From: jlb31348@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jim Brain) Subject: TECH: U of I Powerglove update 7-10-92 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1992 21:06:32 GMT Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Well, on all great things a little rain must fall, and such with my the PGSI project it has. I have found out that we have still not received a firm yes on the rights to use AGE's (That's the people who made the original box) copyrighted information in the product. We here at the U of I had a verbal agreement, but PetroChem (That is the company that markets the original AGE PGSA box) told me that they had rights to sell the box, but they had to pay a royalty on all the boxes they sold. This perturbed me a bit, but I was told by the contact here at the U of I that AGE had given us rights, but that he would check on it. Well, we have all been waiting on a response from AGE, but none has came, and I cannot commit my money and yours if something should go wrong with this. I just feel bad about that. I suppose you all should hate me for giving off an air of completion when I may not now be able to do so, but I really thought we did not have this problem. I guess I will chalk it up to experience and not EVER take a verbal agreement like this again. You should also be mad at me since I have committed to making it and now I have to qualify that statement. However, I hope you all are not mad at me. I want to get you this box as badly as you want them, but I cannot in good conscience take your money and spend it without knowing if I can sell something to you. I have to wait until I get a response, and then things are a go-ahead. Let me assure you I am not killin the project, but I hope you appreciate me not gambling with your money. I will say that everyone reading these posts has been very helpful in comments and standing behind me with support and such, and also overlooking my inexperience in product development. I thank you all for that, and hope that this is not the straw that breaks the camel's back. I started these postings in order to gather comments on what to put in the PGSI, and they have been extremely successful at that. However, I believe they have had the unwanted effect (Or maybe it was just me) of lending too much confidence in this project. Please do not do that. I can tell you there will be a p project when I ask for your money, but before I do, several questions have to be answered. I know there is a small percentage out there who may have been slightly counting on this box at a certain date in August, and to those people I say, email me and I may be able to whip up something, or at least tell you how to build Menelli's Box and give you some code for it. That is within my power. To the persons who gave me products and other things as trades for boxes, let me assure you I can pay you, and I will do so. I think my paying for those things and then you buying a box is muh more businesslike, so I will do it that way. I think only one person has done this, so he(or she) and I will settle up. I did not want to post this posting, but the purpose of these posts was both to encourage people to tell me what they wanted in a Powerglove Interface, and to provide those same people with a 'day-by-day blows', as one netter put them. These 'day-by-day blows have always included progress reports, so this is only fair I put this in. At least I don't have to feel guilty about not telling the buyers what is going on. I just hope you can go along with this, as I am very new to this copyright stuff, and it has boggled my mind. I can tell you that, if I had to do this again, I would have done a lot more homework before I started the work. I should have figured out what the thing was going to cost before I started posting, and I should have figured out a realistic date before I started posting. I did do those things, but not until I made quotes I found out were not even close (Someone reminded me yesterday that I said something about early June for prototypes). You can see that I have a lot of learning to do, but I am glad I get to learn with people that are a little lenient and wouldn't fire me for a mistake. On other fronts, I have still been working with the software. The two-glove support is coming along nicely, but I am afraid I may have reached a limit on the speed. I can not get anything past 30 frames a second for one glove, and 15 for two gloves. I have been trying to speed it up, but I just do not think it can be done with a 2Mhz bus speed on the HC11. People are invited to prove me wrong, but I just cannot get it to go any higher. If I went to a faster processor, I bet I could get more frames per minute, but that would require a little time to redesign and port code (not too much, though, cause I am gettign good at writing this kind of code). I would still like a few answers to these questions (especially from those who have said they would like to buy a glove): Does anyone really care about A/D ports? I ask because I could probably get a little more speed from either the HC11 , or another chip, if I did not provide that. If you do care, What will you use them for? Could I make a slow interface for you? What about programmability? I put it in because I was not sure we could get all the bugs out, so you might have to upload a new version of the code after you received the product. If I can make it bug proof, will anyone need it? If I sold goves, how many people need them? Does anyone need over 30 frames a sec for 1 glove, or over 15 for two gloves. No one has really told me what they want as far as speed is concerned, so I assumed 30 was the number. Do you want more, because I would rather change designs now than later. (Please speak up. You will not offend me by saying, Jim, I really like what you have done, and I will buy an interface, but I REALLY wished I could get 40 frames a sec) I REALLY want to know. It s not like I am only able to program on the HC811E2 or HC11s in general. I cut my teeth on 6502 and did a whole semester of 8086. I will be working on the code over the weekend to see if a speed increase is theoretically possible on 2MHz, but I do know that the glove will handle it. it is just a matter of clocking it right. Well, I will close for now. Email any flames to me, as I have yet to receive any (well, I am not UNHAPPY about that), and I sincerely want to know. Jim (wishing I could read AGE's mind right now) Brain P.S. you know, if I had this to do all over again, I would have dumped the marketing part on someone else. Now I realize what trouble it is for one person or a small compny to make and market a product. I am not even sure if I have done everything yet. There is so much more to product than the engineering and software (This is probably old hat to everyone on the net besides me). If anyone does not believe this, come over and I will put you to work. P.P.S. As for the above statement, I DO enjoy hearing from you all, so that is a good part of marketing, but the other stuff like getting boxes and user manuals and shipping and on and on is very frustrating. -- Jim Brain, Power Glove Serial Interface Project Leader brain@cs.uiuc.edu Yes, my last name REALLY is BRAIN!