TouchCaster Setup, Calibration, and Use

The Organic Touchscreen Experience.

TuneTracker Command Center came into this world with touchscreen instincts written right into its DNA. The result? A radio automation system so naturally inclined toward touchscreen control that it feels like a natural extension of your own body. The system's large, distinct buttons and fingertip-friendly responsiveness give you the ultimate "hands-on control" of your broadcast operation.


Setting Up Your Touchscreen

1.   If you purchased a TuneTracker computer that came bundled with a touchscreen, your software driver has already been installed. If you purchased the touchscreen package from us separately, insert the included TuneTracker touchscreen driver CD, and when it appears on the desktop, open it and double-click on the installation icon to install the driver. Do not attempt to install any driver that came in your touchscreen box. That is for Windows use.
   
   
   
2.   Turn off your computer. Leave your monitor unplugged from power.
   
   
   
3.   There are two different control cables on your touchscreen; a serial cable, and a USB cable. Connect the serial cable to the serial port on your TuneTracker computer. If you have more than one serial port, be certain you connect to serial port #1. Plug the touchscreen's VGA plug into the video card of your TuneTracker computer, assuring you connect to the video card down below, not to any video jack that is near the top where your keyboard and mouse plug in. Lastly, connect the power cord of your touchscreen to a power outlet.
   
   
   
4.   Turn on your monitor and boot up your computer.
   
   
   
5.   Reboot your TuneTracker computer.

Calibrating Your Touchscreen

After rebooting your TuneTracker computer, your touchscreen should now be activated and available. Always do a quick calibration after a reboot. To calibrate it, touch the extreme upper left corner, the extreme upper right corner, the extreme lower left corner, and the extreme lower right corner.

HINT: The tighter to the corner you can "touch," the more accurate your calibration will be. You can use the eraser end of a pencil to touch directly into the corner, without causing damage to the screen.

Calibration helps assure the touchscreen responses are as directly beneath your fingertip as possible. There will always be a slight variation, normally no more than an 1/8th inch from dead-center of your fingertip, so try touching in Command Center's scrolling text box and note the movement of the cursor, and compensate accordingly with your touches. If the response is slightly right of center, then make note that your touches should be slightly left of center.


Using Your Touchscreen

While you can use your touchscreen with any program you run on your TuneTracker computer, it is the Command Center interface that we will discuss here, since that is the program the touchscreen is intended for under our system. Your touchscreen is very nimble and responsive. It functions best if you make firm, deliberate touches rather than quick, fleeting ones. Holding your finger down for that extra split second or so also gives you time to assure your finger is accurately positioned. For most functions, the actual computer response will occur as you release your finger from the button or object you touch. Below are the touch techniques used in the TuneTracker System.

Touch-and-Release: A single touch of the touchscreen is used for all "click-style" control behaviors. To start an audio event, touch the center of its green or gold start button. To stop an event that is running, touch the center of its bright green event button. Similar single touches are used for Start, Help, Auto on/off, the WeatherPad (to display the forecast), System Prefs, Help, ButtonPad buttons, MyShow buttons, to flip through pages of MyShow buttons using the left and right arrows, to display the contents of the ShuttlePad, to collapse/expand hours in your program log, and to jump up and down through pages of the program log by touching above or below the little elevator in the vertical scrollbar.

Double-Touch  This is just the same as double-clicking with your mouse. The one function in Command Center that benefits from this is double-touching an event in the program log, to make that item next-to-play and remove everything that was in-between the current event and the one you double-touched. When you double touch, make the two touches in firm, rapid succession, in the same spot on the screen both times.

Touch and Hold:  This is the technique to use when accessing certain special functions you'd otherwise right-click on if you were using a mouse. You can make the scrolling text larger or smaller by just touching and holding on the face of the textbox. You can display information about any song for which information is available by touching and holding in the title area of that song.

Touch-Hold-and-Drag: This is the equivalent of holding down your left mouse button while dragging an item to another location and then releasing. Just don't rush! It is the nature of touchscreens that there is a slight "lag" when dragging, so rapid movements don't work well. Get used to just moving slowly and deliberately when dragging items around, and you'll find it works very nicely.

Here are some ways touch-hold-and-drag are used:

•   To adjust a volume, touch and hold your fingertip down on an event's volume symbol. A big floor-to-ceiling volume control will appear. Without lifting your finger off the screen, drag your finger into the volume control area at the location where the slider is presently located, and then drag your finger up or down to adjust volume.
  
  
  
•   To scroll up and down through the program log, perform the same technique on the little "elevator" symbol in the vertical scrollbar. Touch and hold on the elevator symbol and drag up and down. That works fine, but it's often easier and more practical to just single-touch above or below the elevator, which jumps the program log one page at a time.
  
  
  
•   To rearrange items in the program log by dragging them up and down, to drag items to the ShuttlePad, and to drag items from the ShuttlePad back to another location in your program log.
  
  
  
•   To use this technique to preview a song, touch-and-hold on the song in the program log list you wish to preview, and move it slowly and smoothly in a straight line over to the Preview button, and release. To stop auditioning the track, touch the Preview button once.
  
  Mousing and Keyboarding: Some things are just faster and easier with the mouse and keyboard, so keep them handy for quick, nimble access to non-real-time features such as those found in right-click menus, preferences, and when reading documentation.
  
  

The TuneTracker System touchscreen interface is sold in cooperation with patent holder John Connell, Media Digital Corporation, U.S. Patent No. 6,101,324 in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 287.



Table of Contents