Supporting Haptic Input (RPC v4.5+)

SDL now supports "haptic" input: input from something other than a touch screen. This could include trackpads, click-wheels, etc. These kinds of inputs work by knowing which views on the screen are touchable and focusing / highlighting on those areas when the user moves the trackpad or click wheel. When the user selects within a view, the center of that area will be "touched".

Note

Currently, there are no RPCs for knowing which view is highlighted, so your UI will have to remain static (i.e. you should not create a scrolling menu in your SDL app).

You will also need to implement touch input support in order to receive touches on the views. In addition, you must support the automatic focusable item manager in order to receive a touched UIView in the SDLTouchManagerDelegate in addition to the CGPoint.

Automatic Focusable Rectangles

SDL has support for automatically detecting focusable views within your UI and sending that data to the head unit. You will still need to tell SDL when your UI changes so that it can re-scan and detect the views to be sent.

In order to use the automatic focusable item locator, you must set the UIWindow of your streaming content on SDLStreamingMediaConfiguration.window. So long as the window is set, the focusable item locator will start running. Whenever your app UI updates, you will need to send a notification:

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotificationName:SDLDidUpdateProjectionView object:nil];

NotificationCenter.default.post(name: SDLDidUpdateProjectionView, object: nil)

Note

When your renderingType is SDLCarWindowRenderingTypeLayer, the SDLDidUpdateProjectionView notification should only be sent in the overridden viewDidLayoutSubviews method of your rootViewController. If you do not, your haptic rects may not update as you expect.

SDL can only automatically detect UIButtons and anything else that responds true to canBecomeFocused. This means that custom UIView objects will not be found. You must send these objects manually, see "Manual Focusable Rects".

Before Xcode 12.5, some built-in UIView subclasses, such as UITextField, responded true to canBecomeFocused. That is not longer true, and you must subclass these built-in views and implement canBecomeFocused to return true.

Manual Focusable Rects

If you need to supplement the automatic focusable item locator, or do all of the location yourself (e.g. views that are not focusable such as custom UIViews or OpenGL views), then you will have to manually send and update the focusable rects using SDLSendHapticData. This request, when sent replaces all current rects with new rects; so, if you want to clear all of the rects, you would send the RPC with an empty array. Or, if you want to add a single rect, you must re-send all previous rects in the same request.

Usage is simple, you create the rects using SDLHapticRect, add a unique id, and send all the rects using SDLSendHapticData.

SDLRectange *viewRect = [[SDLRectangle alloc] initWithCGRect:view.bounds];
SDLHapticRect *hapticRect = [[SDLHapticRect alloc] initWithId:1 rect:viewRect];
SDLSendHapticData *hapticData = [[SDLSendHapticData alloc] initWithHapticRectData:@[hapticRect]];

[self.sdlManager sendRequest:hapticData];

guard let viewRect = SDLRectangle(cgRect: view.bounds) else { return }
let hapticRect = SDLHapticRect(id: 1, rect: viewRect)
let hapticData = SDLSendHapticData(hapticRectData: [hapticRect])

self.sdlManager.send(hapticData)