Hacky New Year

I took a bit of a creative break over the holidays in order to regroup, look at this project with a fresh pairs of eyes and think about the spec. I didn't stop completely; my mind was working away quietly in the background worrying about the one-button interface and whether one button was one going make it simple or make it unusable. I guess it depends on if you are a Mac or a PC kind of guy.

The idea of "Press button to start logging" and "Press button to stop logging" seemed simple enough, but upon consideration this makes it too easy for kids to mess up. It would be pretty easy to accidentally press the button when taking the LogStick to and from the field and start/stop it logging. I could go for double clicking but that seemed less intuitive and kids don't always double click the way adults do. So I came up with the idea of the length of time you press the button being significant. A long press could start logging and a short press could pause rather than halt logging. A long press can't be accidental and a short press will only pause logging rather than starting all over again.

Santa was good to me and I got a great book in my stocking.

This has some very interesting projects that I think would easily become LogStick applications.