SWC UI Navigation

[v864]

So I've retrofitted a touchscreen into my factory head unit and will naturally use that for a lot of my interaction with Hudiy, however my vehicle does have a limited set of steering wheel controls that I can monitor with the CAN hat attached to my RPi5.

Unfortunately my SWCs are not terribly modern. Available for use with Hudiy I have a scroll wheel with a push button and two other buttons that were previously used with OnStar. There are more buttons but using them with Hudiy would conflict with other vehicle features.

With these buttons I would like to be able to:

• move focus
• scroll through items within a focus area
• trigger/enter
• Go back
• Pause current track
• Trigger voice assistant
• hang up calls

That's a lot for 3 buttons and a scroll wheel, but if my API client had more access to information I think it's possible. The biggest part I can't currently accomplish is scrolling through focus areas and items within a focus area. My API client needs to know when to send left/right/up/down/scroll in response to the SWC scroll wheel but that would require more information from the API.

Alternatively, if Hudiy had a key events like "next/prev focus item" this would be much easier. Ideally, such an event would:

• Select next/previous item in current focus
• If the current item is the last item, "next item" would move focus to the next focus area to the right
• If there is no focus area to the right then focus should move down
• If the last item of the last focus area is selected and "next item" is received, focus should move to the first (top-left) focus area.
• "prev item" would work in the reverse fashion

This would be a great feature if implemented directly in Hudiy, but it could be implemented by an API client if the Hudiy API exposed the current focus area and selected item. A client could detect when one or both doesn't change in response to a next/scroll event and then send the appropriate key to move focus.

If you think this is currently possible without any Hudiy updates, please let me know!

Thanks!

[hudiy]

Hello, interesting idea. Currently, Hudiy on certain screens (e.g., Dashboard) detects whether the current item is the last one in the input scope and then shifts focus to the next input scope. We'll check if this can be applied globally across the entire interface and whether scroll-only navigation will also work in Android Auto.

[v864]

Awesome, thanks!

I was playing with a keyboard last night and did notice that scroll will shift focus left and right on the dashboard, which is handy. Let me know if you guys need any software contributors, C++/Qt/QML are things I have experience with in the automotive space as a software engineer

Thanks!

[hudiy]

We've implemented initial support for controlling the Hudiy interface using only scroll, and so far it works well. It still needs more testing and handling of corner cases, but it looks like we'll be able to include it in the new release we're planning for later this year.

For projection, the CarPlay interface can be controlled using only scroll. Unfortunately, Android Auto requires directional keys (UP, LEFT, RIGHT, DOWN).

Thanks for your suggestions and for the great idea.