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Posted: 04 Jun 2018, 06:01
by Elrick
chuckdee wrote: That would seem to make this more public, which it seems that XMIT doesn't want to do right now. Perhaps it would be good to not create drama about this- unless he says it's ok? You might think you're helping, but you're not getting the whole situation, and could actually hurt his efforts.
CORRECT because all companies hate having internal disputes going public.

It basically means they shut down all discussions and make way for legal action to occur, simply how they avoid any unnecessary blow back on them.

Also instead of trying to fight a losing event via the web, which means loss of time and money on their part, it's far better allocated towards their lawyers instead (which are completely tax refundable).

Really hope it doesn't go that way because Xmit will suffer the consequences here, for our own stupidity.

The only way to help him is to not get involved with the current Hall Effect Group Buy and hope that MassDrop will pay up for his time spent on the earlier releases of this keyboard.

Posted: 06 Jun 2018, 17:07
by nickg
Wow... f massdrop.. I wont be doing anything with them until they git gud man. Hopefully xmit gets his money soon

Is there any way to get a nice linear hall effect now or are they gone forever again? Was hoping to get one for the office but if i cant then well thats life

Posted: 06 Jun 2018, 18:38
by dwolvin
I didn't specify this but did contact MD and reminded them that word gets out quickly in small passionate groups (I belong to a disparate bunch of them on MD), and that it would behoove them to clean their slate. And that I would not be ordering until such time as they come clean or pay up. Hopefully they straighten up, the Vast was looking like a soon~ish buy, as was a second Hall effect.

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 07:54
by Elrick
dwolvin wrote: the Vast was looking like a soon~ish buy, as was a second Hall effect.
YES indeed.

I missed out on this latest version of the Hall Effect Keyboard round and I'm pissed at this situation.

Calling on everyone else to leave MassDrop altogether, is not going to happen because they do run other keyboards and key-cap group buys worth being in.

Just have missed out on being in the Hall Effect buy, which really hurts :( .

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 08:09
by Blaise170
Massdrop also has other nice non-keyboard stuff, I've bought several of my knives and EDC stuff from MD.

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 10:57
by Big Bricced
Never tried it out but what I can see is better letter fonts (the normal looking ones) and maybe cherry profile PBT dyesub keycaps and prob some factory lubing if you can do?

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 16:40
by chuckdee
Blaise170 wrote: Massdrop also has other nice non-keyboard stuff, I've bought several of my knives and EDC stuff from MD.
Agreed. @Xmit, any update?

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 18:05
by andrewjoy
You carry a knife every day ?

Well if your in the UK get to jail my friend , you cannot even carry a potato peeler in the UK and or judges are seriously saying we should all go to the police station to get our kitchen knives dulled as nobody at home needs a knife with a point on it .

I shit you not.

And you can also get thrown in prison for a joke or saying mean things on twitter or posting rap lyrics (of a real published song) on your instagram. Oh oh and , you will soon need a licence to have private time. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 49281.html

What a time to be alive folks. I did not think you could live in a country that's both totalitarian AND a nanny state.

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 18:26
by Blaise170
Yes I've been daily carrying a knife for the last 4-5 years. Remember that the US is the country where you can open carry weapons, it's part of our constitution. Now, I think we need far stronger gun control, but that's a debate for another day.

Weapons laws vary by state and can be stricter than what we have federally; in Kentucky I could open carry just about anything, and you can concealed carry any old pocket or hunting knife without a license. With a CC license, you can own and carry anything. Now that I live in Massachusetts, the laws are stricter here (and there are less deaths from weapons, imagine that) and you cannot carry anything considered a deadly weapon, but I can still carry my pocket knife on me. You are allowed to carry a pocket knife so long as you are not "acting in a dangerous way" and it must be manual open (no switchblades).

That also goes without saying that there are some places where weapons are explicitly banned, such as schools, government centers, etc.

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 21:09
by codemonkeymike
Can't say I have ever needed a knive to carry around. I do have one for camping though, but thats a different story then walking the streets of NYC with a 5in blade.

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 21:26
by Blaise170
I am currently carrying a Spyderco Dragonfly H1. It's not very big at all but it's still very useful. I tend to find a use for a knife almost daily even in the streets of Boston.

