Determine strategy to implement missing Android HW buttons on BUG

[kgilmer]

BUG20 has one user-accessible button. Android devices typically have 4 buttons:
HOME
BACK
PROPERTIES
SEARCH

The PROPERTIES button is necessary in many applications. Also, BACK and HOME are obviously important. This issue is to determine how these buttons can be triggered on BUG w/out having hardware buttons available.

[thebohemian]

As a remark I'd like to add that some android brands provide those buttons as a softbutton. That is they are displayed permanently on the screen and lie outside the desktop area (are never hidden by apps).
Out of my head I don't know where to find code for this but I stumbled upon comments somewhere in Android that mentioned these.

[teknosalsero]

I think we should develop a new BUGmodule for that... call it BUGandroid or what have you. We have the capability to put a bunch of buttons, speakers and other to mimic the conveniences that a cell phone provides. Another option might be to build a 2x1 sized BUGmodule that has a BIG screen and 4 buttons at the bottom. Let the imagination run wild.

Seriously though, Terg and I've been discussing a generic BUGmodule w/ EEPROM to DIY. This might be a good project for that.

[thebohemian]

If you're considering a hw solution the following info might be of use. The keys in android are normal keyboard keys. So if there is a driver for that module-to-be that Linux detects as an input device you can make it generate the necessary key presses.

[kgilmer]

Robert, thanks for your suggestions! Yes, problem with soft keys is that the LCD screen is already QVGA...so losing space would seriously effect usability. In regards to keyboard device, yes I've already setup the user key from the TWL4030 driver to provide the BACK key event. Matt enabled the TWL4030 power button and it somehow worked out of the box without mapping to a key.

[kgilmer]

After some digging and some tuning, you can now "press" the menu button by running the following command either via the adb shell or the serial console:

# input keyevent 82

This functionality is available in build 110 or greater: http://bugcommunity.com/downloads/files/android_builds/dist-jenkins-android-froyo-110.tar.gz

Also, available Android apps that emulate soft keys on the LCD screen should work as of build 110.

Leaving issue open as the softkey functionality is not built-in by default but requires getting a third party app from a non-market source.

[teknosalsero]

Ken, is it possible to use the slider tab thing and put the button there?

[kgilmer]

Not sure what you mean teknosalsero.