GraphicsUserInterface

Graphic User Interface

The gui package contains the code necessary for the graphics user interface of the application.

The primary class in this package is GUI, which creates and manages the gui for the application.

It consists of a number of elements, with varying degrees of configurability.

Controls

The constructor takes a Controller as the controller argument. This is found in the vehicle_control package, and allows the user interface to control the vehicle in question

Elements

This section describes the three element groups Video Stream, Main Controls Column and Miscellaneous Controls.

Video Stream

A main element of the interface is the video stream. It is placed in the upper left corner of the window. The default configuration simply displays a static .png image.

Main Controls Column

All primary controls are displayed in the column to the right of the video stream. These controls are:

• Drive Enables the user to change between high drive, and low drive
• Gear Enables the user to change gear
• Throttle Enables the user to change throttle
• Direction Enables the user to change vehicle direction

Miscellaneous Controls

The miscellaneous controls group is by far the most customizable, as it is where all vehicle-specific controls are displayed and available. Examples of controls in this section could be lights controls, vanity features, music, etc.

Configuration

This section described how the aforementioned elements are configured.

Video Stream

To define what is shown in the video stream element, a VideoViewer defining the new behaviour is simply specified in the GUI constructor

Main Controls Column

Each of the elements in this column, can be enabled/disabled as needed, to be compatible with different types of vehicles

This is done through the enabled parameter in the GUI constructor. This parameter defaults to all-enabled, and id specified by passing a map between element-identifiers and booleans. If an element is set to True it is displayed and usable, if it is False it is displayed but disabled, if it is not present in the map, it is not displayed.

By passing an empty dictionary none of the elements are displayed. The identifying strings are as follows:

• Drive drive
• Gear gear
• Throttle throttle
• Direction direction

Miscellaneous Controls

As with the different sections in the Main Controls Column the Miscellaneous Controls can be enabled/disabled/non-display by specifying in the same dictionary, using the key misc.

If the section is displayed it is configured by passing a list of MiscControlSpec to the misc_controls constructor parameter.

Each of these needs the following:

• display_name which is the name displayed in the user interface
• on_update which is the function that is called when the user interacts with the element
• param_type specifies the type of input expected; i.e bool, int etc.
• row specifies the row inside the Misc. Controls frame for which this element is displayed
• column specifies the column inside the Misc. Controls frame for which this element is displayed
• description is the description to be displayed in the GUI - defaults to None