Gods damned nubs


monty

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Nov 12, 2007
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I've owned four different Pandoras over  the years. Faulty, faulty, traded, retained. Three were CC, the last and current is a 1GHz. All of them have given me the exact same experience with the nubs. They are god awful.

When they work, they work well. An innovative solution to the need for analogue sticks no doubt. But I don't think they've ever worked broadly as they should for more than forty percent of the time. The rest of the time one will loose half its movement (can't go into the minus in x dimension, for example), or will have a sort of kink in their movement which makes diagonals infuriatingly slow. The latter is so common I'm suprised when it doesn't happen during a session.

Example; When playing Black Shades it will randomly become really sluggish to look around in one direction. I have to wiggle it back & forth to fix it. Another example; I can almost never reliably use the nubs as a mouse on the desktop.

As I said its been the same for all the Pandoras I've owned. I know the rotate-them-ten-times-and-back-again trick. Sometimes it works. Sometime I have to turn it off and on again then do the bloody trick anyway. I know to push down on the plastic around the nubs, not that it does anything that I've been able to tell.

Have I been extraordinarily unlucky? Should I send it back for new nubs? Or is, as I suspect, this a fatal weakness in the Pandora's design? If its the latter, can anything be done to get around it to some degree?

P.S. I hope they'll use something else entirely if there's a Pandora 2. I have no interest in fighting the nubs when emulating mouse-driven PC games.

P.P.S. Oh look, in the time it took to write this post the right nub has gone tits up, only recognising about one third of the total range of theoretical movement. That's pretty severe, but not entirely unusual. So bear with me while I get the stylus out to hit 'Post'.
 
Nope, I've had the same issue on my Rebirth and 1Ghz units.. amazingly my CC unit been the best out of the bunch..
 
My nubs on 1 GHZ Pandora work not perfect too,
I soldered them more to see if its the soldered contact and sometimed they work and sometimes not right as mouseclick.


But i found out,when i go to the NubConfiguration and make a Nubreset,then work they ever fine.(until the next reboot)

Hey Ed can you please insert a Nubreset at booting?
Maybe then have not so many Persons Nub related Problems.

Under the Pandora Game NubNub runs ever all fine...
..i think WB have ever a nubreset or near at starting the Game :)
 
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I very often have trouble with slow diagonal movement when using the nubs as a mouse.

Using the nubs as mouse buttons caused me so much trouble (hitting the wrong function 40% of the time) that I figured out how to hack ABmouse to do all 3 mouse buttons.
 
I don't love them, but they work reasonably well for me. I suspect that it would help the user experience a lot if it was possible (like for the touch screen) to set the calibration data explicitly on boot instead of relying on auto calibration. Having the nub firmware reprogrammable would probably also help.
 
You can use NubNub as a nub test: go in the game (start playing) and press START. This gives you the pause screen, which you can use to check your nubs.
 
I never had big problems with the nubs. At least not while playing.


Just do the nubdance once in a while and while starting up :)
 
When they work I love'em, actually I think all the controls work and feel  great. I would like to try using it as a ps2/3 controller just to see how it would feel.
 
Same issue here with the nubs,  because it is quite a problem, and no one else has ever complained, I assumed it was just me :-D
 
Same issue here with the nubs,  because it is quite a problem, and no one else has ever complained, I assumed it was just me :-D
Did Nub Reset work too on your Pandora?

After that worked my Nubs wonderfull every Time.

When yes can we avoid many Problems doing a Nub Reset in the Boot Process from the Pandora ;)
 
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Resetting definitely improves the situation, but even after a reset there are still sometimes issues (slow tracking in certain directions etc)
 
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Hmm maybe its a Volting Problem?

We had in the Past some Problems that the Nubs did not get enough Energy to work proberly.

In a newer Pandora Firmware was this fixed,but now

say more and more Users they have Problems with Nubs.

But that can Test only ED,or Notaz or the Dev Team.

Maybe the Volting is little "unstable" and set them higher will maybe work better.

Many Users have Problems with Nubs and i dont think its all Nub Related.

(because i soldered them again to check if its the soldering)

Maybe they need little more Energy.

Its only a Idea and maybe this can explain why after Nub Resets the Nubs work little better.

(and here by me perfect after this,until next Reboot)

I am Curious what ED say to that,maybe he can try to give them little more Energy.

When my Idea is correct have whe soon this Nubs Problems not more or only a Few ;)

(sorry for my bad English and little gammatical Errors) :rolleyes:

It should help too for many Users to add in the Boot Procedure everytime a Nub Reset too.
 
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I remember bad recalibrations of the nubs when playing Super geometry wars for some time, even resulted in the completely loss of one direction. If someone knows a way to disable the nub-recalibration, please tell.

I knew from the beginning that this will cause trouble. "Auto calibrating", great, "auto" usualy means "lost of user-control"...   :rolleyes:

"Pandora 2" sould use better nubs with a propper manual calibration that just stays where it was calibrated, like the Touchscreen for example.  Also use modular Nubs for easier replacement. ;)
 
I've had my 1ghz unit since December and have had very few issues with the nubs. When I first received it I did the "nub dance" as a preventative measure to keep the nubs from failing but it seemed as though that was the main cause for said failure. Now I just refrain from any nub movement during the entire boot process until the desktop is fully loaded and almost never have any problems.
 
I have several Pandoras in my hand since I now distribute it in Japan and I see that the behavior is not always identical on all units. Some work very well out of the box in all directions, some indeed have a problem in one diagonal direction and the nub dance usually works to set things right. If not, a proper nub reset does the trick, but the problem sometimes comes back after a while. 

So, I'd say there are two categories:

- the ones which almost never have any nub issue (my old Rebirth is like that)

- the ones which seem to have some recurring issues and that you can fix temporarily.

Not sure if anything can be done with voltage/firmware or anything else. 

All in all, I dont think its a very big issue, but it's certainly a little bit annoying when it occurs. 
 
So, in summary, it happens to most Pandoras to some degree. But if some people don't get it badly it must, as Ingoreis suggests, be something to do with a variable quality in manufacture of the hardware.

I find the nub reset is essentially a random process. I generally get a different kind of problem after doing it, so press it a few times until its OK. I honestly think Thinkpad-eque nipples would be preferable to the current nubs, albeit far from ideal themselves.

"All in all, I don't think its a very big issue, but it's certainly a little bit annoying when it occurs."

For me it is unfortunately.
 
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So, in summary, it happens to most Pandoras to some degree. But if some people don't get it badly it must, as Ingoreis suggests, be something to do with a variable quality in manufacture of the hardware.

I find the nub reset is essentially a random process. I generally get a different kind of problem after doing it, so press it a few times until its OK. I honestly think Thinkpad-eque nipples would be preferable to the current nubs, albeit far from ideal themselves.

"All in all, I don't think its a very big issue, but it's certainly a little bit annoying when it occurs."

For me it is unfortunately.
Why dont you send your Pandora for repair then? They can probably provide a new SOC if still under warranty.
 
Because most People like me can life with that and simply use more the Touchscreen then :)
 
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