UCCNC with a split UI

[eddius-maximus]

Heya guys, due to the placement of my computer in relation to my cnc machine, I've retrofit a gen 1 ipad mini as a little monitor and attached it close by. Currently I'm just mirroring my entire main monitor.

Ideally I'd separate the toolpath preview portion into its own separate clickable/draggable window so I could have that as the only thing in the iPad mini's screen.

I'm fairly comfortable doing custom screensets and can get myself in trouble with Python but I wasn't too sure if this requested functionality was a thing, or had already been made into a thing, or simply not possible.

[eddius-maximus]

(I shall continue posting into the void of idlers. i'm an optimist)

I spent a pretty decent amount of time designing my own screenset. I used to be a designer many moons ago. Super rusty. This UI eliminates the jog screen, its 2560x1440 to match my shop's monitor, i've pared down lots of stuff i never use, all the hover states/toggles work. This was made in Photoshop/Illustrator and assembled using the UCCNC Screen Editor site (https://snapwebapps.com/uccnceditor/)

I added the .ssf into /screens
I changed /profiles/default.pro to use the new UI file

I finally load it in only to find that after the initial splash screen, nothing. the UI just never opens. no error message.

So, i'm going to go ahead and assume I accidentally stripped away some UI component that uccnc checks for upon startup. is there an error log? the ssf files are just simply too large to try and parse line-by-line.

To test, I copied/pasted the old axbb code from Default2019.ssf and it works. I then appended my new code at the end of the Default2019 code (minus the beginning and end blocks) and it bricked again. An error log showing me The Way Forward would be fabulous.

[ger21]

You might need to include the jog screen, but I'm not 100% sure.
Sounds like your code might have a syntax error?

I always strip out the code for all the other motion controllers when working on a screen, so the file is easier to navigate.

[eddius-maximus]

I actually just stripped the other controllers out -- it does feel better to work in.

If there's a syntax error, it would've been introduced via the screen editor site. I feel like if that were the case it likely would've been caught/pushed to github by now. But you never know, I'll go look.

Hmm. My jog panel is there. Sort of. I believe I made it 1 pixel by 1 pixel. Let me go revert it back to its original size. Maybe i"ll just slowly go backwards until something happens. Appreciate your help

[eddius-maximus]

Turns out if I delete a single element from the default UI, it bricks. so for now I'm just tossing them onto another layer. It's working!

Toolpath preview background color. Is this changeable? (currently black)

[ger21]

Under the Appearance Settings. Background Color.

[eddius-maximus]

Thank you!

[2046]

I would say you loose a lot of space with the rounded boxes..

Plus I would not use the online tool. It was more like a test if it is possible rather then production ready tool. The UCCNC it self is s good enough for all the positioning, quite hell but much better then fight with some online app test.
The way I did mine was to first draw the ui, make sure you make use of asset and automatons as you will export and redo all the buttons million times as you need to bake the text to it as well and make each button as a separate "set", Once you have that just replace duplicate the default screenset, and rip out the buttons you do not need, replace those you did and reposition them in the UCCNC. You can grab them, you can manipulate them with arrows. You can move some from tab to tab by changing the layer ID and quite a lot more.
This way you'll make no errors in the UI code, the UCCNC will export/save it right.
If you look at the code it can be done more programming way, but in reality it cannot as the UCCNC expect it to be sort of monkeybussiness.

third thing is that there is a new UCCNC version on the way which I hope will address some UI issues as well (scrollbar, textfield sizes,..), they might even come with new more usable screenset who knows..
If I be them I would throw away the current Opengl UI and write it from scratch into say Electron that would be more user friendly in many ways. That way they will bring it to contemporary realm and give users more freedom in the UI definition. As what is there now is absurd in 2023.
The app low level realtime core would stay the same.. anyway.


I would wait for the next release that they said "will" be released this January 2022.. I guess they do more work on it that they thought.