Touch Engine

This Library has been build to bring the capabilities of Lightning to Automotive Ui's and Apps. This Library will track each individual finger and analyses it's intent. Once the analyser recognizes a gesture it tries to dispatch that event on one of the active touched elements.

Getting started

Update your project's dependency and run npm install

"dependencies": {
    "@lightningjs/automotive": "git+ssh://[email protected]/mlapps/Lightning-Automotive.git",
}

Example Ui implementation

https://github.com/mlapps/com.metrological.ui.Automotive

Getting started

If you want to enrich your app with Automotive touch-support you first import the Library into your app.

import {Automotive} from '@lightningjs/automotive'

Next step is to start the automotive engine, in this example we implement it into a Routed App, and start it right after the component get's attached to the render-tree ( _setup lifecycle event)

export default class App extends Router.App {
    _setup(){
        Automotive.start(
            this.application, settings
        )
    }
}

Documentation

Types

There are 2 main types that provide a lot of information on the started / active and ended touch event.

Record

Every touchstart will start the creation of a new Record that will be available and update during the lifespan of the current touch action (press / swipe / drag pinch etc.)

Interface Record {  
    startime: number;
    endtime: number;
    fingers: Map;
    fingersTouched: number;
    duration: number;
    isTap: boolean;
    isHold: boolean;
    moved: boolean;
    hasFingerMoved: ()=> boolean;
    startposition: Vector;
    delta: Vector;
    firstFinger: Finger;
    analyzed:boolean;    
}

Finger

This library tracks each individual Finger that it pressing the screen. Each Record stores a Map with data for every finger that's currently on the screen and will keep track of their current position. By doing this, the library can make a distinction on a Swipe with one or multiple fingers. While building your App or Ui you can call recordInstance.fingers getter to receive the Map with with each Finger instance.

Interface Finger {
    moved: boolean;
    identifier: number;
    start: Vector;
    end: Vector;
    position: Vector;
    delta: Vector;
    queue: {position:Vector, time: number}[];
    pinching: boolean;
}

Touch Gestures

When one or more Finger's are touching the screen this library will try to analyze it's intent. This library ships support for the following gestures:

• Single tap
• Double tap
• Multi-finger tap
• Single longpress
• Multi-finger longpress
• Pinch (zoom and rotation)
• Spread (zoom and rotation)
• Swipe left
• Swipe right
• Swipe up
• Swipe down
• Multi-finger directional swipe

This library tries to recognize one (or more) of this gestures when a Recording has ended or when one more Fingers are moving across the screen. Once a gesture is recognized the touch ending will search for all the on-screen Components that are rendered at the position where one of your fingers is positioned. When collision is detected it will order the Components by z-index (so highest order first) and try to call a corresponding Event on that component. If a Component is not handling that specific event it will try to call it on the lower positioned (z-index) Component.

This will enable you to add touch life-cycle events on i.e: a List Component but still render the Items on a higher level.

Available events

In addition to Lightning's lifecycle events, this Library provide a set of new events that you can add to your Component to enable and listen to touch behaviour. Each function will have 2 parameters:

recording

The active Record as described above. Important to know that this recording can still be updated if the recording has not ended.

local

An Object that provides that provides position local to the Component that has been touched (as the recording only provides world position)

type Local = {
    first: Vector;
    all: Map<fingerId, Vector>;
}

first is a Vector with local positions for the first finger that touched the Component and all holds a Map with local positions for each finger that's touching the screen.

_onSingleTap

Will be called when one finger quickly touches this element

_onSingleTap(recording, local){ }

_onMultiTap

Will be called when mutliple fingers quickly touches this element

_onMultiTap(recording, local){ }

_onDoubleTap

When one finger quickly double taps the same element

_onDoubleTap(recording, local){ }

_onLongpress()

Will be invoked if one or more fingers are pressing this element for < 800ms. For now the recording data holds data for all the fingers so it could be that 3 fingers are touching 3 individual elements they all receive

_onLongpress(recording, local){ }

_onDragStart()

Will be invoked when you start dragging an element

_onDragStart(recording, local){ }

_onDrag()

Will be invoked when you touch an element and start moving your finger

_onDrag(recording, local){ }

_onDragEnd()

When you stop dragging an element

_onDragEnd(recording, local){ }

_onSwipeLeft

When one of more fingers perform a swipe to the left (moving along the x-axis where startposition > endposition)

_onSwipeLeft(recording, local){ }

_onSwipeRight

When one of more fingers perform a swipe to the right (moving along the x-axis where startposition < endposition)

_onSwipeRight(recording, local){ }

_onSwipeUp

When one of more fingers perform a swipe up (moving along the y-axis where startposition > endposition)

_onSwipeUp(recording, local){ }

_onSwipeDown

When one of more fingers perform a swipe up (moving along the y-axis where startposition < endposition)

_onSwipeDown(recording, local){ }

Multi-finger swipes

As noted above, the first parameter of the method is the Record instance, this will enable you to do some extra calculation based on duration / force / amount of fingers. But sometimes you want to listen to (in example) a swipeLeft but only if the gestures was performed by 2 fingers.

