretty easy to implement.
On the positive side, I can't say that I've experienced any real accuracy problems when in actual use. Probably I don't tend to write so close to the edge where it might be an issue. It's more an annoyance that the cursor doesn't quite match the tip. It's actually less annoying than having my hand trigger s-note's zoom or the notification drawer every time I try to write something.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wouldn't expect much help from a company that hires people who don't know the difference between "loses" and "looses". That's sad.
Sent from my GT-N8013 using xda app-developers app
Do you use magnet type cover? Try to remove it and see if the problem fixed
Sent from my GT-N8000 using xda premium
Hi to all. I am having a note 2, it has the same s pen as all the note series... i had that problem but it fixed when i did update! Try to go on developers options and check 'show pointer location' to check if the problem is the spen or the software.
I also notices that when used near the camera there is a great loss of accuracy .... and good to know that's not hte fault of my Note:good:
Scorpion_Ibm said:
I also notices that when used near the camera there is a great loss of accuracy .... and good to know that's not hte fault of my Note:good:
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Click to collapse
Mine just works fine, even on the ledges! Sometimes, but sometimes when the accelerometer is uncalibrated the S-Pen just stop responding well. I calibrate the accelerometer using this game https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fgol.HungrySharkEvolution Just go on Options/Change to tilt control(If necessary)/Calibrate
It worked for me!
Post results!
kokero said:
Mine just works fine, even on the ledges! Sometimes, but sometimes when the accelerometer is uncalibrated the S-Pen just stop responding well. I calibrate the accelerometer using this game https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fgol.HungrySharkEvolution Just go on Options/Change to tilt control(If necessary)/Calibrate
It worked for me!
Post results!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for trying to help .... the slight offset near the edges is no problem for me but i had a relatively bigger offset near the top (near the cameras) but that appeared to be due to the magnetic part in the book cover i had what an idiot .. i thought the camera had magnetic parts that do this and forgot the magnet of my book cover
So now what i really have is the offset near the edges
For me it's not an overall offset issue but just near the edges where it makes taking notes, sketching particularly difficult. It's very frustrating that these tablets aren't better calibrated out of box and provide no option for calibration. I'd be very surprised if this couldn't be fixed through software but would probably require support through the driver.
The other issue I have is that the drawing point only visually aligns with the tip of the pen when the pen is 90 degree from the tablet and you're looking straight down at it. Provided you hold the pen at a relatively steep angle and you angle the tablet so you're looking mostly down at it (say on your knee or a tilted stand) it's not bad. But once you deviate from that, say by putting the tablet flat on a table in front of you so you're looking at down at around 30 degrees, the deviation from where the tip appear to be and where the drawing point is becomes significant. I find this very frustrating. While I still prefer the s-pen to a passive capacitive pen, the fact I can't draw where I think I'm drawing makes it hard to work with. I've been using the tablet as my primary note taking device but I'm getting frustrated enough that I may go back to pen and paper and scanning.
It's probably not possible to fix this issue without hardware changes. Although multiple calibration profiles might reduce the effect.
I guess I'll have to wait for better hardware before I can finally live a paperless life...
tmagritte said:
For me it's not an overall offset issue but just near the edges where it makes taking notes, sketching particularly difficult. It's very frustrating that these tablets aren't better calibrated out of box and provide no option for calibration. I'd be very surprised if this couldn't be fixed through software but would probably require support through the driver.
The other issue I have is that the drawing point only visually aligns with the tip of the pen when the pen is 90 degree from the tablet and you're looking straight down at it. Provided you hold the pen at a relatively steep angle and you angle the tablet so you're looking mostly down at it (say on your knee or a tilted stand) it's not bad. But once you deviate from that, say by putting the tablet flat on a table in front of you so you're looking at down at around 30 degrees, the deviation from where the tip appear to be and where the drawing point is becomes significant. I find this very frustrating. While I still prefer the s-pen to a passive capacitive pen, the fact I can't draw where I think I'm drawing makes it hard to work with. I've been using the tablet as my primary note taking device but I'm getting frustrated enough that I may go back to pen and paper and scanning.
It's probably not possible to fix this issue without hardware changes. Although multiple calibration profiles might reduce the effect.
I guess I'll have to wait for better hardware before I can finally live a paperless life...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May be try this app with this kernel the post says that it can successfully reset the Spen callibration
Post with kernel: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2299406
App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whitedavidp.reset.spen
It was the case
wiien said:
Do you use magnet type cover? Try to remove it and see if the problem fixed
Sent from my GT-N8000 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That was it for me. The case was causing that. When I read your post I realized that my case has a keyboard and you can remove it. It stays in place with a magnet. So I removed it and it works as expected. so now I know to get it on the edges it's that. Thanks:good: