Shame the Duet is so unreliable

[ezkcdude]

I think the last half dozen posts have summed up the Controller’s woes pretty well. It’s been like the elephant in the room; no one prepared to say the Controller is not good enough for real world situations.

I was one of the beta testers, so I've had the controller for a long time now (1 1/2 years or so). I love it now as much as the first time I used it, and my experience has only improved. I'm sorry that some folks don't find it as useful as I do, but for me, it's only helped my music listening experience. I first used it with XP, and for the last year on an iMac running OS X Leopard.

[Louise Straus]

My Duet, as my 3 other SB3 are connected to my DS107+ with a LAN Cabel.
The SB3s are working fine for 3 Years now!
The Duet is a nigth mare!!!
Every 2-3 days it loses connection to the DS107+ and can not find it back. Mostly I have to reset the Duet and reconfiguer it from the begining
:-(((

[TheLastMan]

I was one of the beta testers, so I've had the controller for a long time now (1 1/2 years or so). I love it now as much as the first time I used it, and my experience has only improved. I'm sorry that some folks don't find it as useful as I do, but for me, it's only helped my music listening experience. I first used it with XP, and for the last year on an iMac running OS X Leopard.

The Controller is brilliantly useful - when it works. The problem is not its usefulness but its tendency not to work properly.

What kind of physical environment are you using it in?
Do you live in a wooden house with good wi-fi coverage?
Did you ever get a chance to use it in a more problematic environment?

I think most of the problems with the Controller can be resolved if you can give it a strong enough wireless signal. With a weaker signal it suffers from an inability to reconnect to the wi-fi network, get an IP, find the Receiver, find the server etc etc.

My recipe for getting it to work was by hook or by crook make sure it gets a 3-bar wireless signal wherever you can and leave it switched on, in its charging cradle. Also leave the Receiver on or "off" (standby - not unplugged) and - if possible - get a SC server you can leave on 24/7 (NAS or low power PC/Mac/Linux box). Now that I have those conditions in place the Controller works (almost) flawlessly.

Incidentally, I never had any problems with the Receivers. Even when the Controller was telling me I had no Receivers or server I could happily play my music through the Receiver using the web interface on my laptop.

I am now, at last, playing and enjoying my music!

[ghostrider]

I don't have a receiver, only the controller and for the most part it works fine. The one complaint I have is that it sometimes won't power up. Sometimes I have to hit the home button five or six times before it lights up and begins to boot. It then always finds the wireless network, obtains an address and allows me to select a player.

[ezkcdude]

My recipe for getting it to work was by hook or by crook make sure it gets a 3-bar wireless signal wherever you can and leave it switched on, in its charging cradle. Also leave the Receiver on or "off" (standby - not unplugged) and - if possible - get a SC server you can leave on 24/7 (NAS or low power PC/Mac/Linux box). Now that I have those conditions in place the Controller works (almost) flawlessly.

That's pretty much the way I have it setup. The Controller is always resting in the cradle on my nightstand. I never unplug the receiver (not sure why anyone would). My iMac is on 24/7. No problems.

[TheLastMan]

What kind of physical environment are you using it in?
Do you live in a wooden house with good wi-fi coverage?
Did you ever get a chance to use it in a more problematic environment?

I would be interested to know the answers to the above. I think it is the key to a lot of the problems people are having.

[ezkcdude]

I live on the third floor of a brick triplex. The wi-fi signal is pretty good, but the router is very close. I've never tried moving it somewhere else since it works fine.

[TheLastMan]

I live on the third floor of a brick triplex. The wi-fi signal is pretty good, but the router is very close. I've never tried moving it somewhere else since it works fine.

Thanks, that's interesting. Clearly the wi-fi is not an issue for you.

This, I think, is some of the trouble with "beta testing". All people are required to do is just use the equipment / software and report their experiences. Very little "testing" as such goes on.

Beta testing is no substitute for proper professional equipment testing. I also think that Logitech / SlimDevices view many users as simply using the Controller in conditions it was not designed to cope with and it is therefore "not Logitech's fault" if it does not behave right.

Clearly one needs a Wi-fi network to use the Controller. So they would have tested the Controller where there was a wi-fi network. They may not have thoroughly tested its behaviour in poor or marginal networks as this is clearly not where it was meant to be used.

What they did not reckon on was that a very large number of domestic wi-fi setups are far from ideal, but the users are blissfully unaware of this. A lot have out of date or malfunctioning WAPs and routers. Many of the wireless ADSL modem / routers provided "free" by ISPs are designed down to a price and have very poor firmware implemenations (DHCP issues). The construction of many buildings involves a lot of heavy masonry walls impervious to wi-fi. Most laptops will provide an internet connection even with a 15-20% signal. They are designed that way. Clearly the Controller is not.

For the next iteration they need to test the Controller's robustness in networks subject to interference, at 10 - 20% signal levels, at signal levels that swing wildly between good and poor. They also need to test its behaviour with less than ideal wi-fi hardware, when moving in and out of areas with a weak signal and when coming in and out of "sleep" mode.

In particular it needs to behave more promptly and "politely" and provide better messages when it has problems. It is not on to keep the user waiting indefinitely while they watch spinning dots.

Obviously, if they are reading these forums, they know all this and be working on it already.

[Edit: I wonder if Logitech have considered selling their own branded Server and WAP. That way they could guarantee compatibility and performance up to a defined standard. It would make support a lot easier too.]

[ezkcdude]

Most laptops will provide an internet connection even with a 15-20% signal. They are designed that way. Clearly the Controller is not.

Really? Even my PowerBook doesn't get wi-fi when the signal is that low. I grant you there is some lower limit that the Controller should be designed to, but 15%? Maybe these wi-fi devices should come with disclaimers or some test data that specify how robust they are. That way people could determine whether it will fit their environment before they shell out the cash.

[TheLastMan]

Maybe these wi-fi devices should come with disclaimers or some test data that specify how robust they are. That way people could determine whether it will fit their environment before they shell out the cash.

This must be a major headache for Logitech. There is no way of telling in advance whether a customer's network provides enough signal for the Controller to work, or whether it will work with their other hardware. But clearly the more "tolerant" it is and the better it hangs onto a weak network the fewer support calls they will get. At the moment it seems to be pretty "intolerant" and with an insensitive antenna / wi-fi setup.

If I were Logitech this is the area I would be working hardest at for the next version of the Controller. All the fancy new features in the world are for nought if the customer cannot rely on the Controller working in the first place.

My Lenovo X61s ThinkPad laptop will (just) provide a working wireless connection at a signal strength of about 15% - 20% (at least enough to browse the net). But it is probably exceptional.

The Controller actually does not have to do very much, just send and receive a few text character instructions and get the album art.

Obviously if you want to use the headphone jack for listening it is a different matter, but I imagine that if the Controller could hang onto a network better it could do its "controlling" function at very low connection speeds.