A few years ago, by the time of V4, I built a custom zynthian with a 5-inch capacitive screen, 4 encoders but no push buttons under the display, which wasn’t a big deal because there was a configuration option for showing these buttons at the bottom of the screen instead.
I’d like to update to the latest Zynthian OS to benefit from the latest features, but associated V5 official hardware now has 20 buttons. Is it still possible to use the latest software without a bunch of hardware buttons, i.e. can corresponding commands be triggered from the touch screen and how?
I thought I had read somewhere a while ago it was possible to operate recent OS versions with a touchscreen only, but I’ve been unable to find the info again.
The “On-screen buttons” are not mimics of the S1-S4 buttons. They do different things. S1-S4 are extra hardware buttons that can be bound to trigger events. The on-screen buttons provided some navigation and functionality that was not possible or more awkward with touchscreen only, i.e. without the 4 encoders and their switches.
You can still use Zynthian with touchscreen only. We occasionaly make changes that may break this functionality, e.g. navigation may be awkward or impossible but if this is reported then we try to fix is ASAP.
These options in webconf INTERFACE->UI Options can help with pure touchscreen:
Enable onscreen buttons
Enable cursor (if using a mouse rather than touch)
I have zynthian with just 4 encoders on my pedal board and oram is usable as the previous stable version. Yes, you will often need to do additional clicks and selects to get to some screens instead of just clicking one button on V5 but everything is still possible.
I have moved most of my zynthians to 5" screen , 20 buttons and 4 encoders on the right using MINI V2 hardware but sometimes I miss old screen layout with two encoders left and two encoders right. There is something nice about that design. Maybe, if we introduce 8 encoders in future (4 on each side of the screen) it will look as nice as before.
Good thanks, I’m willing to give it a try then. As it’s burning a new SD image is mandatory (rather than updating), is there a way to transfer all the configuration, other than taking screenshots of the webconf pages?
Also, it’s been a while since I set up my Zynthian, but as far as I remember I had to configure a couple of things manually in config.txt (like disabling spi to avoid conflicts in my hw setup). Is the config.txt file format compatible, i.e. can I simply copy it onto the new SD?
This is OS and Hardware related and may be modified by webconf. I would suggest taking a copy of your current config.txt then comparing it with the new one if you have issue. Note that this has changed location and is now in /boot/firmware.
Yes, @stojos, i also think there is something special on this minimal control interface. Probably due to the fact we have spent hundred of hours thinking the best way of layering the ever-increasing functionality, trying different combinations, making adjustments, dreaming with it!! until reaching the current V4 workflow. It’s not something casual. It’s the distillate of almost 10 years of iterations: “think => implement => test + feedback”. Probably it’s a key part of the “zynthian-experience” and i’ve tried to follow this path and “catch the spirit” when designing the V5 workflow.
I must say that we take care of keeping up-to-date this control interface, trying to keep accessible all new functionality. Indeed, i just pushed some changes that improve the V1-V4 workflow: