Replies: 9 comments 48 replies
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Thanks for the input!
I'm not sure what you mean by that, could you elaborate?
Makes sense, but did you know you can delete a whole track section? Sections are what you select before you can create a block.
Yeah that used to be different, but it regressed when I refactored some code and I never fixed it. |
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Welcome.. I'm sure there will be more;-)
Does 1 sq equal 2 pieces of track or how many brick studs? Mainly for track planning and scale.. I use an app called BlueBrick ..Lego track planner
So you can select multiple bits and delete? Also maybe a way to lock the track as sometime you add more in weird locations when relocating the train. |
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Ah I see, you're asking for a to-scale representation of the physical layout. Unfortunately, the way it currently works out it is impossible, since The curve geometry is intended to work nicely with a grid, not to be in scale with LEGO track. For example, if you draw track "diagonally" the lengths are different than doing it vertically or horizontally. With LEGO tracks, diagonal tracks don't really work out that well.
Yup, you can select a track section just like you do when creeating a block. |
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implemented the more intuitive tracks section selection (e.g. for blocks) and automatically selecting the next track when deleting one piece now https://github.com/Novakasa/brickrail/actions/runs/4830487870 |
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Thanks for the updates... they make a diff when creating the new layout. |
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Maybe a Batt indicator on the switches too, but maybe poll less frequently? |
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There should be a battery indicator for layout_controllers too. But the layout isn't ideal, you might need to incrase the size of the left panel to see it. In current master I changed the UI layout a bit so hopefully it is now easier to see. |
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Oh, I just remembered that battery for layout hub currently requires a new firmware, but I didn't distribute that one yet. The train program sources the new communication module dynamically, so that's why the train can already support battery polling (and why the download for train is so slow currently) |
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Battery on the layout hub is good. |
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Yeah the hub panel will scroll when many hubs are there. I am also thinking about only requiring to connect to hubs that are active in the current layout. Maybe you can "disable" trains, so they wouldn't need to be connected when you want to control your layout. Maybe there is something like "train storage" or similar? |
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See on the train panel, maybe you could have Turn next to Stop? Just a thought, as I keep doing it with Brickrail: With BAP, people wanted something fast to do the emergency stop rather than find the location in the GUI, so they implemented the space bar as well... so you can run across the room and hit the space bar to stop everthing. |
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Currently, when you set control devices to "switches", it means that you can still manually control trains in the left panel while being able to control switches by clicking them in the layout. Currently, it still will only work if all hubs present are connected, even trains). The main point of this mode is that you can manually control trains while switches are able to be controlled as well. For my layout this will be useful for trains that are on my lower layer and hard to access, but need to be positioned correctly. |
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I might need to rethink this whole approach though, as it is probably not intuitive that this is the purpose of this mode. |
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AH, ok, all good.. I understand now... that's still really useful. |
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Haha, please get enough sleep though, Brickrail has been in development for 2 years, so waiting for a reply is allowed to take a few hours :P |
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Ah, but now it is exciting.. I have been waiting 2 years for it to get to this stage!! Serious! |
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3 minor things that would make life easier.
