Do people want redesigned nubs for the next pandora?


asimov-solensan

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Just wanted to know if people are happy of how they work.


I replaced the two I had because I had a "one nubber" from the first batch and I don't like the new ones either. My reasons:


-They feel too loose, I don't have almost any feedback from them.


-There is a dead zone near center that makes hard to make precise movements (specially when using them as mouse).


-Behaviour is not symmetric, like they are more sensitive on the left side than the right.


-Not enough travel, they feel like they only have 3 or 4 values for a particular direction. This is surely related with the dead zone at centre.


-Don't understand that calibration thing. I use gamepads on my linux machine (two dual shocks with usb adapter and a logitech clone from a 360 controller) the analogs works perfectly from the begining.


-Is really worth to have two analogs? I think replacing the right one with a trackball or a better suited controller for the mouse will be better.


Of course those are just my opinion, my intention here is to hear what people think, and see if it's worth for developers to invest time/money on this or just leave the nubs as they are because people have no complains.
 
Admittedly I haven't used the nubs much, but i agree there is room for improvement. I also experience the dead zone, and as such use the stylus almost exclusively.


Clickable nubs would also be very useful, not only for mouse use but also for ps1 emulation. Can anyone tell me how i'm supposed to play Ape Escape with our current nubs?


I've already suggested in other threads that a trackpoint be included as an input option for the P2... And while there are a few of us that really like that idea, I very much doubt we will see it come to pass... :(


Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using Tapatalk
 
The nubs have always been terrible. They seem to be the only analog controls in the entire world that need calibrating on power-on. They're either over-sensitive or almost dead until you've rammed them around a bit. I'd rather have a mini-trackball for a mouse instead of the nubs - using them as a mouse pointer was a pretty stupid idea; they're just not suitable.


D.
 
Actualy, I only use the nubs for mouse movements on the Pandora Desktop. :D Much more handy than using the Stylus imho. Mouse calibration and sensitivity varies from time to time but it is usable.


However, the Nubs are not that great how Pandora Team always told us. I find the nub travel distance much to short, they should be some mm wider in each direction, so you can do a more exact acceleration control.


I'm also for the long awaited removable nubs with sockets, pretty clever Idea but It is not made yet.
 
The nubs have always been terrible. They seem to be the only analog controls in the entire world that need calibrating on power-on.
They don't. Not once have I ever done anything but use them as is. The "magic nub dance" is mostly cargo cult behaviour: it works for certain situations, so we'll just apply it to everything, just in case. It doesn't actually need to be done every time at startup, only when the auto-calibration starts going wrong. When the auto-calibration has gone wrong, it can be corrected faster and easier at a restart when there isn't a lot of contrary data, but if it happens during normal use you should still be able to spin the nub in a circle a lot (many times, over several seconds, not just the one time required at boot up) to cover all its extremes and force the chip to a new state. If you regularly move the nubs to the edges as part of normal operation then there shouldn't be any weird calibration issues at all.


Ideally the auto-calibration wouldn't exist. It isn't needed, but we have no practical way of replacing it.


Other than my one nubber (which jumps around spastically) I've not had too many complaints. The rubber could be made of stiffer stuff, I think, eliminate the deadzone and make it easier to hit the low ranges, like you suggest, but on the whole I'm happy with them.


One thing I would definitely oppose change too is the caps: the caps are awesome, comfortable, good and grippy. My thumb is constantly sliding off the 3DS nub and I found the PSP small and uncomfortable on my thumb. The Pandora nub moves well with my thumb. Even the way the caps spin, which I at first thought would be a bad thing, actually makes motion much easier, I've found.
 
I dunno, I think the nubs are fine. Pretty great, in fact.

-They feel too loose, I don't have almost any feedback from them.

Actually, my feeling on this is the opposite: I like that it's easier to move the Pandora's nubs than the 3DS's nub. The stiffness of the 3DS nub is actually the main reason I didn't enjoy playing Super Mario 3D Land; I found the nub uncomfortable to use because it's so stiff. I guess I'm in a minority, though.

-There is a dead zone near center that makes hard to make precise movements (specially when using them as mouse).

I don't really notice much of a deadzone when I tested it out. The natural deadzone on the Dualshock 3 is just as big if not bigger.

-Behaviour is not symmetric, like they are more sensitive on the left side than the right.

I haven't experienced much of anything like this. Usually, calibration fixes any incongruity, and that's automatic. The only exception for me is that a couple of times (two, to be exact), the right nub has become extremely sensitive going down and not sensitive at all going up. In both cases, rebooting solved this.

-Not enough travel, they feel like they only have 3 or 4 values for a particular direction. This is surely related with the dead zone at centre.

I was a bit skeptical of this, so I tried out Super Geometry Dust with movement set to the left nub, then with movement set to the right nub. I didn't experience this at all with the left nub (I could distinctly see at least 10 different speeds) and I experienced this with the right nub at first (sort of; one direction was only going at maximum speed), but it went away when I did some swoops to calibrate it.

-Don't understand that calibration thing. I use gamepads on my linux machine (two dual shocks with usb adapter and a logitech clone from a 360 controller) the analogs works perfectly from the begining.

I wasn't fan of it either, but one good point about auto-calibration is that it self-corrects, and I've learned to appreciate it enough. I do think that it would be nice if calibration settings could be saved and auto-calibration turned off, though.

