Can I remap/assign keys on a Bluetooth device to toggle the Finger touch setting?

[llinfeng]

I wonder if I can map a certain key on a Bluetooth controller to toggle the "Finger touch" setting natively? Likely, this key will be DPAD_UP or DPAD_LEFT. More generally, I wonder what it takes to trigger some system event in a Boox tablet using a button on a Bluetooth device.

# Why bother with toggling the "Finger touch" setting?
Even with the v3.2 firmware on a Lumi 2 tablet, I find it necessary to disable "Finger touch" when writing in the OneNote app. Either my palm is different or that the palm-rejection is not there yet, OneNote fails to take my pen-strokes almost half of the times when I write on it with my hand resting on the screen. With OneNote, well, finger touches are also needed when I need to move the canvas. Spoiled by the better palm-rejection on a Surface tablet, I tend to write and move the canvas rather frequently.

For now, to disable "Finger touch" for writing, I need to swipe down from the top of the device to summon the Drop-down panel, and then tap on the icon for Finger touch. This is fine on a 7-inch Nova air, but takes noticeably more effort on a 13-inch Lumi 2.

In an ideal case, the controller sold by Boox should have a dedicated button that toggles "Finger touch". For now, interestingly, it has a dedicated button for screenshot and another one for adjusting the contrast.

# Alternative solution with Tasker + Button Mapper
Tasker along with its touch-simulating support tools constitute one obvious solution. Yet, it still involves visually summoning the Drop-down panel and can be clunky to execute at times. Additionally, Button Mapper by flar2 is needed to trigger the Tasker event from Bluetooth devices.

[llinfeng]

It appears to be quite a demanding task to emulate the toggling of the "Finger touch" feature on Boox tablets. How demanding? Well, may be at the level of writing oneself an Android app

An outline of steps includes:
1. Identify the pattern of "intent" when the "Finger touch" setting is switched on/off;
2. Find a way to initiate such "intent" with a trigger of some sort;
3. Find a convenient way to, well, trigger the trigger event.

For step one, running adb.exe logcat > local_log.txt will generate a long text file. I am stuck at the second step, as I cannot tell which is which among the logs. Suppose all the three steps are done, then, one can combine all into one app, where pazos offered more tips in this post.


-----

Until Boox implement an alternative way to toggle the "Finger Touch" setting, here is my current workaround:
1. Use Button Mapper to assign a button on a Bluetooth clicker, to summon the notification field on a Boox device.
2. Then, tap on the icon to trigger the setting for "Finger Touch".
3. Lastly, to write again with the pen, well, tap somewhere else to dismiss the notification panel.

I find this to be an improvement over doing everything with my fingers - on Boox Lumi 2, it was a bit challenging to swipe properly from the top edge of the device to reveal the notification panel, especially when I am in the middle of writing something, thus with a pen at hand. The range of motion is just too prominent: one needs to start exactly at the very top of the device, and swipe all the way down, covering at least 1/3 of the vertical size of the tablet. On a 13.3-inch device, this is not a fun task to perform routinely.


With Button Mapper, I can now hold the clicker in my opposite hand for triggering the notification pane. Then, it is manageable to perform two quick finger taps with a pen in my dominant hand, for toggling on/off the "Finger Touch" feature.

-----

At this point, since palm-rejection is still barely working for OneNote when one writes continuously from left-to-right, I would urge the Boox programmer who sees this post to get us a quicker way to toggle the "Finger Touch" setting.

[lvlrdka22]

Originally Posted by llinfeng

Either my palm is different or that the palm-rejection is not there yet, OneNote fails to take my pen-strokes almost half of the times when I write on it with my hand resting on the screen.

I'm fairly sure this happens because touch occurs before stylus activity. You should check if they are disabling touch when stylus is hovering, because if so, it's the best they can do for a panning canvas (in addition to adding a pointer for stylus hover) if you want touch automatically enabled/disabled.
If not, you can just write a script that does this.

If you have root, /sys/class/input/input?/inhibited and /sys/onyx_misc/captp_disable both do this (on a Note Pro). Touch may sometimes get stuck in the "down" position.
If you're able to access the SDK, EpdController.setAppCTPDisableRegion and EpdController.appResetCTPDisableRegion are much better.

[llinfeng]

Thanks a lot for suggesting the options once I get the device rooted!

I am testing a new setup where I paired a mouse with two wheels to my Lumi 2 tablet. It is working surprisingly well - with the two dedicated wheels, I can scroll up/down or left/right, respectively. It came as a surprise that scrolling to the left may further reveal the page/section/notebook panel as if I was pressing Ctrl+Shift+Plus/Minus sign on Windows.

[lvlrdka22]

Actually, I just discovered a much better approach.

am broadcast -a action.disable.tp.exclude.bar.region

and

am broadcast -a action.enable.all.tp.region

Both of these actually cause the touch icon to change, provided screen isn't in raw drawing mode. Not sure what the analogue is for the first one in 3.2, but you can just check it easily from logcat.

[llinfeng]

@lvlrdka22, thanks a lot for the two lines of commands. They work as intended when issued through adb shell for firmware version 3.2! And, both action.disable.tp.exclude.bar.region and action.enable.all.tp.region are still working as valid "intents".

My current solution is to use Button Mapper, and map:

• action.enable.all.tp.region as Broadcast intent for one key
• action.disable.tp.exclude.bar.region as Broadcast intent for another key

With Button Mapper, in order to specify such settings to certain keys, one should first tap "Add Buttons" to register a specific key to the app, and then enable such key for additional functionalities. To "enable" the key, on needs to toggle the setting for "Customize". The end result looks like this and this.

----

Thanks again for spotting out the two intents!