Dial Reading Tutor

Reading Multi-Dial Analog Guages otherwise known as METERS

A JavaScript Application

Show original set in 3+ and 3- directories Show dials with numbers, and ticks Show dials without numbers but with ticks Show dials with neither numbers or ticks Show 3 dials Show 4 dials Show 5 dials Show 6 dials

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[BEGINNING] [DIALS] [ENTRY] [GOALS] [TASKS] [LICENSING] [END]

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Goal

Reading a dial is easy, anybody can do it. My guess is, that almost as soon as the right geek thinks of it, there will be an app available on almost any phone to accurately determine the read from a dial. However, there will never come a time when humans will not need to read large numbers of dials with inaccuracies of less than 1 per 10,000 reads. That said, when dials must be read with a very high degree of accuaracy, experience is the only way for a human with a multi-threaded, very organic consciousness to achieve this accuracy.

This tutor will eventually have these features

1. Dials from three to six
2. Will differentiate between readable misplaced hands and misplaced hands that are too misplaced to read.
3. The far right dial will always be EASY to read. (Will never be between 80% and 100% of a number.)
4. Will include dial-sets where the right hand dial goes counter-clockwise as well as clockwise
5. The interface will either be allow left-to-right entry or right-to-left
6. Will have levels of difficulty including:
   • Numbers or numberless
   • Ticks or tickless
   • Misplaced (up to 40% will be considered readable, more than that should not be read)
   • Statistics for the session
7. This project is a HOBBY, not a job. I have a real job.
8. Even so, will limit feature creep to very a very basic level
9. This little application will be available under a Creative Commons License. It will be ok for anyone to take it, modify it and redistribute it and even make money using it under very few, but definite restrictions.
10. This application should be usable with sofware produced in 2017.
11. This application will be backwards compatible to software produced in 1998.
12. My reasoning for making this compatible with older software has to do with my own personal vision of inclusivity. Besides, it is probably faster and uses less computer power than drawing with HTML5. (I'm not proficient at HTML5 anyway.)
13. Anybody who uses this application takes all responsibility for any risk from using it. I can't for the life of me imagine what that might be, but there is an imaginative universe out there.

Steps

What I've finished looks like this. What I plan to finish looks like this What I won't do looks like this

1. Design basic but functional graphic user interface (GUI) using xhtml and CSS2 (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language and Cascading Style Sheets Version II)
2. Create process for inputing reading using number buttons
3. Create process for clearing input
4. Create process for changing input direction from Left to Right to Right to Left
5. Create process for updating dial to match input
6. Create process for updating input to match dial
7. Create process for clearing dial
8. Create process for changing difficulty of the dial
9. Create process for generating random read and matching the dial to it
10. Create process for increasing size of dial
11. Create processes for misplaced hands
12. Create process for generating and tabulating statistics for a session
13. Create process for saving statistics for a session
14. Create process for viewing statistics for a session
15. Create tooltips and help texts for all applicable objects
16. Provide descriptive and helpful content
17. Provide information to the user on what is happening (via the status bar)
18. Provide Cheering and Jeering content (Totally useless, but kind of fun)
19. Enable or disable cheering and jeering
20. Tidy up the GUI so it looks good on most browsers incuding current (2017) cell phones
21. Review the GUI and operation on various browsers. Update if necessary
22. Remove or comment extraneous content: package for production
23. Validate the code in with an html validator
24. Provide solution for all social problems in the universe

Glossary

Analog

Something that changes state proportionally to something else. An analog gas meter, for instance, moves its hands at predictable rates according to how much gas flows through the meter. An analog meter has an infinite number of dial positions.

Dial

If analog, the display of a measuring device consisting of indeces and pointers or hands. If digital, the display shows the numbers. A gauge may or may not have these features, for instance the gauge for a traditional level consists of a bubble withing a liquid filled tube with marks on it.

Digit

One of a set of numerals that make up a number. In the number 1,987, "1", "9", "8", and "7" are the digits; they may be numbered left to right or right to left, so that "1" may be the first or last digit depending on who is speaking.

Digital

In Dials, a dial which shows a specific value which is the value of any digit of a numbering system.

Index

(plural: indeces or indexes) The numbers indicating values of a dial. On a clock dial they are usually from one to twelve, sometimes one to twenty-four. On industrial, multi-dial meters, they are usually from zero to nine. On scales, they may go frome zero to thousands.

Meter

A mechanical or solid-state device for indicating a measurement. Examples of meters include clocks, thermometers, scales, cash registers, electric meters and hand-held calculators. It could be argued that any record is a meter.

Numbering System

Any consistent method for describing amounts and values. The most common numbering system for most of us, is the decimal system using the digits: "0123456789". The most used numbering system today is binary which only uses two digits: "0,1". Other common numbering systems in the computer and western world are hexadecimal: "0123456789ABCDEF"; octal: "01234567"; roman "IVXLCM" and who knows what else.

These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Installing this on your computer

If you want to install this web page to your device you can (so that you can practice reading meters even though you don't have network access at the moment). Some operating systems try to hide your file structure. If so, it is up to you to conquer this. You need to do these things to have this on your computer:

1. Download the zip file named "manyDials.zip", and . . .
2. after checking it for viruses and other security issues (because you really should do this no matter how much you trust the source), and . . .
3. unzip it to any directory on any drive where you have permissions to run an html page, keeping the directory structure, and . . .
4. open the index.html in an javascript enabled web browser.

The version of this page without notes is simpler.