To prevent this pattern:

_onSwipeLeft(recording){ 
    if(recording.fingersTouched === 2){
        // execute some logic
    }
}

the library provides an swipe event for multiple finger count: swipe + finger count + direction

_onSwipe2fLeft()

This will be invoked when 2 fingers perform a swipe left on a certain Component (could als be a Page)

_onSwipe2fLeft(recording, local){ }

_onSwipe4Up()

This will be invoked when 4 fingers perform a swipe up.

_onSwipe4Up(recording, local){ }

_onSwipe8right()

This will be invoked when 8 fingers perform a swipe to the right

_onSwipe8right(recording, local){ }

Invocation order

There is a certain order of invocation; The engine will first to call the multi finger event before falling back to default version.

So if you perform a swipe up with 4 fingers the engine will first try to invoke swipe4fUp and if it's not being handled by any Component it will try to invoke swipeUp. This enables you to extract logic for a certain multi-finger gesture.

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Available methods

start()

Start automotive touch engine. app is a reference to a Lightning.Component instance that will be the parent which the children will be tested for collision detection against different points.

config is a settings object that can hold different automotive settings

Automotive.start(app, config)

block()

Prevent one or more events from being called on touched Components

// block one
Automotive.block('_onSingleTap')

// block multiple
Automotive.block(['_onMultiTap', '_onLongpress'])

release()

Allow one or more events to be called again if they're currently blocked.

// release one
Automotive.release('_onMultiTap')

// release multiple
Automotive.release(['_onSingleTap', '_onLongpress'])

lock()

Place one or more events on a whitelist. If this list.size > 0 we only allow those events to pass-through, if the list is empty we allow all events again (unless they're blocked)

// block one
Automotive.lock('_onDoubleTap')

// block multiple
Automotive.lock(['_onSwipeLeft', '_onSwipeRight'])

unlock()

Remove one or more events from the whitelist. if the list is empty we allow all events again (unless they're blocked)

// release one
Automotive.unlock('_onSwipeLeft')

// release multiple
Automotive.unlock(['_onDoubleTap', '_onSwipeRight'])

createVector(x, y)

Will return a new Vector instance to do additional vector calculation.

const center = Automotive.createVector( 960, 540 )

distance(v1, v2)

A small helper function that returns the distance between 2 vectors

const dis = Automotive.distance(finger.start, finger.end);

smoothstep(min, max, value)

Perform interpolation between 2 values

// returns 0.5
const v = Automotive.smoothstep(0.0, 0.8, 0.4)

getHorizontalForce(finger)

Return the force which the finger did during the last swipe in the same direction along the x-axis. by dividing the traveled distance between the swipe duration. For performance reasons we only store the last 70 positions per finger.

const force = Automotive.getHorizontalForce(finger);

getVerticalForce(finger)

Return the force which the finger did during the last swipe in the same direction along the y-axis. by dividing the traveled distance between the swipe duration. For performance reasons we only store the last 70 positions per finger.

const force = Automotive.getVerticalForce(finger);

Automotive settings:

bridgeCloseTimeout

The amount of milliseconds we keep the 'bridge' open for new new fingers to touch the screen. All touches within the list while the bridge is open will be recorded.

tapDelay

Max Amount of milliseconds between touchstart / end to be flagged

doubleTapActive

Flag if the Ui needs to listen to doubleTap (the benefit for disabling is a more snappy Ui since a tap can immediately be invoked)

beforeDoubleTapDelay

Max amount of milliseconds that a touchstart can start after a tap flag to be flagged as a double tap

doubleTapMaxDistance

Max distance between 2 taps to be flagged as double tap

externalTouchScreen

Are you using an external touchscreen. This feature has been specially added for beetronics screens under OSX.

componentBlockBroadcast

Define if components an block global events by adding it to itself as class member

flagAsHoldDelay

Amount of milliseconds that need to be passed to start flagging recording as a hold; for drag / pinch / long hold

swipeXTreshold

Minimal amount of pixel one or more fingers need to travel before it's gets recognized as a swipe along the x-axis

swipeYTreshold

Minimal amount of pixel one or more fingers need to travel before it's gets recognized as a swipe along the y-axis

touchQueueMaxLength

Amount of position vectors we store during finger (pointer) movement, a higher number will lead to better precision. Defaults to 70

maxForce

For force calculation (i.e getHorizontalForce()) we divide the distance a finger has traveled by the duration between the first and last touchQueue element. Due to duration calculation and the fact that a finger needs to make a small movement to be flagged as moving, it's possible that we end up with swipe distace of 0 pixels and a short duration. In this situation we return the maxForce

maxZeroDistanceDuration

Sets the duration a zero-distance gesture can take to be flagged and return maxForce

example

const settings = {
    bridgeCloseTimeout: 110,
    tapDelay: 120,
    doubleTapActive: true,
    beforeDoubleTapDelay: 180,
    flagAsHoldDelay: 800,
    doubleTapMaxDistance: 40,
    externalTouchScreen: false,
    componentBlockBroadcast: true,
    swipeXTreshold: 30,
    swipeYTreshold: 30,
    viewportOffsetX: 0,
    viewportOffsetY: 57,
    touchQueueMaxLength: 80,
    maxForce: 10,
    maxZeroDistanceDuration: 50
}

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