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If you would like to build multi LED-Wiz support into your software...
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Howard_Casto:
Well let me go down the list of how you are simply ignoring hte problems yet again!


Well you CAN'T do on and off animations, you can do on and off gimmick tricks.  The same gimmick tricks, I might add that you can do with a pen I bought at goody's for 2 bucks that has an ultra bright led in them.  And again I am NOT talking about animation, I'm just talking about setting the color.  Can't make a button pink without adjusting the intensity now can you?  Also you have to remember that any (well coded) application has to assume that another application could have already gotten ahold of the device and monkeyed with the settings and therefore it's good coding practice and pretty much required that even if you aren't going to mess with the intensites you have to set everything back to 48.  So I repeat again you HAVE to send two commands when dealing with rgb leds.  And no the intensity doesn't default to 48, once one program sets it to another intensity it stays that way until a new intensity is set.  I know because I'm sitting here doing it right now. 



And yes, it is indeed required.... if I set the intensity of a light to 27 nothing happens until I first turn on the light state.  Now a person with sense would have put a command in the ocx, clilpboard commands, ect that allowed you to do both at the same time... you don't have to do anything to the hardware, just have the interface method know that when this new command is sent, to send both commands to the device.  Since only one command is transmitted over the clipboard, all of the timing issues are magically gone for novice users as now they can actually light some colored lights with only one command.  I'm literally gonna fly to your house and slap you silly you you can't see the logic in that.  I'm sorry I just had to spell it out so bluntly for ya.  You really need to start listening to what I say instead of what you think I say.  ;)


No developers are certainly NOT made aware of these concerns.  You don't have ANY data posted on your site other than the commands you can send.  By your own admission on your own site this is considered a developers tool, I shouldn't have to email you back and forth until I get all the answers I need, they should be posted clearly on the site.  Don't agree?  Well I'll get to that in a minute.  I found a powrmame thread a while back in which poor old mike worked for hours trying to figure out why some of his users were having the exact same timing issue I've described.  He didn't get a single reply by you to that thread. 



Ok the "beta" animation editor that has been out for a year now and is the official software for the product.  By your own admission it's a commerical product right?  Ok so let me get this straight, you have released a product that doesn't have any software, doesn't have a reliable interface method other than copying and pasting from a text file and doesn't come with a dll for developers to interface with it?  I don't think I even have to say anymore on that one. 

And yes it does very much effect a stand alone app, because it stands to reason that many users are going to want to use the resident app for other things or for testing.  Once that intensity has been set to 0 by another app there is no way for them to get it back up, save deleting the cfg for ledwiz87.  I try to look at all possible problems myself, not just the ones I can write off as unlikely. 


How in the blue hell can you get an agenda out of what I am suggesting?  I have an ocx that works.  I also have mikes dll that I can get to work if I write a wrapper for it.  I'm talking about issues in your software and issues with the clipboard method.  If my "agenda" is to make your product operable out of the box so it'll sell better and thus be more widely accepted by the community and as a result be spported in more arcade realted applications then yes, I have that agenda.  Darn you caught me, what an evil person I am trying to help both you and the community as a whole.  I'll tell you what, I'll just stand against this cross with my hands out-stretched and you can go ahead and drive the nails in yourself. 

Yes, it's a commerical product... billed as a developers product.  Which means either you give them a professional way to inteface with it, or you write software that is NOT beta they can use to inteface with it.  I'm just using what you've told me here.  And actually the code commander guys have all the specs I would need to inteface with their product plainly posted on their website.  They seem to realize that when you sell an i/o kit you need to tell developers how to...well i/o with it. 

I apologize about the last one, you are right out of the developer's enviromnet it works fine.  Respectfully though the original ocx didn't do this.  I'm not sure what has changed but it really threw me for a loop. 

I feel bad yelling at you I really do, but it seems like you don't even start to consider our advice/complaints unless we all "gang up" on you like we did in this thread.  Remeber if you truely did make this device for this community then when somebody like me or sf or anyone willing to write free software for you which will help sell your product your response should never be "no" it should always be "let me see if I can do that".   I don't think I have made any insaine "demands"  here  I asked that you post more details about the ocx and clipboard method on your site.  I asked that you make the ocx visible and downloadable and accessable from your site.  And I suggested you make a new command-line inteface that uses your ocx (or direct communication method since you can do that too.) So that it would work better.  It'd take you all of 5 minutes to make one... there's nothing to it.  Since you dont seem to be willing to do those I just asked for the system device interface commands.  Since you product is obviously based on a generic HID chip kit and we are all buying the hardware, not the firmware and you don't have a non-beta, official application for end users to use, this seemed like a fairly reasonable request to me. Haven't you ever heard of "the customer is always right"? ;) 

Btw, with respect, the appripriate response to SF is "I'll get right on that" not "I'll take that into consideration".  He's right, about the ocx's they are all but extinct.  And when a vb6 freak like me tells ya that, you know it's true.  I like em personally, but it would make a lot more sense to write  a dll and document that.  Even though dlls are more complicated to setup it's well documented in all languages on how to set them up.  Seems like a fair trade-off to me considering ocx's don't work too well in anything other than a vs6 language.  Also there is the annoyance of having to have a form in your app.  Not a bid deal, i'm just saying.  Broadcasting is also a very nice method... I don't prefer it though because it's a little "wonky" but it works well and it's fast.  I'm using it for an upcoming app that gets the romname from an open mame instance.  It's really fast and works really well.  Also it takes nearly no computer resources to poll a window caption (once you get the handle of course) as quickly as every 2ms because windows already has the window caption of every parent window stored for use in the taskbar and taskmanager and aparently regularly polls them itself. 


Now chill this time man, no point in us getting all angry again.  Just don't reply if you don't want to.  Go to your happy place. :angel:
Space Fractal:
yep, dlls is maybe not the easiest to do in Visual Basic, but it darn simple to use them in other langauges! As Im know

I'm simply created a little wrapper for the bass, when I created AMB. Then all commands sent to the wrapper was pure basic commands, that was easy to use.

Yes ocx is mosly for MS language, like Visual Basic, but not all like that language. Some may prefer Blitz+(like me) or other very cheap language (like Pure Basic). Blitz+ is one of the language, that is so simply to use dll
RandyT:
Howard, I'm not going to go back through all of what you wrote and point out where you see what you want to see, where you go on about interactions between people you just aren't privy to , how you compare apples to oranges, and the numerous places where you are just plain wrong.  But all of those things are indeed happening in your post, along with the usual sprinklings of insanity that seem to pervade all of what you do.

I'll leave this thread with the following so you can go back to doing whatever it is you do;

The current Multi-device ActiveX control is free, as was the one before it.  There is no extra charge or limitations placed on you or anyone else who wants to use it, provided they do something constructive for this community with it.  I just spent the last week working on it because one of my customers has been very patient and very nicely requested a way to let him programatically control more than one LED-Wiz.  This support was never promised, but I have delivered it and not made a single extra nickel in doing so.  I have also not even begun to break even on the work done on the LED-Wiz product as a whole.  They sell from time to time, but unlike the company who "has everything you could want as a developer on their site", we don't charge$20 for just a chip.  Everything comes at a price.  Take a close look at your LED-Wiz, Howard.  Each of those 29 components and 160+ solder connections were put in place and fully tested by a skilled human who actually gave a crap about your happiness when you opened the box and plugged it in for the first time.  If the market was larger, we could mass produce them and let our customers do our QC like some other vendors do, but it isn't and we don't.  And those things don't even begin to address the efforts made in the board design, firmware and software phases.  The next time you feel the need to "protect my customers" you be sure to remember these little tidbits of info, ok?

Have fun comparing yourself to Jesus, I'm off to that happy place you mentioned. :angel:

RandyT
loadman:

--- Quote ---I have also not even begun to break even on the work done on the LED-Wiz product as a whole.  They sell from time to time, but unlike the company who "has everything you could want as a developer on their site", we don't charge$20 for just a chip.  Everything comes at a price.  Take a close look at your LED-Wiz, Howard.  Each of those 29 components and 160+ solder connections were put in place and fully tested by a skilled human who actually gave a crap about your happiness when you opened the box and plugged it in for the first time.  If the market was larger, we could mass produce them and let our customers do our QC like some other vendors do, but it isn't and we don't.  And those things don't even begin to address the efforts made in the board design, firmware and software phases. 
--- End quote ---


Some feedback

I bought one of these and there is no question of the quality of the product.  It is very well constructed and nice layout. Good work

The price is very low for the Hardware you receive.

My view is I would have been prepared to pay a fair bit more if the software suited my gaming needs.





Circo:
Agreed, I would pay more for working software.  That's nothing new, wonderful product, just wish it worked  :banghead:

I wonder if Randy has left the thread?

With working software you would definately sell more so that's a positive.   ;D
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