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Product Announcement, LONO Arcade to USB Controller
armi0024:
Donkbaca, you are on to me, I did more to Hawaii from Minnesota and I'm just trying to spread the Franken love.....
This thread is like a bad prime time show where you laugh then cringe thinking, he did what? However, it has taken a better turn towards civility and appreciate that move greatly.
Ader brings up some good questions and I will try to answer those as well as some of the other points as best as I can.
I am a relatively new entity. If I came out with a controller that also drove your car, piloted helicopters, allowed for the space shuttle cocktpit to be installed in your living room and more, people would say..."Oh, I wouldn't want to buy something so complicated from a newbie". Instead I came out with something that was relatively straight forward but I thought would fit some certain applications better then the currently available encoders. I did so with a lot of thought and care into how it was done. So people are now saying "What value is this?"
If it's not of value to you don't buy it... That's really fine with me, I wan't trying to come up with a solution to everything that ever was, just a great solution for what I see as a niche in the controller market. This is at heart a fast board that comes with wires for easy installation and has 72 inputs. If that fits your need GREAT if it doesn't, build a bigger panel :)
So your questions:
What versions of Windows requires drivers for the Lono? The advertisement says most versions. Is that something to do with USB 2.0 compatibility?
The board has been tested on System 7 (32bit and 64bit), XP and Linux. I have not tested it on older versions but it should be compatible with the same systems that the Xin-mo has been tested on and that includes 98, 2000, and a few Mac OS's.
What is the speed of the interface using USB 1.0 or is it not compatible?
I'm not going to cover all of the USB details, but if you need to know these specifications please look here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus
Now that being said, I was very precise in what I said. This is a USB 2.0 native hardware device that is running at full speed. This means that it is backwards compatible with 1.1(which is what most people refer to as USB 1), I have not tested it with USB 1.0 which is not a common port. Full speed is defined as 12 Mbit/s by convention. One advantage of this device is that it does not use software to emulate a USB port, the chip has a dedicated hardware based USB 2.0 port integrated.
Is there any blocking or ghosting with all devices being operated at once?
No, in fairness and not to be rude, I think I've covered this a few times. But there is not limit to the number of buttons you can push at once. And no blocking.
What is the main differences between the Lono, Ipac and the Eco Wiz, except the price?
OK, I am not going to answer this, because it is not fair for me to state direct comparisons in a thread where I do not want Randy or Andy to post. And to their credit they have respected that boundary. (Andy's one statement was very appropriate and device independent)
I will say this, consider looking at my two encoder products. The Xin-mo we offer and have been for the last 9 months, as well as the Lono. I'm not saying this is the be all and end all way of looking at it, but if you were to break this down like grocery stores do, $x/oz or something like that. Let's do the price per WIRED input. (in emphasized wired input because that is an integral part of the Lono design and that is not the case with all controllers) The Xin-mo, which by most accounts is a low cost controller, is 25 dollars with 30 inputs, or $0.83 per wired input, the Paradise Style is 28.95 making it $0.97 per wired input. The Lono is 72 inputs for 65 dollars or $0.90 per wired input. So i was surprised that people were commenting about pricing. Now if you need 10 inputs, this is an expensive way to go, but if you need 60-72 inputs and want the wiring included. The Lono is cheaper per input than our budget controller with a fancy harness. I have intentionally not included an analysis of anyone else's controller here. As I said, that would not be fair, but it's not hard to do the comparisons yourself and compare the costs of a controller with harness to a controller with harness, as a whole or at a per input calculation.
What sets this product apart from other well known established keyboard encoders?
The amazing name :) First off, it's not a keyboard encode, I know that I am harping on that. Now we are not the only USB controller that maps to arcade controls. And we are not the only full-speed device. I have only been able to test this device against a few select products and use the statistics that are on a suppliers website, I have not seen a button update rate or specific speed data for other suppliers products that also run at full-speed.
Can this interface work with rotary Joysticks, or can you add daughter boards to expand control devices?
This is a great question and I can always expand on this board.... You didn't think this was the end of my plans do you?
Have you begun to ship these Lono interfaces, or is the one pictured just a prototype?
We sent out beta test boards for feedback with a harness that would function but was not the final harness. The board shown is a final production run board. At this point we are just waiting for harnesses to arrive. Now come on... that looks better than a prototype doesn't it?
I would love to sit here and talk about all the things we are working on, and how this board is the part of a much larger evolutionary process taking place at our store, but as pointed out by others there is competition in this market. If I show everyone else where we are going, then there are those who would work hard to stop us from getting there. And that's fine, we are competitors. I have friendly competition and less than friendly competition, but I haven't told any of them, and they haven't told me the secrets of what's coming next.
I will say that getting this board out when our leaf switches finally arrived was not a mistake... if you are going to spend the money on leaf switches, we wanted to be able to offer a board that would perform in a way that allowed our customers to use them to their full potential.
But here is a simple truth.... 1 year ago, we didn't have a website and were selling LED buttons through the KLOV forums and today we have over 350 products, are releasing our own custom boards and are doing OEM work for other people(Yes, cooperation, the custom 1.5" ball tops for Wolfeel's sticks and other projects on other forums, as well as some not publicly discussed cooperation here) I am not trying to say, "Hey we are amazing", as I'm sure other retailers can point out their merits, which are pretty amazing. But I am saying we are showing a clear pattern... if you think this is it, you haven't been paying attention ;)
All that being said, Malenko you now must die for releasing the secret of the Shaolin Death Toe, this secret technique was the core of our Lono 2.0 (aka Lono Ultraspectacular).
Hoopz:
--- Quote from: Malenko on May 17, 2011, 09:15:31 pm ---he moves too fast to be photographed, remember?
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My bad. I should have realized that.
--- Quote from: Donkbaca on May 17, 2011, 09:22:37 pm ---X2 aside... Its not just the amount of info, its the rate at which it's transferred, so this device should get those button presses there faster, which would mean the game would be more responsive, which is basically what Nephs impression was having actually used it
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I don't think so. If the device is sending the info faster than the software calls for, the rest is superfluous and isn't factored in. I'm pretty sure that's the dumb downed way of saying what MonMotha said. It may not be exactly precise though but it's somewhat close.
Donkbaca:
I think the rate if transfer is different then the the amount of processes per second. If a single were pressed, it would be sent to the computer faster. So yeah I guess if the limit is 60 registers per second, the volume of button presses registered would be the same, but the USB 2.0 should get those sixty there faster. But it's microseconds, and it might not matter, but it mattered to Neph, the only guy that's tested it so far.
I could be wrong. I really don't care.
Go Mavericks
Nephasth:
--- Quote from: armi0024 on May 17, 2011, 09:28:04 pm ---I have not tested it on older versions but it should be compatible with the same systems that the Xin-mo has been tested on and that includes 98, 2000, and a few Mac OS's.
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I should have mentioned this before, but I tested this on Windows 2000 and it was instantly recognized, so there's one more to cross off the list.
--- Quote from: Donkbaca on May 17, 2011, 09:52:58 pm ---I think the rate if transfer is different then the the amount of processes per second. If a single were pressed, it would be sent to the computer faster. So yeah I guess if the limit is 60 registers per second, the volume of button presses registered would be the same, but the USB 2.0 should get those sixty there faster. But it's microseconds, and it might not matter, but it mattered to Neph, the only guy that's tested it so far.
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I didn't test this board to see the raw data of its performance. I tested it from a consumer point of view, comparing it with the keyboard encoder I have been using since before I joined here, the one I had been perfectly happy with since I bought it, and to me there was a NOTICEABLE improvement in response time when compared with my other interface. Perhaps someone will give the Lono a try and collect the data to provide the numbers others have been requesting.
Silverwind:
--- Quote from: armi0024 on May 16, 2011, 03:43:12 pm ---I really appreciate people taking the time to think about this and contribute their thoughts. Cheffo made a great suggestion, we are waiting for our harnesses to arrive... A great deal of thought went into trying to lay this out so it made sense. For the harnesses, we wanted to make sure that it was easy to wire up. There are 18 connections per joystick and once you get out to the end of the run, knowing if you have button1 or button 10 can be tough unless you have a clear system. So what we did was to have 10 colors per 20 pin connector
with two different colors of insulation at the end. For example, Red Clear is button 1, Red Blue is button 10.
The end result is harness that allows for a very wide range of connections, but is relatively simple to use:
The harnesses are 18" and 30" long to allow for larger control panels and come with a simple .100 female header so that you can just plug them in.
If people want a non-harness, no pin header, version so that you have to do all the soldering yourself.... let me know, I might be able to arrange for a batch like that.
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Love the harness. Nice work! Good selling point to differentiate your product.