We keep incrementing the version on Ground Control each week and we’re about to hit version 1.0 which feels like a milestone (1,200+ commits, 14 contributors, and 42 versions released!).
I’d like to take some time to work on the way Ground Control looks and I want everyone’s feedback. I’ve talked to a friend who is a graphic designer (he came up with the ‘M’ logo). We talked about how the old white on black look to the software can intimidate (making the machine less accessible), but how we also didn’t want something childish or dumbed down in any way. Here’s what we came up with as an idea:
What does everyone think?
How do we feel about a lighter more friendly Ground Control?
Hi Bar! Long time lurker and hopefully a contributor soon. I’m building my Maslow now. I don’t have a ton of experience with tool automation, but I have with IT infrastructure and often engineers will choose black backgrounds and white, yellow, or green for consoles. I believe it makes things much easier to see. I’m not arguing aesthtics at all, what you’ve done is very pretty; black and white not so much, but it may be more functional. Would it be possible to give the tool path display color schemes? Ok, so now on to the gushing - What you’ve done and the community you’ve grown is absolutely amazing! I love the forum, I know I’ll love the tool, your openness and collaboration with the community is absolutely AWESOME - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
I hear what you are saying, let’s make it so people have a choice in the settings? Like you can toggle between the two options? I like that a lot.
Which parts would we want to change? Do we want to maybe leave the icon buttons (like the purple arrows) the same and invert all of the other colors? That would be pretty easy to do
The new interface certainly does look more friendly, that could be very good for people who don’t have a lot of experience working with CNC’s and industrial automation.
Personally, however, I like the old style. Maybe it’s just all the hours of AutoCAD or my chronic migraines, but I’ve always liked darker interfaces. I even changed the forums over to the dark scheme! I think that using the new style as the default but having a dark/light option in the settings would be great!
Nowadays i prefer the darker themes but i must say this light theme looks very good.
How about having both? and a customisable theme? i’m sure there are people who now also want it lighter then the dark theme but not this bright.
The dark theme seems to have a slightly better range to me. From a distance the thin lines in the light theme fade into the background… minor detail… also depends a bit how big the screen is on a large screen i may take the light theme on a netbook i would pick the dark one.
not sure if customisable is an option? seems to me that it’s all just SVG’s and colour values. a /theme dir with all the SVG’s and a text file with the color values?
then a /darktheme /lighttheme /customtheme would seem reasonable simple options.
however having multiple themes is an extra maintainace task
now also tinking that a high contrast theme could be on some users wishlist
Please make this a user choice For give me
Edit: I love the traffic light colours for Run, Pause and Stop though. Gives a clear reference to the functions.
you are giving v-plotter too much credit. It was written and tweaked on the
assumption that the maslow was accurate across the entire work area, it turns out
that the maslow is not as accurate as we were thinking, but I haven’t tried
tweaking v-plotter to make it ‘more accurate’, it’s guidance, not gospel
Would it not be possible to make GC skinable? Allowing the user to choose from themes or customize it? It seems like there are only a few different places to need values and the only logic that it needs is to not allow the font and background to be set to the same value? Thoughts?
Bar,
I much prefer the black tool path on white background which is shown above.
I also like the traffic light colours for the Run, pause and stop.
Only very early days for me with this product as just received my kit this week.
I am not sure if block stepping is available in ground control but it is a very useful feature. This would allow you to display each block of code and step over it (purely for simulation purposes before committing to cut) and see the cut path in the work area of ground control. This can avoid the expense of an incorrect tool path.
The grind in v-plotter is feet and inches, with the + in the top corners being
the motor positions. Adjust the variables internally for different machine sizes
For give me 
