First Thoughts - UX

First off, Iā€™m super excited to see you pushing forward with your own sender. I think it will be a great value add for the users of the longmill.

I like the overall look and feel, but I see a couple of things (as a regular user of CNCjs) that would be must haves, and several that would be nice. (I may revert to CNCjs terms for some things because that is what I am familiar with).

Must have:

  • EDIT: Sheesh. This was right in front of me and because I wasnā€™t thinking straight I didnā€™t see the bit ā€œPauseā€ button, so nevermind on this one: Quick on-screen access to ā€œfeed holdā€ to pause the machine without resorting to the emergency stop - donā€™t want to lose my workspace or machine coordinates and have to start over because I hit start before putting on dust boot for example.

  • Control over position of the macroā€™s within the macro window. I have brought over a bunch from CNCjs but canā€™t control their layout. (Also longer macro names. Fitting into 12 characters is pain-full when coming from unlimited name length)

  • RPi support so that the RPi can maintain the connection to the longmill and my laptop can just connect to the same instance to load gcode, etc. (this way if something happens to my laptop during a long cut the RPi keeps the job going)

Would be nice:

  • in my case I have adjusted $130, $131, and $132 to closely (within 1 mm) match my machine. It would be nice if the General|Settings|Machine profile page reflected those settings (or give me the option to use the firmware or factory defaults) and it would be nice if these values were reflected in the visualizer.

  • If the bit for homing switches is enabled it would be nice if there was an onscreen ā€œhoming cycleā€ button. - this could be visible or hidden based on the firmware $22 bit. Looking at the home screen I have to make the determination is the machine in alarm state because of something or is it because of no homing has been set.

  • when looking at the file path, its not possible (that I can see) to determine the path of the source of the loaded file. maybe a tool-tip type popup that contains the fileā€™s full path. This comes into play because sometimes I might load a file from the network and sometimes from local system.

  • an option to reload same file with just a click (and a confirmation). comes in handy when doing several iterations of a gcode file, making sure everything is right before starting.

  • an option to view (or maybe edit?) the loaded gcode file - sometimes Iā€™d just like to take a quick look to see something and understand maybe (for example) why the cut file is way off the origin.

  • almost every single time I load a cutfile I have to change the zoom in the window. it always seems to be not quite zoomed out far enough.

  • export/import option for individual or all macros - would be nice for the community if I could easily share my keyhole macro or my ā€œdoesnā€™t matter what bit diameter, because this will auto figure it outā€ XYZ probe, or my ā€œbit setter using sienci touch blockā€

And finally - gSender seems to not like to be started before the connection to the controller is established. If it is started and then the usb is plugged in, there is no indication of why my controller is not showing up on the ā€œconnect to machineā€ dropdown. (Maybe a refresh button?)

(I will submit this on the google form too, but I wasnā€™t sure if you wanted each one of these as a separate item there or ?) I thought that by putting all my thoughts together here users could chime in on themā€¦

Kevin

2 Likes

@Kevin wondering if you still have any outstanding comments from this original post :stuck_out_tongue:

If so, feel free to voice your feedback on gSender Wish List and List of Active Bugs

It looks to me that some of your comments were already implemented, some have since been addressed, and some (like moving macros and longer names / description) are scheduled for release this Friday on the next version :+1: