That was a very thorough review. Thanks for that! A few clarifications:
- That black stuff on the back of the board is polyurethane. It is a resin that secures all the electronic components on the board, so there's minimum risk of damage due to mechanical shocks. It also improves cooling because it spreads the heat (which is generated by just a few spots on the board) to a wider area. Overall, the black resin improves the reliability of the electronics, so it's gonna be on all our boards.
- The turn off time was indeed increased as compared to previous boards, because on Diamond the button is also used to activate the menu, so we wanted to minimize the risk of accidentally turning off the saber while doing that.
- In order to activate the menu, you have to rotate the hilt in BOTH directions (back and forth, clockwise and counterclockwise). The menu is activated by a "force" motion executed with the button pressed - you can see the force motion here:
http://rsx.ro/tmp/force.mp4. If you adjust the sensitivity of the force detection, this will also affect the sensitivity of the menu activation. For the left and right rotations used to navigate through the menu, there's a separate sensitivity setting which allows you to customize the ease of navigation to you own style.
- The gestures are actually limited to 5 seconds - if it takes longer, only the last part will be recorded and recognized. I strongly advice anyone who records a new gesture to adjust the detection sensitivity, because with gestures there's no "one size fits all". Simple gestures need lower sensitivity to avoid false detection and complex gestures need higher sensitivity to make sure they're recognized even if not reproduced 100% identically. We designed the gestures having in mind solo practice and artistry shows, as gestures give the saber the ability to recognize when a specific motion was executed as previously recorded. Other people have in mind more practical uses for gestures, such as switching fonts or turning the saber on and off. In time, we may implement such features and give the gestures more applications.
- The latest release of the Launcher (v2.19, which right now is under the final review and should become available very soon) fixes the problem of the cumbersome process of editing multiple effects. The effect editor now has a button labeled "Apply to font", which saves all the changes made to the effect in the current font, so you don't have so save it to a file or write it immediately. As long as you don't select or load another font, all the effect changes can be applied with a single write and no save. That was a serious slip on our side so we made a priority to fix it as soon as possible. Thanks for bringing it to our attention!
- Felicia... well, she's not gonna go down in flames, but she will learn to be more reverent
Marius.
Thanks Marius. Good info in there.
As to the black stuff, the reason I covered it is that you guys catch a lot of flack for it on Facebook groups. Most of that comes from fans of one specific "other guys" brand. As I said, it is neither here nor there for me. It gives your board a distinctive look, but I have boards from 7 different makers that I use and more than one version from a couple. While I have had issues with LEDs and their drivers, with speakers, and often with wire connections, I have never had a board overheat or fall apart. That was pretty much what I was saying was that for those people who say it is a technical problem, I had never observed that to be the case, so I figure we can let you do you.
I figured that was the reason behind behind the delayed power down. Makes sense. It is just something that takes getting used to.
The force effect thing was new to me. I had not found that one yet. I assumed the force effect was what was triggered by the gesture. Still does not make the menu less tricky to get into. It does tell me though that I can just keep the button down and keep trying until I get it or the saber powers off. I found the sensitivity settings but figured the menu setting was for getting into the menu as well. I did not think to adjust force.
The gestures you mention as future possibilities would be great. Specifically the gesture to switch to specific fonts. That was what I was hoping gestures would be able to do when you introduced the board, so it is good to know it is not off the table. That would also give people a way to not have to go through the menu. One thing I will note about gestures not in the video is that about a fifth of the time I set a gesture, it ends up being corrupt and leading to an activation error at powerup after the saber has shut down and turned on a few times. Sometimes this goes away with a restart, sometimes, I have to overwrite or clear the gesture.
Good to hear about the launcher, and I hope we can at least see a Felicia with reduced dialogue in the future. The pleasantries are what put her over the edge for me.
Again thanks for all the info and the great communication on the forum. You were integral in me figuring this thing out to begin with, not that I have it entirely figured out obviously. If you do get Felicia under control and fix up the launcher, I will be happy to shoot an update and show off the streamlined features in future.