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Yes, Disconnect Hubs and closing the app will disconnect and close the app, just the hubs stay on as I said. |
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Oh, maybe I wasn't clear, they disconnect from the app and it closes, but 2 are still solid, and 2 slow flash, then do the quick 2 flash then turn off, the other 2 are always on. Tomorrow I will reflash to 2730. |
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Hmm. So the way it should work is this (and it works like that for me): Assuming brickrail is running and all hubs are connected and running. If you close Brickrail (press "X" on the title bar, but not for the BLEServer terminal), the brickrail should not immediately close, but the status bar should show status messages like "stopping program" and "disconnecting...". Only after every hub is disconnected (flashing twice with 1 second pause), Brickrail will then actually close. So in total, it will take 5 - 20 seconds to actually close the GUI, depending on how many hubs are connected. If you press "disconnect hubs", the same process should initiate, only that brickrail does not close after that. I have not tested what happens when you close the GUI while the disconnect process is still ongoing, so for now this is not encouraged. But in the end, brickrail should never actually allow to be closed if a hub is still showing continuous blue LED (connected) or breathing LED (running program). If for some reason brickrail is closed while hubs are still running, the hubs will detect after a few seconds that they do not get a response, and stop the program. Then it can take 30-60 seconds for the hub to disconnect by itself. This is however only when things go wrong, usually we should not rely on that. |
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The BLEServer terminal should only close by itself automatically after the GUI is closed. |
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Before I updated the Hubs to 2730 I tried again on the disconnecting, and it all worked perfectly. Maybe at lunchtime I will see and run the trains for a continuous period. But starting up now is really great... and on par with my BAP startup. I am updating the hubs to 2730 anyway. |
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OK, a serious question, are you left-handed? With 4D Brick I used Linux on small screen 5x7 ins and that worked well. I always have heaps of ideas for other people's projects!! |
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Haha, yes actually I am left handed, however I am still using my mouse with the right hand. Actually a few months ago the control scheme used to be different. There were 3 different mouse modes "select", "draw track" and "control", and right click was only used for very few things. When I changed to the "edit" and "control" tabs to disallow editing the layout while trains are running, I simplified the control scheme. Since I have been using desktop PC my whole life and my UX decisions probably come from video games, I didn't really think about these Laptop trackpad issues. I did notice that middle click to drag the view was impossible on trackpads, so I did implement using left click to drag the view. You are definitely right to highlight these issues, and I will need to think about it. I don't really want to add back different "control modes" again since it introduces some complexity. Would a setting to switch right click/left click already help? |
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Ah.. all makes sense now. Yes, you could have a switch... I was going to go into the settings and change mouse buttons. Actually, double tap and drag will move the layout, and pinch to zoom will size it. but right click and drag is hard.. but may depend on the laptop .. some don't have buttons anymore either. |
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Also I'll look into touch screen stuff, Godot technically is aware of touch screens, but maybe only for android builds... |
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It looks like unfortunately touch screen on PC is only implemented in Godot 4, Godot 3 (which brickrail is using) is touch screen aware only on mobile devices... |
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Yeah I just tried some and it was scary ;-) |
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2 really minor things with the inspector…. The name of the train would be good when you click on it… as the Color dot is small on the virtual layout sometimes, I’m not sure which train I have selected especially if 4 are running. In Run mode. |
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I now implemented a "allternative train colors" setting that makes each train color much more obvious. BTW, it is now also possible to rename trains and blocks by clicking their name in the inspector. This required quite a bit of internal changes, so it might have introduced a number of bugs, and when you load an old layout, train positions might not be the same as before. So after loading an old layout, you might encounter 2 trains at the same block, which of course you should fix in edit more. I am also not sure if the home positions are updated correctly, so it probably makes sense to check those as well. Backup your old layout file before overwriting it with the new brickrail version! |
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Hi, because of my monitor now being remote, I like to have the internal train line Color set to white, this makes it easier to see sensors etc. I changed in the Color in the settings section ok. But now the grid in Edit mode is also white. |
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I know I have asked for this before but would it be possible to have the Space Bar toggle the Emergency Stop, sooner rather than later, please? |
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I just pushed a commit for this. Build should be ready in a few minutes. Spacebar should now trigger an emergency stop. I have not tested this with actual trains connected yet, so please tell me whether it works. |
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At first test it seems ok, I'll check more today with multiple trains runing... thanks so much !!! |
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I've done quite a bit of testing and it does work well... thanks again.. it saved a few crashes while I am rebuilding the Brickrail layout :) |
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These are just ideas..
The file name in the top of the GUI
Scale of the Edit squares in relation to actual track.
As it's easy to over run the track when creating it, so it would be good if the red piece of track you select to delete flowed backwards, so you could just keep pressing the delete key to remove track faster.
It took me ages to figure out how to make the block section flow when creating it, you need to make the tiny arrow be in the direction you want... maybe add to the wiki?
Explain about the Settings tab and Render mode and Dynamic/Cached
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