Embed Control developer version for controlling and monitoring Arduino
There are two versions of Embed Control desktop UI, the first is built into TcMenu Designer and is aimed at developers and more advanced users that fully understand the menu tree, and may want to create customize views. The second version is a user-centric Embed Control packaged for App Stores and available from the App Store for that platform. This version will also support mobile devices running iOS and Android soon.
Control embedded menu application from browser - embedCONTROL.js
Instead of the desktop version, on Raspberry PIs you can serve a React.JS based single page web application that needs no installation. It works on a wide range of mobile phones, desktop and tablet devices. It is not supported in the Arduino or mbed environment directly at the moment.
Using the deployed app
To open the app, simply browse to the device on the configured host and port. For example if the device were 192.168.2.2 and the port were 8080, you would connect to http://192.168.2.2:8080, in the case of port 80 you can omit the port number.
Generating Form Layouts for use with Embed Control
Embed Control can load layouts that have been generated in tcMenu Designer. These layouts provide more control over the mobile layout than what is possible using the Auto UI. Either the user-centric or tcMenu Designer based UI can load forms, but only tcMenu Designer can create them.
How does Embed Control show menu items?
A form layout is nothing more than a grid of drawing instructions, and you can select the number of columns in the grid, along with the layout name and a few common options. Let’s dig into how these grids are created, and the options for loading these grids into Embed Control. It is assumed at this point, that you are fairly familiar with both TcMenu and Embed Control.
Completed roadmap projects 2021 Q2
Summary
Please see GitHub for the ongoing work, this only shows historic work.
Projects that have been compeleted in Q1/2 of 2021. All releases use the name of a popular LP / album. See the Product roadmap for current projects
Sprint: There’s a new dawn (The New Dawn)
| Status | Est | Project | Task |
|---|---|---|---|
| Done | testing | Fully test tcMenu 2.1 UI with 2.0 libraries to ensure all new features are working, and high compatibility | |
| Done | website | Document the changes in the interfaces for 2.0 and ensure all pages still relevant. | |
| Done | tcMenu | Investigate the performance of I2C LCD’s at 100Khz carefully to see if there are optimisations to be had. | |
| Done | tcMenu | Notarize the macOS package and code sign Windows with high trust. Start looking at debian repo. | |
| Done | tcMenu | Bring the Java UI to the same standard as the others, and make it the default. | |
| Done | tcMenu | On AVR and smaller SAMD boards the btree template collection is too heavy, de-template much of it for now. | |
| Done | tcMenu | Exiting a list goes back to the wrong item - cannot recreate. | |
| Done | tcMenu | List rendering crashes in base renderer because it’s trying to call invoke in a tight loop | |
| Done | taskMgr | On 32 bit boards task manager should be able to schedule lambdas with captured parameters. | |
| Done | ioLibs | Provide an mbed / STM32F4 HAL version of EepromAbstraction that wraps the battery backed RAM. | |
| Done | testing | Fully test tcMenu 2.0 UI with 1.7 libraries to ensure full backwards compatibility | |
| Done | testing | Prepare 2.0 releases (github, our site, and App Store versions). |
Sprint: Agents of fortune
This sprint has turned into a huge iteration, we’ve broken it up into smaller segments, and it means that we’ll move the library to V2.0 as it’s got so big. It’s introduced a new much improved method of drawing, with more configuration options. Further, it’s also the first version that will be able to work with touch interfaces, and also ESP32 touchpad keys.
tcMenu Designer UWP and MacOS - 2.x releases
Current status, TcMenu Designer 2.1.x is the current stream, the 2.0 library and plugins will be released soon. At this point 1.7 will become previous, and 2.0 current. All menus we’ve tested have transitioned without any issues.
The main changes:
- All graphical classes moved into the “graphics” directory, so for example
GfxMenuConfig.his nowgraphics/GfxMenuConfig.h. - Most of the graphical code is now in a namespace, you may need
using namespace tcgfx;in your code, although the library takes care of backward compatibility for most. - Graphical displays are now skinnable, you have complete control of the font, colour scheme, borders, spacing, and icons that are used.
- 2.0 Plugins: By default, the
GfxConfigwill no longer be created, if you want to stay with this (and we recommend against) then you’ll need to create aGfxConfigin your code as the plugins no longer do it automatically.
BETA 2.1.1 release
This may be the best designer we’ve released to date, it has all the features of the macOS store version, a new project creation workflow, and a full CLI!
tcMenu Designer UWP and MacOS - 1.7 releases
Release 1.7.12 (download version 13) Windows 10
- Full testing completed
- Ensure that save adds to the recent list immediately
Release 1.7.11 Windows 10 BETA
- Automated testing has been added during the release cycle, tests complete menu creation flow.
- Very minor formatting and display bugs have been fixed.
- This will probably become the next Windows Store seed.
Release 1.7.10 Windows 10 BETA
- Refactored the tree view to be more like the MacOS and Java version. Simplified basically.
- Made it possible to run it outside the store, and work out if it is standalone or store.
- Ensure that it always saves documents, even if the designer thinks they’ve not changed
- Added Save as feature.
Release 1.7.5
This release has issues and is being replaced as soon as possible
Completed roadmap projects 2020 Q3
Summary
Please see GitHub for the ongoing work, this only shows historic work.
Projects that have been compeleted in Q3 of 2020. All releases use the name of a popular LP / album. See the Product roadmap for current projects
Emergency changes to Windows designer to restore stability (Completed 23/12/2020)
Next sprint abandoned while we restore stability to the windows tcMenu designer application and make it possible to download and use all current patch releases of the software. Store version will update much slower in this case, and the download version will update quicker. New version available in BETA, being tested before being made the stable version, and put on the store.
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