Adding Fine range controls

[Anthocyanina]

Hi! I'm new to the Analog Discovery 2, and have been playing around in Waveforms a lot for the past couple weeks. I noticed the ranges on the oscilloscope, and voltage settings on the generators, and pretty much everywhere where there is a scale setting of sorts, they have the usual 1-2-5 increments, and also allow for a specific setting if you manually type it in the field. While this gives all the functionality one might need, for some reason, perhaps from being used to using blender shift+drag for fine controls, I keep pressing shift+scrolling on the field, expecting fine controls of the scale, but it behaving just as usual.

Seeing how this shift+scroll combination doesn't seem to be used for anything within Waveforms, I was thinking it would be great if fine controls were added to Waveforms in what, at least to me, feels like such an intuitive way to do it, and it could work like it does on bench instruments which have the "push for fine" functionality, by increasing or decreasing the range by, i don't know, a fixed percentage of the current scale? like if you're in 500mv/ and press shift then scroll, it will change by 10% of 500mV, so 50mV, until you reach the next step in the 1-2-5 sequence, then it will be either 100mV at 1V/ range or 20mV at 200mV/ range. Or it could be a fixed value across all ranges, let's say 10mV per shift+scroll step. Or! shift+scroll does the percentage based change and ctrl+scroll does the fixed fine change.

However this is implemented, if at all, from my experience with bench instruments, I think it would feel like such a good addition to the overall experience of using Waveforms, particularly when you need to quickly setup the environment for your measurements and then to be able to quickly tweak it if you got it wrong at first.

Also curious if this has been considered before, and if so, why has it not been implemented? or is it being considered for implementation already? 

Thank you! 🙂

[JColvin]

Hi @Anthocyanina,

I have moved your suggestion to a section of the Forum where the developer of the WaveForms software will more readily see your feedback.

I do not think I have seen this particular suggestion of doing a shift (or maybe control?) plus the scroll wheel to start doing a fine adjustment of the voltage range, time base, waveform amplitude, etc. I'd imagine the mouse would have to be hovering over the correct text box or settings area to do this so that other Tools (or channels) are not unintentionally affected.

Thanks,
JColvin

[Anthocyanina]

2 hours ago, JColvin said:

Hi @Anthocyanina,

I have moved your suggestion to a section of the Forum where the developer of the WaveForms software will more readily see your feedback.

I do not think I have seen this particular suggestion of doing a shift (or maybe control?) plus the scroll wheel to start doing a fine adjustment of the voltage range, time base, waveform amplitude, etc. I'd imagine the mouse would have to be hovering over the correct text box or settings area to do this so that other Tools (or channels) are not unintentionally affected.

Thanks,
JColvin

Hi @JColvin thank you, yes! my suggestion is just that, to add the shift and/or control fine adjustment functionality to the existing functionality of scrolling when the cursor is on top of those fields.

Thanks again! 🙂

[attila]

Hi @Anthocyanina

The entry field let you type in values or select from the presets list which can be scrolled by the mouse wheel.
The plot axis let you adjust the respective range with the wheel or right mouse drag, and the offset with left button drag.
Holding the Shift or Ctrl key slows down or speeds up these operations, and the Alt key swaps the offset/range adjustment.
These operations also working on the plots when enabled.

[Anthocyanina]

Hi! @attila

I just tried that and in the plot, it does seem to work like that! I didn't know that or had tried that on the plot, thank you! But on the right side panel where the ranges are, it doesn't seem to do anything differently when i press shift, ctrl or alt (alt does do something but that something is just move the rectangles to the sides a bit). Is this behaviour different on linux and windows? asking since I'm aware some things are different, like 3d spectrogram not being available on linux. I've made this short video showing what happens when i use those key combinations with scrolling on the plot and on the right side panel controls.

Thank you! 

 

[attila]

Hi @Anthocyanina

The Shift/Ctrl/Alt work on the plot and axis with mouse drag and wheel.
In the entry fields, like on the right side, you can enter value or select/scroll from the presets.

On 7/29/2022 at 11:48 AM, attila said:

The entry field let you type in values or select from the presets list which can be scrolled by the mouse wheel.
The plot axis let you adjust the respective range with the wheel or right mouse drag, and the offset with left button drag.
Holding the Shift or Ctrl key slows down or speeds up these operations, and the Alt key swaps the offset/range adjustment.
These operations also working on the plots when enabled.

 

[Anthocyanina]

Hi @attila

Thank you. That's what my suggestion is, to add shift/alt/ctrl functionality to the entry fields on the right side, and in the entry fields of other instruments like the generator, to allow for quicker fine tweaking of the settings in those fields with a button and mouse scrolling. Seeing that it is implemented in the plots and axes, why isn't it implemented on the entry fields? 

Thanks again!

[attila]

Hi @Anthocyanina

The next version will have Ctrl/Shift value adjustment speed for the entry fields (comboboxes) using wheel and keyboard arrow keys.

Than you for your post.

[Anthocyanina]

2 hours ago, attila said:

Hi @Anthocyanina

The next version will have Ctrl/Shift value adjustment speed for the entry fields (comboboxes) using wheel and keyboard arrow keys.

Than you for your post.

Awesome, thanks! any plans to add Alt functionality in the future as well? or just shift and ctrl for the speed? thank you!