Round 4. Fight! (2010-10-12)

[vaiovann]

It is said that the defining difference between the "Russian" engineering principle, and the "American" principle, is this: When in that moment a decision to either add a feature or reduce complexity (and therefore a projects over all feature set), a Russian Engineer will generally side on the reduced feature set. Instead relying on it's abundant but hearty qualities to get it thru.


All stereotypes aside, I suppose the OP method is to test... and make damn sure that the product provided meets the Engineers own criteria first an foremost. I respect this.


However it may be a good faith effort on the part of the OP Team to (depending on the difficulty involved, and if financially productive) to let the most recent nub material thru. If this material stands up to say 300K cycles (but noticeably shy of the 500K mark), to just let it ride. I for ones would not mumble decent if a more "reliable" material was discovered and properly vetted in the mean time, while a large bulk of Pandoras met their collective owners... Just a thought.

 

[Korlithiel]

While I hate to continue to wait, I do look forward to my Pandora arriving again.

 

[TitanUranus]

Ed, I genuinely appreciate the way you try to keep us up to date - in fact if you didn't I'd have bailed out a long time ago. Forgive me if I make the odd snide remark. Most of us who do are just venting a bit of irriration at seeing yet another estimate about to pass us by.


My excuse is simple I'm Scottish. Being a miserable, sarcastic bastard is as close to being optomistic that I can manage. Please keep up the good work, and the optomistic outlook - we need it.

 

[DisgruntleElf]

Why is it exactly Pandoras can't be sold at a lower cost without any nubs? Its an alternative for anyone who is satisfied with just DaveC's directional pad or who doesn't need their Pandora for gaming. If there's a demand for it or if the nubs fail again it might be a good way to go.

 

[moz]

Why is it exactly Pandoras can't be sold at a lower cost without any nubs? Its an alternative for anyone who is satisfied with just DaveC's directional pad or who doesn't need their Pandora for gaming. If there's a demand for it or if the nubs fail again it might be a good way to go.

that would be one ugly pandora

 

[dapoangel]

Why is it exactly Pandoras can't be sold at a lower cost without any nubs? Its an alternative for anyone who is satisfied with just DaveC's directional pad or who doesn't need their Pandora for gaming. If there's a demand for it or if the nubs fail again it might be a good way to go.

or just use the old nubs instead to those not gonna use it in gaming, so they still have nubs...

 

[frostedfires]

Great work ED!! Glad to see another update! Pray to God this time it reaches extra RPM's and we get more than we expect.

 

[sehs33]

I am not sure if it was asked before, but:


1. Can OP team solder the nubs themselves if it was needed?


2. Can a normal person with basic soldering skills solder the nubs to his unit when extra spare nubs are available?

 

[gruso]

Not sure if everyone in the team can do it, maybe only MWeston. I think an end user would have to have intermediate to advanced skills to remove/install them. It's been done:


Nub disassembly, cleaning / More info / More info and pics / Fix broken Nub PCB traces


(Taken from tips, tricks & tweaks thread)

 

[sehs33]

Thanks a lot for the reply Gruso, bookmarked until we have spare nubs (I have a flimsy right nub but mailing my Pandora to the UK/Turkey to get ti fixed will cost me at least $100 without customs. Yes customs in my country will ignore the fact it is sent for repair and that they over charged me for it earlier when it arrived although I have the receipt )

 

[Caine]

Despite what the team said, I always knew that having shipped by the end of October was optimistic. I still believe that finishing batch one before the end of December is going to be a challenge.


Having said this, I'm glad to hear some progress on the nub front. Thanks for keeping us up-to-date ED. Without you, this project would have failed for certain due to a lack of customers.

 

[levi]

However it may be a good faith effort on the part of the OP Team to (depending on the difficulty involved, and if financially productive) to let the most recent nub material thru. If this material stands up to say 300K cycles (but noticeably shy of the 500K mark), to just let it ride. I for ones would not mumble decent if a more "reliable" material was discovered and properly vetted in the mean time, while a large bulk of Pandoras met their collective owners... Just a thought.

Interesting thought, but the testing requirement hasn't got as much to do with making it perfect, and ensuring that a small enough number of nubs fail within the warranty period so it doesn't end up eating into the budget to replace them. No point paying to produce nubs that will need to be replaced under warranty. If the sample of nubs last 500k uses then the odds are any individual nub will last at least a year.


Have OPT made a statement on what the warranty period is for the Pandora, by the way? In UK law things are supposed to be warranted against manufacturing defects for the length of time they'd normally be expected to last - so an orange is only warranted for a few days, for example, but a TV for much longer. Unfortunately lots of companies seem to think this means 12 months for electronic equipment, presumably since the user should've noticed manufacturing defects before the 12 months is up, and anything that happens after that point is likely due to the user being a ham-fisted dimwit. Famously though, in the case of the xbox ring of death, the 12 months rule isn't hard or fast.

