Speedometer Demo
Good evening guys!
Last night i put out a short video of something i designed while waiting for D3 to launch. It's a basic speedometer. I've been wondering for a while now exactly how i could bring VTemp to Firemonkey completely. You see, some of the components i use in VTemp currently are available in Firemonkey, but cost money. Being unemployed (for now at least) means i don't have the cash to spare to buy these components, and despite my knowledge improving a lot,i've been unable to figure out how to make a graph component. As such, last night i realised that creating a speedometer with animation wouldn't be all that difficult. I spent a few hours on it, and more time was spent trying to render the video (below) at truly high quality than was spent designing the speedometer.
As you can see, it's a very short video. It was when i was filling in the description and tags that i realised i could potentially use something like this for displaying temperatures rather than the graph. The "Randomise" button randomises the position of the arrow. The only part that's drawn in Photoshop is the notch overlay. I had to scale the whole thing up to 2x to make it take up enough room in the video/be large enough to see properly so it's a little blurry. The other elements are actually objects and shapes from within firemonkey. All of this is done with animation, and the only code used is to change the rotation angle/value that the hand should point to. At the moment, it points to an angled position but i aim to make it work with values at some point, probably by dividing by the range of values (which would be 270 in this example) and then multiplying by the desired output value, but i'll have to work with the code to verify that.
On the topic of the video, i think i'm gonna stick with this style for most of my future developer videos. I always liked the Google style videos because they're simple, to the point, and don't have distractions in them. I might change the colour with different videos, but i'll aim to stick with colours in the same luminosity as they give a good feeling to the videos.
VTemp 2.0 will be released later this year. I don't have an ETA for it, and i don't even have an ETA for starting it, but i've got plans for a complete overhaul of the interface. It'll still have all the features you'd associate with it, but i'll be trying to make it cleaner and more appealing to look at. Look at MoPAndBugget to see what i mean. The interface is "HD", which in this sense, simply means i could scale the whole thing up and it'd not lose clarity (as everything is vector drawn and as you've seen, powered by the GPU and CPU). Of course, Firemonkey has some issues with 3D interfaces and button response, but since i'm not dealing with 3D interfaces for my current projects, that's not such an issue.
Also, Bleakfall. That's something i REALLY want to bring back. In my new vision of development, i feel that something like Bleakfall could allow remote control from both the web, and from the desktop via a client. However, i want to ensure that it's secure enough that it can't be abused by malware authors.
One last point is about the 3D modules i worked on in the original Hypercaine. I forgot to release those to the public as i said i would, but i'm still wanting to get them out there. It's really about fixing up any remaining issues and packaging them up. Then i want to make a promotional video to show them off in a decent way.
So, plenty of things to get done, and another project i'm contemplating (but absolutely no guarantees i'll even get past the assessment stage with it).
Have a great evening guys! ;)
Last night i put out a short video of something i designed while waiting for D3 to launch. It's a basic speedometer. I've been wondering for a while now exactly how i could bring VTemp to Firemonkey completely. You see, some of the components i use in VTemp currently are available in Firemonkey, but cost money. Being unemployed (for now at least) means i don't have the cash to spare to buy these components, and despite my knowledge improving a lot,i've been unable to figure out how to make a graph component. As such, last night i realised that creating a speedometer with animation wouldn't be all that difficult. I spent a few hours on it, and more time was spent trying to render the video (below) at truly high quality than was spent designing the speedometer.
As you can see, it's a very short video. It was when i was filling in the description and tags that i realised i could potentially use something like this for displaying temperatures rather than the graph. The "Randomise" button randomises the position of the arrow. The only part that's drawn in Photoshop is the notch overlay. I had to scale the whole thing up to 2x to make it take up enough room in the video/be large enough to see properly so it's a little blurry. The other elements are actually objects and shapes from within firemonkey. All of this is done with animation, and the only code used is to change the rotation angle/value that the hand should point to. At the moment, it points to an angled position but i aim to make it work with values at some point, probably by dividing by the range of values (which would be 270 in this example) and then multiplying by the desired output value, but i'll have to work with the code to verify that.
On the topic of the video, i think i'm gonna stick with this style for most of my future developer videos. I always liked the Google style videos because they're simple, to the point, and don't have distractions in them. I might change the colour with different videos, but i'll aim to stick with colours in the same luminosity as they give a good feeling to the videos.
VTemp 2.0 will be released later this year. I don't have an ETA for it, and i don't even have an ETA for starting it, but i've got plans for a complete overhaul of the interface. It'll still have all the features you'd associate with it, but i'll be trying to make it cleaner and more appealing to look at. Look at MoPAndBugget to see what i mean. The interface is "HD", which in this sense, simply means i could scale the whole thing up and it'd not lose clarity (as everything is vector drawn and as you've seen, powered by the GPU and CPU). Of course, Firemonkey has some issues with 3D interfaces and button response, but since i'm not dealing with 3D interfaces for my current projects, that's not such an issue.
Also, Bleakfall. That's something i REALLY want to bring back. In my new vision of development, i feel that something like Bleakfall could allow remote control from both the web, and from the desktop via a client. However, i want to ensure that it's secure enough that it can't be abused by malware authors.
One last point is about the 3D modules i worked on in the original Hypercaine. I forgot to release those to the public as i said i would, but i'm still wanting to get them out there. It's really about fixing up any remaining issues and packaging them up. Then i want to make a promotional video to show them off in a decent way.
So, plenty of things to get done, and another project i'm contemplating (but absolutely no guarantees i'll even get past the assessment stage with it).
Have a great evening guys! ;)
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