Idea

Kevin Windrem suggested May 14, '21

Changing inverter mode and AC current limit from Flow Overview

I have added popups to the Flow Overview that allow adjusting the AC input current limit and inverter modes.

The following screen shot shows both popups active but this will probably not be the case in practice.

There is no space available on this screen for dedicated buttons, so you need to touch hidden areas to activate the popups: the bottom 1/3 of the AC Input tile and the middle of Multi tiles. The touch area was purposely limited to minimize conflicts with tap to activate the bottom bar and to swipe between overviews.

The current limit popup is a clone of the one used for the AC CURRENT LIMIT button on the Mobile Overview page.

The inverter mode popup is all new and presents a set of buttons to change the inverter mode when touched. This differs from the AC MODE button on the Mobile Overview page which cycles through available modes with each press.

This enhancement is part of my GuiMods package:

https://github.com/kwindrem/GuiMods

Venus OS

flow-overview-popups.png (59.5 KiB)

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Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · May 16, 2021 at 09:49 AM

Really nice addition, especially the inverter modes. Makes it super easy for my co-owner, who is not tech-savvy. Thanks!

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Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · May 16, 2021 at 06:21 PM

@Kevin Windrem,

how about giving the actual inverter mode a different color other than grey, so that one can see on a glance (when the popup is visible) which mode the inverter is switched to?

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Kevin Windrem Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · May 23, 2021 at 04:37 PM

The current inverter mode is now shown in the popup. The button for the current mode is black while others are gray.

https://github.com/kwindrem/GuiMods/tree/current

You should also update Setup Helper if you haven't done so in the last few days

https://github.com/kwindrem/SetupHelper

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Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ Kevin Windrem commented · May 23, 2021 at 05:30 PM

Yes, took me a while to discover that ;-) Letters are a bit too small for my sore eyes.

If you're going to "light up" the switches, maybe a better contrast between grey as background color for the switch and white for the letters is also a good idea. It's a bit difficult to see when you look at it from an above angle.

edit: Thanks. Much much better now.

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Kevin Windrem commented May 24, '21

I'm experimenting with colors that might help identify the current mode and to aid in choosing the new mode. Do the pastel colors for the unselected mode help or would gray for all three be better? Comments please.

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Stefanie (Victron Energy Staff) ♦♦ commented · May 24, 2021 at 03:46 PM

Yes to pastel colors. It adds a much better contrast compared to white on grey. I personally like the peach and mint colors.

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rmaddy commented · May 25, 2021 at 02:08 AM

I setup mine with the original gray buttons and white text and I used the battery blue color for the currently selected mode. That battery blue looks really nice next to the gray. I like that blue better than the two blues shown in this proposal. I also find the black Cancel text on this proposed darker gray button too hard to read. For that dark of a gray it is easier to see white text.

Picking colors is tough. It's been the hardest part of building my trailer too. :)

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Kevin Windrem commented · May 25, 2021 at 05:41 AM

I'll change Cancel to white text, so you'll only see black text on the pastel colors.

I have one more enhancement I'm working on. I dislike the current limit spinner. It's so difficult to quickly get to the desired level and it's something I change a lot: 30 amp, 20 amp shore power then generator power based on altitude ...

So.....

The top 4 buttons are presets which you can define in the setup script when installing.

The -1 and +1 buttons are spinners (like the original current limit dialog. (Press and hold works.)

Accept shows the new current while making changes, Cancel shows the current actually being used. So to get to the 12 amps, I press 10 followed by +1 twice, then Accept.

The original spinner incremented by 0.5 amps. This one increments by 1.0. Any need for the 0.5 amp finer granularity (maybe in the 220 volt world)?

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rmaddy Kevin Windrem commented · May 25, 2021 at 05:59 AM

I like this a lot. I'll only ever need 15A or 30A so this is way more user friendly over the stock spinner. Nice extra touch letting people define the 4 top buttons. Those with 50A shore power can set values accordingly as can those, like me, with 30A shore power.

Would it make sense to highlight one of the 4 main buttons with the same color you use for the inverter mode if the button happens to match the current limit? So in your example, in addition to showing (20.0A) under Cancel, highlight the 20A button.

If you do go with the -1A and +1A buttons there is probably no reason to add the decimal point under the Accept and Cancel buttons.

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Kevin Windrem Kevin Windrem commented · May 25, 2021 at 07:05 PM

rmaddy, thanks for your input.

I've made the change to highlight the preset button if it matches the new value (or the actual value of no new value exists yet).

I also disable and hide the buttons if you enter a value of 0. This might help reduce clutter if you don't need 4 presets.

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Kevin Windrem commented May 25, '21

I've put the mods to the two popups on GitHub:

https://github.com/kwindrem/GuiMods

Preset values are set during package installation (setup script), or you can change them via dbus-spy.

The AC current limit popup shows actual and new values, then 4 user-defined preset, "spinner" buttons to adjust values between presets and finally Accept and Cancel buttons.