Image

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 21:56
by chuckdee
I carry at least one daily. Usually a craft knife or some sort of edge to open packages, and a full-fledged knife for other things. Right now I'm carrying a CKRT Squid and a TUKK, but recently switched to a Kershaw Shuffle II, though I carry a Petzl Spatha depending on how my EDC goes, and I carry my Leatherman Micra instead of the TUKK. Knife laws are varied and complex, and you have to check per municipality, but those are legal carries where I am and find more use than I would have thought before I started carrying.

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 21:57
by XMIT
Things with Massdrop are moving. I'll post publicly when I have something public to post.

As for knives, another dad I know carries one, and uses it to cut drinking straws shorter for his small children. Brilliant!

Posted: 07 Jun 2018, 23:41
by rich1051414
I like a good Kershaw knife myself. Tends to have better tempering than spyderco.

Re: XMIT Hall Effect - Round 2 Design Thread

Posted: 08 Jun 2018, 04:32
by Techno Trousers
XMIT wrote:Things with Massdrop are moving. I'll post publicly when I have something public to post.
Great news... I hope!
XMIT wrote: As for knives, another dad I know carries one, and uses it to cut drinking straws shorter for his small children. Brilliant!
I did that with my daughter. I carry a mini Leatherman with scissors in place of the pliers, and a small pen knife on the side. Very useful indeed.

Posted: 08 Jun 2018, 04:42
by chuckdee
^^ I think that's the Micra... same one I carry. Incredibly useful.

Posted: 08 Jun 2018, 09:46
by Elrick
Blaise170 wrote: I tend to find a use for a knife almost daily even in the streets of Boston.

Image
Here in Convict Town, you will get charged and fined if the Pigs pick you up and go through your pockets.

It's an OFFENSIVE weapon deemed dangerous and illegal. Just watch out, you never drop down to our level of complete Police/Government Control of the population and the complete loss of freedom.

The only thing they can not restrict and control, is your own mind but they are working on that as we speak.....

Posted: 08 Jun 2018, 15:11
by andrewjoy
But what happens if you get into a life and death struggle with an kangaroo ?

Posted: 08 Jun 2018, 15:17
by Blaise170

Posted: 13 Jun 2018, 03:45
by XMIT
Massdrop did finally pay me for Round 2.

Now to figure out what (the hell) is going on with these APT branded boards. Those are the same boards I designed, sold by the same manufacturer. It seems they circumvented me AND found a different contact within Massdrop. What a mess.

We either need to come to a happy agreement about these APT boards, or agree to part ways.

Re: XMIT Hall Effect - Round 2 Design Thread

Posted: 13 Jun 2018, 04:19
by Techno Trousers
That's great news you got paid. I don't know if you saw it, but about a month back, Chyros did a review on his YouTube channel of the "APT Hall effect keyboards." I was sitting there wondering "what happened to XMIT? I thought those were his designs?" D'oh.

Edit: here's the link. https://youtu.be/Y0BMkV8P9a4

Posted: 13 Jun 2018, 04:37
by chuckdee
XMIT wrote: Massdrop did finally pay me for Round 2.

Now to figure out what (the hell) is going on with these APT branded boards. Those are the same boards I designed, sold by the same manufacturer. It seems they circumvented me AND found a different contact within Massdrop. What a mess.

We either need to come to a happy agreement about these APT boards, or agree to part ways.
I don't remember... was it posted in Tech or MechKeys? That might be the disconnect - a different community head. Are you talking with Yanbo or Xik?

Posted: 13 Jun 2018, 12:50
by XMIT
I'm not going to comment on Massdrop internal affairs until this is sorted out. They deserve a chance to make this right.

Posted: 13 Jun 2018, 17:07
by nickg
Woah woah, woah. They took your design(round 2 design I assume), put a new label on it, and went back to massdrop!? If i understand right? Thats... well then. I wonder if its just massdrop theyre pushing this on or if theyre planning to try and use your work to launch a line...

Posted: 13 Jun 2018, 17:16
by andrewjoy
My prediction


I am not saying it was massdrop.....but it was massdrop.

Lets hope it works out ok , i would love a more refined hall effect from mr XMIT , the round 1 was good , with a bit more refinement its going to be epic .

Posted: 13 Jun 2018, 18:51
by XMIT
nickg wrote: Woah woah, woah. They took your design(round 2 design I assume), put a new label on it, and went back to massdrop!? If i understand right? Thats... well then. I wonder if its just massdrop theyre pushing this on or if theyre planning to try and use your work to launch a line...
This is exactly the behavior I expected from the manufacturer for sure. I'm not in the tiniest bit surprised about this. My relationship with the manufacturer was souring after their unwillingness to open up firmware or share some design specs to let me build my own firmware. To put it this way: the nails in the coffin have now been hammered in.

But I'm saddened that they circumvented me and went to Massdrop. I could see them going to another retailer or trying to go direct to market without using my name, but the fact that they went through Massdrop - and Massdrop agreed - certainly makes things more complicated.

Posted: 13 Jun 2018, 19:17
by zslane
Seems MassDrop can't stay away from switch drama. First it was the Halos, now it's these.

Posted: 13 Jun 2018, 22:32
by chuckdee
zslane wrote: Seems MassDrop can't stay away from switch drama. First it was the Halos, now it's these.
There's another one in audio right now. From Massdrop's perspective, they posted a reply that seems to indicate that the direction they want to go in is right, i.e. from https://www.head-fi.org/threads/massdro ... t-14294445 by Will:
I was hoping to avoid making another post on this topic, but given sosolar’s most recent posts, I feel it’s necessary to summarize and clarify the statements and claims made.


Sosolar surfaced in the Massdrop RDAC discussion at the beginning of the week, claiming the RDAC was a copy of his Hibiki project. A lot of people got excited by this, maybe not understanding all the details, but seeing the layouts of the PCBs looked the same, and accepting that as proof of sosolar’s claims.


Seeing that post, we (Massdrop) were surprised to see the similarities as well. We were unfamiliar with the hibiki DAC, and we didn’t play a role in the development of that top PCB, so we reached out to William at Airist. He let us know he wasn’t familiar with the project either, and was reaching out to his engineering manager to get more information (thus the post from William explaining reference designs and saying he was unfamiliar with the hibiki DAC).


At this stage, we needed to get details from the engineering manager and the contract engineers he hired to work on this project. The layouts looked the same as the RDAC, but the arrangement of some parts was different, and the spacing between parts was also different. That’s all we knew at the time. Sosolar continued to feed the discussion, making further claims, and posting details of his project on various discussion boards, talking about releasing a product and gathering feedback. At this point, I had already provided my contact information as a direct response to his comment on our discussion, and received no response.


While this was happening, we were able to speak with the engineering manager from Airist and his contract engineer. The engineer explained his process; initially he was provided with a set of specifications, a mandate for a ladder arrangement that would meet the specs of William’s overall design (the top PCB represents ~25% of the overall RDAC design). Given that mandate, he began searching for reference material, and discovered this reference design posted for free use (says that on the post) in 2014: http://bbs.hifidiy.net/forum.php?mod=vi ... tid=994769


From the basis of this reference design, he looked for examples of layouts that could provide a good baseline, while allowing him to build the underlying structure to serve the purpose of William’s design. Important note here, PCBs have multiple layers, the top board of the RDAC has four. The top layer is where components are positioned, but the content of the other layers determine how those components interact.


At this point, the engineer found the Hibiki DAC, and while the same configuration of parts wouldn’t yield the desired result, the general layout would work for this project, so he used it as a reference and creating the RDAC top PCB layout. This is why it looks the same, and why we subsequently posted as much in our discussion. My wording could have been more direct, but it’s not an exact copy, so “inspired by” seemed like the best option, but ultimately it was more confusing than clarifying. The position of parts is nearly the same, but sosolar continued to post, accusing Airist’s team of reverse engineering the board, which isn’t the case.


From there, still having received no contact from sosolar, I reached out to the email address associated with his Massdrop account, explaining that I’d like to understand exactly what he’s saying, and to understand more about the Hibiki project in general. Now I want to pause here, and make clear an important understanding in professional communication. Emails are intended for the specified recipients, and it’s bad form to break that trust. I won’t be posting screenshots or exact wording from his message, but following sosolar’s most recent posts I feel it’s important to share some of the general themes in our communication.


He responded to my messaging with a development timeline for the Hibiki DAC, starting in June 2015 and ending in July 2016, and demanded that we post a comparable timeline for RDAC development. His timeline had great detail, with lots of links to posts and things of that nature, which makes sense given the Hibiki was developed publicly, with sosolar sharing details with the hifidiy.net community. It’d be nice if posting a timeline would answer the questions at hand, but the RDAC development was private, there are no public posts to verify the statement. Given the many responses from people saying they didn’t believe our previous statements, I didn’t think an unverifiable timeline would answer questions for anybody.


The most important part of Sosolar’s response, was around some parts in the design he said were unnecessary, essentially saying they were stylistic choices on his part, that wouldn’t exist on another board unless the functionality was being copied through a reverse engineering service.


All of these parts which are unnecessary for the HIbiki, but are critical to the function of the RDAC. We answered all of Sosolar’s questions directly, here is the explanation we provided for each of the sections sosolar called out:


For the op amps:


The op amps on the RDAC top board are not just buffers, they are necessary for the operation of a sign-magnitude ladder. The output from a network of so many resistors is very weak, so we have to bring that signal strength up or else further processing will drown it in noise. These op amps do that amplifying, merge the outputs from the positive and negative ladders into one output waveform, and filter out the switching artifacts.


For the large transistors:


Because the R-2R ladder is basically a 48 resistor network on each side, you need a fair amount of current to actually drive the whole thing, not to mention extra overhead.


For the logic switches:


These are the same switches used in the open source schematic posted in 2014, and that is how the engineer picked this part.


Sosolar’s response to this message said that he was waiting for us to post the timeline, followed by a sentence that I think was trying to suggest he wasn’t accusing Airist of reverse engineering and copying the DAC design, but the layout alone (not trying to knock his english, I don’t write a character of chinese, but I couldn’t understand his wording) which would be a change from his previous statements, but I can’t be sure. Hopefully we can talk about this on the phone where mandarin/cantonese speaking team members can remove the language barrier in this technical discussion.


I responded to his message early this morning, hoping to catch him still awake so we could have a call, and in that email I proposed a solution that would give clarity to the community. We could both provide our gerber files to an unbiased third party (I suggested the new editor of IF, guy has no skin in this, and I’ve been asking folks for his contact info today in an effort to reach out and see if he could do this), they can examine the files and tell the community if the RDAC top pcb is a copy of the Hibiki pcb. I haven’t received a response from sosolar, but it’ll be morning in China soon, so hopefully sosolar is game for what seems like a pretty amenable situation.


TL;DR


Overall the layout of parts on the hibiki DAC and the top board of the RDAC are nearly the same. Neither Massdrop or William Tse of Airist was aware of the Hibiki DAC before sosolar’s post on Massdrop. The layout is not 1:1, but it’s clearly close enough where folks feel it’s essentially 1:1. We’ve explained how the hibiki layout was used by Airist’s contract engineer, and hats off to sosolar for creating a layout that works for the RDAC’s execution needs. If he had interest in compensation for this, he has plenty of avenues available to express that, as it stands, it seems he’s more interested in posting about the balanced hibiki he’s releasing this August. The similarities end at that top layer, and we’re glad to provide RDAC files for verification by an unbiased third party.


We’re doing everything we can to resolve this amicably, and we’ll keep trying, hopefully sosolar will engage with us.
But even though missteps are to be expected, the optics will never be good in association with it, even if they do cleanup after the fact. But partnering with others, I'm not sure if you can ever eliminate it. And then there are those actors that deal dishonestly, or never will even look at the fact that it could have been done in an earnest mistake, especially if they steps that they take to rectify it are not the steps that Massdrop takes, but they instead choose some other course of action. And there are the third type of actor, who believes that Massdrop can never act in an honest way, even given evidence.

It's a hard place to be in, and I don't envy them.

Posted: 14 Jun 2018, 03:00
by Blaise170
Let's also look at another drop I just got today, for the Spyderco Native 5 Blue Box (those unfamiliar with Blue Boxes, you buy in with a guarantee to get a base model and a small chance of a free upgrade from the manufacturer). The box was supposed to gave certain blade steels which were actually not included and additionally some of the handle types were not even listed that people received. A lot of people are wanting to return their knives because they didn't get what was promised (they received an S30 blade instead of S35VN). More details here: https://www.massdrop.com/buy/blue-box-s ... iscussions

Posted: 14 Jun 2018, 03:15
by chuckdee
Blaise170 wrote: Let's also look at another drop I just got today, for the Spyderco Native 5 Blue Box (those unfamiliar with Blue Boxes, you buy in with a guarantee to get a base model and a small chance of a free upgrade from the manufacturer). The box was supposed to gave certain blade steels which were actually not included and additionally some of the handle types were not even listed that people received. A lot of people are wanting to return their knives because they didn't get what was promised (they received an S30 blade instead of S35VN). More details here: https://www.massdrop.com/buy/blue-box-s ... iscussions
I'm of the opinions that the mistake doesn't matter as much as the rectification of the mistake. Mistakes will be made- I've had mistakes from all sorts of online retailers. Many of them wouldn't rectify their mistake. I've never had that problem with Massdrop.