I am still all agog at my coffee table and happy as a clam at high tide. However, I have a couple of suggestions that may spare others the struggles I experienced as I set up this glorious device.
- Include an extra tab of teenie-weenie rubber bumpers. They are more than just teenie-weenie: they are itsy-bitsy, and human fingers are comparatively big. An extra tab of bumpers will allow for flying bumpers, misapplied bumpers, and bumpers hijacked by the cat.
- Ditto for the felt feet. The expense will be minimal.
- A very light ring printed on the fabric will guide the user in spreading sand. A bit more expense than the extra bumpers and feet, but this will make life easier for users .
- Most important: The app is dandy, but connecting to a wifi net is unnecessarily a cluster-fig. Make it clear that in order to connect to a local network, the user must first join her phone or other device to the Sisyphus network advertised by the Raspberry PI, and THEN try to go to Community, where the user learns that she is not connected to the internet, and is there, finally, afforded the opportunity to login to a network. This took me at least 45 annoying minutes to figure out. Intuitive, NOT.
- I've never before joined a forum without a search utility. Either it is cleverly hidden, or it has not been configured.
Overall, hats off to Bruce and Micah. I am blown away.
@adambrower Thanks for the in depth feedback! Mea culpa on several points - I will be sharing this to our support and dev teams. My quick response:
- teenie-weenie rubber bumpers - We hear you (and you're not alone). We are moving to an all-the-way-around seal for our future tables.
- sand guide printed on cushion - Don't feel this is crucial, as sand edge and depth are subjective choice variables. There's no single "correct" setting.
- app connectivity - Full agreement. We are actively working on making it far more robust and intuitive.
- forum search utility - This one's easy: look for the "spyglass" icon on the right of the Forum menu banner.
Excellent idea: a 360º seal will eliminate stress points on the tempered glass and prevent dust from getting into the arena (or whatever we call the sand bed), in addition to eliminating a lot of fiddly stuff on the part of the user. It will increase your fixed costs, though, because it will have to be pre-applied to either the glass or the ring—otherwise you'll have the user fiddling once again, this time with a big, floppy, sticky ring instead of teensy-weensy, bouncy, sticky bumpers.
These are mere quibbles, though. The thing is just marvelous. The silence of the automaton is sheer engineering genius: all we can hear is the soothing crunch of the ball spreading sand. I am ensorcelled.
Thank heaven you didn't design this thing in the 90s: it would have been able to send email. (You have to be over 60 years of age to get that one.)
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