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Volkswagen Will Bring Back Physical Buttons In New Cars | Down with touch screen controls. (insideevs.com)

submitted 9 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Volkswagen Will Bring Back Physical Buttons In New Cars | Down with touch screen controls.::Volkswagen says that it has heard the feedback from its customers. It plans to bring back physical buttons and controls in future models.

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[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The physical buttons aren’t attached to anything though. It’s still software. My ford buttons glitch out when the soft buttons and steering wheel buttons do.

[–] riskable@programming.dev 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's because they cheaped out and used (cheap) electromechanical switches for the buttons and electromechanical rotary encoders for the knobs.

If they used magnetic hall effect switches they'd never glitch (unless the microcontroller itself is glitching). Hall effect switches are forever.

(And no: Even cars in Arizona don't get hot enough to wreck rare earth magnets... They'll lose strength slightly above 80°C but not enough to matter since the car knows its internal temp and can compensate if they didn't get the better sensors that auto-compensate).

For reference, hall effect switches and encoders aren't really that much more expensive for something like a car where you're going to be using/making millions of them. It probably saves pennies per car to use the cheap switches.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It’s because the knobs control software and the software is buggy. The volume knob is not connected to the amp for instance.

The knob or switch longevity isn’t even in question yet.

[–] riskable@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago

If the volume knob was connected to the amp you'd hear the static from a shitty potentiometer that's wearing out. Instead what you get is a volume knob that occasionally skips steps because it's an electromechanical rotary encoder and doesn't rely on brushes rubbing against a gradient resistive wheel (that literally wears itself away over time which is why car manufacturers switched to rotary encoders in the first place).

The software sucks too (absolutely!) but it's pretty obvious when the problem is one of the following:

Skipped control (e.g. volume) steps. Indicates that a contact has worn out (oxidized too much).
The car suddenly thinks a knob is being turned constantly in one direction (e.g. volume suddenly goes up up up or down down down sometimes forever until you move the knob). This can be "bouncing" or just a contact that's getting stuck (because dust/car gunk got in there).

These two things are clear indicators of electromechanical components failing. Not normally caused by buggy software.

Neither of these things happen when you use hall effect switches or hall effect rotary encoders (for knobs).

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago

What I don't get is this constant cheating where they don't have to.

Even where making a real thing with its advantages is cheaper or same, they'll still make it dependent on something that breaks.

Well, it would be advantageous where no competition will do the real thing. But we have competition, right? Free markets, right? No cronyism, right? LOL