-Is really worth to have two analogs?

Yes! For many games, dual analog controls are very useful. Super Geometry Dust in particular is a game that is not anywhere near as good without dual analog. Not to mention N64 and PSX emulation.

The nubs have always been terrible. They seem to be the only analog controls in the entire world that need calibrating on power-on. They're either over-sensitive or almost dead until you've rammed them around a bit.

I haven't found this to ever be a problem with actual analog controls (e.g. mouse pointer movement) since the calibration is automatic. With mouse buttons, it is, occasionally; that's why I think a great option would be to customize the mappings for each direction (in my case, not having anything for up and down), to minimize this. But really, just swing it around a bit and it's good to go. And this really seems to me like a software issue, not a hardware issue.
 
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I think the nubs are excellent and a strong point for the device.


I hardly use the stylus now.
 
The nubs feel nice, but the calibration is awful, for me at least. Just to give examples:


When I'm playing Super Geometry Dust they will begin to decalibrate whilst playing, so much so that I end up having to adapt my playstyle to avoid moving in one direction for too long.


Similar on the desktop. They begin to decalibrate when been used for a number of minutes, making one or more of the eight points of the compas,s unavailable so I have to move about the screen like an etch-a-sketch.


I've always assumed this was a operating system problem. Does anyone know otherwise?
 
A nice feature could be a small, pressable button in the centre of each nub. What do you guys think about this?
 
I think being able to click the nubs down (the whole nub, no need for it to be an embedded button) would be good. Would make mouse control by nubs much more sane.


Another thought; it seems like poor design to have nubs which can rotate without that rotation having any effect. Preferably they would not be able to rotate, but another option (albeit a difficult one to achieve) would be to measure the rotation. The more input the better. Think volume control, clitoral stimulation simulation, remote fishing rod control. Haveatyou Vita, with your double-ended touch capacitive surfaces.


Was something like a large, flat Thinkpad-esque nippple considered at any point? They work rather well. They do decalibrate, but fix themselves within half a second of taking your hand off them.
 
Another thought; it seems like poor design to have nubs which can rotate without that rotation having any effect.

Doesn't seem like a huge blemish to me (or a blemish at all), but I do wonder why they rotate. Anyone able to explain? Maybe a design choice that's not particularly obvious, or is it just easier to make it that way?
 
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A nice feature could be a small, pressable button in the centre of each nub. What do you guys think about this?
The original design had clickable nubs. I think they were nixed for major cost concerns.


An interesting effect of the way the nubs are designed, it is theoretically possible for them to detect how hard you are pressing down on them. The firmware doesn't do this, and it's possible that the range wouldn't be useful enough to do anything with, but the possibility is there. I'm hoping that OPT keeps the same design but wrangles the ability to update the firmware out of the nub manufacturers for the next Pandora.

Another thought; it seems like poor design to have nubs which can rotate without that rotation having any effect. Preferably they would not be able to rotate
I've actually found the rotating to improve the comfort of prolonged use.
 
We are sampling some alternative nubs which work in a different way.


When we made the Pandora there were no off the shelf solutions for the nubs, which is why they are custom made using a non-patented technique.


They also have to have a low profile and flat top.


Fortunately there are a few off the shelf solutions now which we can take a look at, however none of them are anywhere near as cheap as we are able


to manufacture our own for.
 
Regarding the nub auto-calibration.. Would it be possible to retrieve and upload the calibration to the nubs? If the nub firmware doesn't support this, could MWeston add it to the nub firmware?


This way, someone could write a user-installable pandora app that saves the current nub calibration data, and then on boot the app could be made to upload the calibration data to the nubs.


The Pandora could still be shipped without the ability to save nub calibration on boot in order to avoid patent infringement.
 
The nubs have always worked fine for me, been fine for n64 emulation.. It's funny going back to the real n64 controller I end up missing the nubs.. I find I rarely use the touchscreen outside of scummvm..
 
I like the nubs for mousing, but don't personally find them usable for gaming (I find the nub of the Nintendo 3DS better, on this front, and I find that I prefer how it responds for this). This isn't a big deal for me, as almost no games I emulate on the Pandora need them anyway. :p


I certainly wouldn't mind seeing different ones if they work better than the present solution. Whilst I generally don't need to calibrate mine, sometimes (rarely, granted) the left one will randomly slow down in a particular direction (invariably, left) and require it.
 
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Regarding the nub auto-calibration.. Would it be possible to retrieve and upload the calibration to the nubs? If the nub firmware doesn't support this, could MWeston add it to the nub firmware?
They weren't designed to do this and there's no simple way of updating them after they've been shipped. If you've got a JTAG cable I think you could poke the right pins on the board and reflash the chip yourself, but I doubt the average user is going to have the equipment (not to mention the gumption) to do so.
 
You'd have to be a complete moron to think them unsuitable for mouse control. And for games they get the job done very nicely; I play Spiderman 2 and the Army Men series on PCSX. Most loverly.


I think they feel just fine, the dead spots could maybe go away but otherwise the response and feel are quite natural. I bump the left nub cursor speed up to 225 which is about perfect for navigating the screen. Used lots of analog controls myself, and these are actually well up there in terms of quality. It would seem the quality may vary per unit.
 
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