It's not Arzoo's fault that hardware manufacturers don't always support developers. I offered to write a LEDWiz driver for GGG but Randy didn't want to give me the necessary documentation to do it while he gave it to MikeQ and youki. Youki restricted use of his driver in any front end other than his own. MikeQ did end up releasing his final version which was a dll and useful for the type of plugin I was writing for GameEx. The official driver by GGG was crap to say the least and written as an ActiveX control which is a pain to use in anything other than VB6 (which is a dead language for the most part now anyway).
It doesn't make sense to have umpteen different dll's out there that all do the same thing, especially when you already have an extremely capable individual (MikeQ) who had already written one and agreed to release his work. And when I did offer to give you the information to write your own, after you showed that you were dedicated enough to actually do something with it, you declined in favor of using the one made by MikeQ. As for your comments about the ActiveX control I wrote, it seems to work fine for the world's largest aluminum producer and the 100+ year old department store chain who use it every day with large quantities of the hardware, not to mention countless others.
It should also be mentioned that there could have been another approach taken, one that is taken by virtually every other "real" hardware producer, and that is to completely lock down direct communication with the device and force developers to license the one and only library so MikeQ or Youki could be compensated for
their efforts. Another could have been to officially commission someone to write a suite of apps to provide with the hardware and then charge another $30 more per unit to cover the cost and force folks to buy it, whether they wanted it or not. No, instead we chose, at great financial risk, to make the best hardware we can for a fairly miserable profit margin to fill a void in the community, and to simply provide the basic tools and let those with the desire and skills make it do what they wanted, leaving compensation for their efforts up to them. Perhaps this isn't the best way, based on the nature of these comments.
I think Randy could have been more supportive. For writing the LEDWiz plugin for GameEx he gave me a free LEDWiz but I had to pay for my buttons and second LEDWiz. I believe Arzoo encountered a similar situation where he had to buy the bulk of his hardware from GGG. That doesn't seem right to me really.
Just to keep your story straight, Arzoo bought all of his gear long before LED-Blinky was a gleam in his eye. And I didn't bat an eyelash about sending him a free unit when he asked for one for development not so long ago. And you don't know it, but I have sent out more than $500 in hardware (my cost, not retail value) based on promises of getting support under Linux. Do you see any Linux support for the LED-Wiz? I have attempted this 3 times, once even with an individual from this community. There comes a time when you have to say "no more". We aren't Intel here, just two people who bust their humps close to 12 hours a day and our "take home" pay is less than most of our customers. If you are suggesting that we should raise our prices so that we can provide free hardware to anyone who may or may not actually produce something beneficial to the community or to GGG, then I'll take it under advisement.
I think it's ridiculous for Randy to say he stopped development because we created a new format. What has that go to do with anything?
It may not give you a warm fuzzy, but it is certainly true. It would have made no sense for me to continue development to produce what would have been a competing piece of software with a format that it was made perfectly clear would not be supported by anyone else.
BTW, you make it seem like every hardware producer out there has a responsibility to provide software to do every possible thing that an end user might consider doing with it. This is, at minimum, off-the-wall. It's akin to stating that a modem producer should have written the Internet. No, what the hardware producer is expected to deliver are the tools for others to build upon to make it do what they would like it to do. Call it a driver, a function library, whathaveyou. And we did that just fine, through my own efforts, and the efforts of MikeQ and Youki, about 4 years ago. I'm sorry those efforts weren't sufficient for you.
RandyT
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Topic: A word about LEDBlinky… (Read 26323 times)
