Auto-lock touch pad/screen

[screenclene]

My wife is struggling with her rockboxed Sansa Fuze Plus.  The main issue is that whenever she picks it up whilst driving, her fingers hit the touch pad and unpredictable things happen (to the play back, not to her car).

It would be really useful to have the buttons locked automatically at the same time as the screen going black.  Then she could press the unlock button (the power button on the Fuze+) to enable the buttons.

Another alternative that would perhaps be nice would be to have the touchpad only do "play/pause" when the screen is black.

[gomezz]

This is why on my Sansa Clip+ which I use in my work van I have glued an extra blob of plastic on the Play/Pause button to make it easy to find and use by touch alone.  Unfortunately not an option with the Fuze which does not have a physical Play/Pause button?

BTW I hang my Clip+ from the sun visor clips / mirror mount to make it easy to reach and use which is something that may help your wife.  The audio lead is clamped lower down the fascia using an air vent (for example) which tends to hold the player in a fixed orientation so you could find the screen then move slightly down and left to the Play/Pause button on the Fuze with a bit of practise?

[cela]

Another alternative that would perhaps be nice would be to have the touchpad only do "play/pause" when the screen is black

Why not use car mode, it's much safer. if you get one of those cheap wireless chargers you can stop and start the player with the car ignition without any engine noise as it's electrically isolated.

[screenclene]

Hmm, nice suggestions, but the problem is wider than just car use.  I was just quoting that as an example.  Basically every time she picks it up whilst playing something, there's a good chance that her fingers will hit the touchpad and it'll mess up what she was playing.
Then she'll say to me "that was a rubbish player you bought me, I much prefer the old one". 

The old one was a rockboxed Sansa E250 with a click wheel, but she lost it!

[gevaerts]

Have you looked at using the "First Buttonpress Enables Backlight Only" setting?

[screenclene]

Yes, I have put that setting on, but she still has trouble.  I really think the touchpad implementation is nowhere near as easy for the user as one with buttons/clickwheel.

[pamaury]

Hi,
I am the developer of the Fuze+ port. I agree that our current interface does not handle the touchscreen gracefully.
I understand your proposal and I think it is indeed a good idea. One thing that needs to be tought through is how this would interact with other settings related to screen/buttons.
Also, this setting would need make sense of other players, with more buttons, so can you unlock using other buttons than power ? Is that a setting ? If the player is locked and you touch another button, should the screen light up or stay dark ? (ie smartphone-like)
Then you could have a setting to say whether the volume keys work when locked or not also.

Any feedback is welcome.

[Mihail Zenkov]

Also, this setting would need make sense of other players, with more buttons, so can you unlock using other buttons than power ? Is that a setting ?

No, as we don't provide custom key mapping in general.

If the player is locked and you touch another button, should the screen light up or stay dark ? (ie smartphone-like)

Probably we should add setting for backlight timeout when player locked. If someone what smartphone-like behavior it just set it to off, like we already have for backlight.

Then you could have a setting to say whether the volume keys work when locked or not also.

I already use this behavior (volume keys always work) on my clip zip and I think it should be default behavior

All IMHO.

[redblade8]

I'm not sure if this relates, but there were people suggesting about hold options. One option was a 'sports mode' or 'wps lock' where you could lock into the wps, and then only relavent pause , play , next and previous buttons were enabled so that you are prevented from going into other menus accidently, plus song buttons will function, without having to use hold and unhold all the time.

Perhaps that could be done with a plugin too, where the only menu is the wps, you could choose 'power + select' to exit the plugin, or 'power + volume up' to enable other controls like holding down 'select' will allow the sound options menu.

But your idea of 'an automatic lock', and then using power to unlock is good. You could set the amount of seconds until the device automatically locks. This could be a good alternative for people who don't want to use the hold button to lock all the time.

Perhaps there could be a 'lock plugin' where you could use a button combination of either key presses, or holding a few buttons that you could choose. This could also be used to  have a lock screen at boot , where a password, or button combination could lock the player from being used ( except the OF firmware could still be used, and re-installing/uninstalling rockbox won't affect this..) But the second part is off-topic though relavent to the idea.

I'm not sure that such a plugin could even work though. Maybe if it wasn't a plugin? I'm not sure. These are a few ideas anyways.

[screenclene]

To solve my wife's problem with the touchscreen of the fuze+, I bought her a clip zip! It has buttons on it!

But my own old Fuze V2 is showing signs of age, and I'm thinking that I'll need to start using her Fuze+ soon, so I'm still very keen to have improved touchscreen behaviour, and the suggested auto-lock feature would be great if it ever gets implemented .

[celticwonder]

Any chance of getting the Fuze+ to lock on screens OTHER than the playback screen?  ...record screen perhaps?

Is it actually difficult in the software to just treat the power button like it is on nearly all other electronic devices?

• Short press turns screen on and off, long-press powers the device off
• Option for whether other buttons function while screen is off
• Inactive device with screen off, option "Idle Poweroff" already handles this

Currently the power button does absolutely nothing when pressed (outside WPS).  There doesn't seem to be a way to stop the touch buttons from activating when the screen is off (unless the specific condition exists of PLAYING something already), so too many strange things happen while in a pocket.

[Bilgus]

I implemented advanced keylock + autolock for the WPS and FM but I didn't add it for Recording since it wasn't there already IIRC but it wouldn't be too hard

As for power button turning off the screen it wouldn't be terribly hard but there would probably be some backlash
at the thought of changing how it currently works and some player manual changes