BangleApps/apps/thering/README.md

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# The Ring
*A proof of concept clock with large ring guage for steps using pre-set images, acts as a tutorial piece for discussion*
Written by: [Hugh Barney](https://github.com/hughbarney) For support
and discussion please post in the [Bangle JS
Forum](http://forum.espruino.com/microcosms/1424/)
* The ring is a proof of concept to establish a clean way to draw a
large ring guage with few aliasing issues and artifacts.
* Rather than use grahics commands to draw the ring a series of fixed images are used.
* This allows for better accuracy of the initial image and also does not suffer from performance issues.
* The downside is that more storage and memory is used to hold the
initial images. This is not an issue on a Bangle 2.
* The ring effect is constructed from 14 images that represent a range of different percentages
* The percentages of the images are 0,2,4,7,10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,100%
* The app is not intended to be enhanced further (apart from bug fixes) but rather as code that can be reused in other apps
* The full set of original images are included in the source code to demonstrate the concept
* I will use this code to build a new clock similar to Pastel but
using this ring guage for steps. The new clock will use more
attractive fonts and provide a settings meu to change the primary
color of the ring.
## Screenshots
![](screenshot_thering1.png)
It is worth looking at a photograph of the clock in action as the
screenshot does not do the final effect justice.
![](screenshot_thering2.jpg)
## Production
1. I first generated a circle on black background using [The
Gimp](https://www.gimp.org/) image editor. I used this [Youtube
video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoIAznSdLik) to get started.
The initial image is 178x178 pixels.
![](1circle.png)
2. I then drew another smaller black circle over the top of the original to make a ring
![](1ring.png)
3. From the empty ring image I coloured segments of the ring and saved new images at specific percentages
4. I used the file `calc_percentages.js` to work out the x and y
coordinates of the end point of each percentage position along the
ring.
5. The [Image
Converter](https://espruino.github.io/EspruinoWebTools/examples/imageconverter.html)
was used, set to 2-bit optimal, transparency Y, compression Y and
ImageObject Y, to convert each PNG file to code.
6. NOTE that the generated image object pallete seemed to switch the
order of the colors from 50% onwards.
7. The greying out of the unused part of the ring is acheived by
using a dithered color. So if the ring colour is green #0f0 then the
greyed out part is done in '#020'.
## Stages of The Ring
Below are some examples of the different stages of the ring
![](0p.png)
![](7p.png)
![](60p.png)