 

[Grench]

Suggestion for future designs:


Make the nubs socket based instead of soldered. If one wears out, pop in a new one and go.


Think of it like tires on a car. They're wear out parts - that is why they are relatively easy to change. Nobody welds the wheels onto the axle.

 

[dapoangel]

Suggestion for future designs:


Make the nubs socket based instead of soldered. If one wears out, pop in a new one and go.


Think of it like tires on a car. They're wear out parts - that is why they are relatively easy to change. Nobody welds the wheels onto the axle.

yeah, that could be a nice idea.

 

[EvilDragon]

yeah, that could be a nice idea.

AFAIK, Michael is planning that, yes.

 

[WizardStan]

Why is it exactly Pandoras can't be sold at a lower cost without any nubs? Its an alternative for anyone who is satisfied with just DaveC's directional pad or who doesn't need their Pandora for gaming. If there's a demand for it or if the nubs fail again it might be a good way to go.

You really think the nubs are such a high ticket item that it would noticeably lower the cost of the Pandora? It's a few dollars at most. When the last batch had some boards with completely dead nubs, they were sold as no-nub units for the same cost.


Perhaps OPT can go back to offering queue jumps, or even flat out purchases, of nubless units, but I can't see it being for any sort of reduced cost: the couple of dollars you'd save is made up as an early purchaser tax or something


I don't think even that would be a good idea though: if they sell enough nubless versions, there will be a rift. Some portion of those that jumped the queue to get a nubless unit will later be complaining that they can't play certain games that require nubs, and that they shouldn't have to pay to have them replaced even if that was part of the deal they originally signed. I know enough people to know that no matter how cohesive the group seems to be, there's always one dick that'll make a big scene, sometimes multiple dicks making one big bukake mess of everything.


Just wait it out, it's worth it.

 

[WizardStan]

Unfortunately lots of companies seem to think this means 12 months for electronic equipment, presumably since the user should've noticed manufacturing defects before the 12 months is up, and anything that happens after that point is likely due to the user being a ham-fisted dimwit. Famously though, in the case of the xbox ring of death, the 12 months rule isn't hard or fast.

Officially in the UK it is actually only 6 months: during those 6 months, a company must prove that damage was caused by the user and not in manufacturing. After 6 months, it is the responsibility of the user to prove that any defects were caused in manufacturing and not by himself or general wear and tear. Any company that provides a full warranty up to 12 months is doing you a favour by absorbing those extra 6 months itself. After those 12 months, you would still be covered by the law that says it must last a "reasonable" amount of time, but it becomes your responsibility to prove it was a manufacturing problem that caused the damage. In cases like the Xbox red ring of death where it was happening en mass it would have been pretty hard to prove it WASN'T a problem in manufacturing

 

[Polossatik]

/off topic


In Belgium we get 24 Months of warranty by default.


/on topic


nice, frankly I think those nubs would also be a great hit for robotic builders and other tinkerers .


I understood the nubs will be sold separately , would be nice to have also the exact specifications on how to interface those.


Might be also an idea to check for resellers in the US, might be a hit on SparkFun and so.

 

[levi]

Officially in the UK it is actually only 6 months: during those 6 months, a company must prove that damage was caused by the user and not in manufacturing. After 6 months, it is the responsibility of the user to prove that any defects were caused in manufacturing and not by himself or general wear and tear. Any company that provides a full warranty up to 12 months is doing you a favour by absorbing those extra 6 months itself. After those 12 months, you would still be covered by the law that says it must last a "reasonable" amount of time, but it becomes your responsibility to prove it was a manufacturing problem that caused the damage.

Ah, good to know cheers. I guess that's the progression of case law - my info's a few years old now.

In cases like the Xbox red ring of death where it was happening en mass it would have been pretty hard to prove it WASN'T a problem in manufacturing

True, although they did try for a little while IIRC

 

[Yoyobuae]

/off topic


In Belgium we get 24 Months of warranty by default.


/on topic


nice, frankly I think those nubs would also be a great hit for robotic builders and other tinkerers .


I understood the nubs will be sold separately , would be nice to have also the exact specifications on how to interface those.


Might be also an idea to check for resellers in the US, might be a hit on SparkFun and so.

From what I understand, each nub needs a microcontroller chip to actually work. The firmware of that chip is closed and owned by the nub company. I imagine that reading the nub position from the changes in resistance thru the rubber is not a trivial task.


What could work could be for OPT to sell a small PCB with the nub/controller already on it and connectors for interfacing with the controller. I imagine that the controller should output X/Y data pairs at some rate or maybe it waits for data to read on it's bus.


Depends on OPT if they'll sell this or not.