Button Actions: making your own prop file

By default, the Proffieboard has a wide array of button actions, based on your config (1, 2, or 3 buttons.) However, some of the default button actions can be less than ideal when spinning or dueling the saber. For example, a simple short click on the power button will shut off the saber, which is easy to trigger by accident when handling the saber.

So, how do we fix this? Easy.

Button actions are handled by a prop file. The default prop file is called saber.h and can be found in the "props/" directory. While you can modify saber.h directly, the recommended way is to make a copy of saber.h, then add the following to your config file:

    #ifdef CONFIG_PROP
    #include "../props/yourfile.h"   // this assumes your copy is called "yourfile.h"
    #endif

Inside the prop file, you'll find case statements that specify how buttons are handled. Case statements are a condition and an action, followed by "return true". The condition is what needs to happen to trigger the action and the break stops other actions from firing in separate case statements. Here's the example of the power off case statement from line 72 in props/saber.h:

      case EVENTID(BUTTON_POWER, EVENT_CLICK_SHORT, MODE_ON):
      case EVENTID(BUTTON_POWER, EVENT_LATCH_OFF, MODE_ON):
      case EVENTID(BUTTON_AUX, EVENT_LATCH_OFF, MODE_ON):
      case EVENTID(BUTTON_AUX2, EVENT_LATCH_OFF, MODE_ON):
    #if NUM_BUTTONS == 0
      case EVENTID(BUTTON_NONE, EVENT_TWIST, MODE_ON):
    #endif
    #ifndef DISABLE_COLOR_CHANGE
        if (SaberBase::GetColorChangeMode() != SaberBase::COLOR_CHANGE_MODE_NONE) {
          // Just exit color change mode.
          // Don't turn saber off.
          ToggleColorChangeMode();
          return true;
        }
    #endif
        Off();
        return true;

      case EVENTID(BUTTON_POWER, EVENT_CLICK_LONG, MODE_ON):
        SaberBase::DoForce();
        return true;

So we see that there are four separate case statements that have the same action: Turn off color change mode and then call Off(); That Off() call turns off the saber, and can be triggered by the power button or aux button, depending on config (both momentary and latching.) Most configs have two buttons: power and aux (both momentary), so we can ignore the three statements regarding latching switches.

To alter the button behavior, we simply change

      case EVENTID(BUTTON_POWER, EVENT_CLICK_SHORT, MODE_ON):

to

      case EVENTID(BUTTON_POWER, EVENT_CLICK_LONG, MODE_ON):

Now a long press of the power button (any press longer than 500 ms) will shut off the saber when it's running. However, this isn't the only change that needs to be made. As you can see in the code, there is another action assigned to a long power button press while powered on: Force effects. We need to 'move' this action because there can only be one case statement for a given button, condition and power state in the code, which means that two identical case statements will prevent the code from compiling and uploading to your saber. In my case, I moved the Force effects from long press power to long press aux, like so:

 case EVENTID(BUTTON_AUX, EVENT_CLICK_LONG, MODE_ON):
        SaberBase::DoForce();
        break;

Now we've changed power off to a long press and moved force effects to long press aux. Hopefully this example shows how easy it is to change the case statements in the prop to customize your buttons to do exactly what you want them to do.

Happy sabering!