Controller: first impressions/ experience

[egd]

Well, i got mine today and have to conclude it is definitely not ready for the general consumer. In fact I'm sure they'd conclude it is a piece of crap and return it to the retailer, coming away very unhappy!

- it didn't do what it was advertised to do i.e. other than see the album cover (sometimes) for the currently playing song I couldn't interact with my library at all.

- the firmware would not upgrade via wireless. After reading forum posts I realised that it was possible to update via SD card. Luckily I had an SD card adapter and was able to use a micro-SD card from my PDA for the job. If I hadn't had that I'd still be screwed!

- the damned thing has dead pixels

- the battery life is extremely poor

given it is still under heavy development, perhaps it would be worthwhile posting a sticky topic to help new users figure out what needs to be done to get it working rather than expect them to wade through umpteen forum posts in the hope of an answer.

All in all a very disappointing experience thus far.

[ModelCitizen]

How odd.

Mine works fine. Interacts with library perfectly and responsively, showing all cover art and music details (inc lyrics, bios, reviews etc). The battery life is superb, the firmware updates over wireless with no problems and I've never seen hide nor hair of a dead pixel.

I wonder why yours is so different?

MC

[egd]

Originally Posted by ModelCitizen

How odd.

Mine works fine. Interacts with library perfectly and responsively, showing all cover art and music details (inc lyrics, bios, reviews etc). The battery life is superb, the firmware updates over wireless with no problems and I've never seen hide nor hair of a dead pixel.

I wonder why yours is so different?

MC

Probably because it shipped with r1425 of the firmware and I'm guessing yours shipped with a newer version. I have it working now (firmware upgrade), but I'm pretty damned sure the average consumer would have sent it back and assumed it was faulty. Battery was charged overnight and drained flat within 4 hours. There have been a few reports of dead pixels already.

[ModelCitizen]

Ah, so once you upgraded the firware were all your troubles solved? If so, I guess Logitech should consider shipping with a later version of the firmware.

MC

[Mnyb]

Originally Posted by ModelCitizen

How odd.

Mine works fine. Interacts with library perfectly and responsively, showing all cover art and music details (inc lyrics, bios, reviews etc). The battery life is superb, the firmware updates over wireless with no problems and I've never seen hide nor hair of a dead pixel.

I wonder why yours is so different?

MC

Me too with one exception, the setup procedure didn't work at all. had to resort to NET-UDAP to point the SBR to my server.
But the Controller has worked flawlessly for me.

There are some wol bugs and other handling Quirks (SC to SN switching) but thats minimal problems.

I have my WRT54GL router set to 251mW (default 41) of power on the wireless (the maximum settings he he ) and I live in an 69 Square meters 2 room flat.
And i'm alone on channel 6 in my building. both my players show around 90% (was 75 with 41mW )signal strength. I can use the Controller from my bathroom
trough 1 concrete and 1 sheetrock wall to my router.

Not being able to download fw and sluggish Controller behavior IS usually some kind off wireless problem. They are working on some compatibility issues.

Off course dont use the 7.0 software I never used it. the last months i've been on some kind of 7.01 .

If you tried the product with 7.0 and returned it, that was a little premature decision me thinks.
To criticize Logitech just a little with hindsight the product was released prematurely but everybody does that*. With 7.01 its ready for consumers

I would be astonished if the controller actually had less usable range than the player, THAT would be a piece of cr*p or really really stupid design parameters.

cheers
Mikael

*PS i would like to find the engineer who slipped the secrets of flash prom's to marketing people then...

[MuckleEck]

egd,

I find it worrying that the first person from down under to review the duet has one with out of date firmware and dead pixels.

I can't remember what firmware version I had when mine was delivered but it did do everything wirelessly and I heven't noticed any dead pixels.

Battery life is average, about a long evening, shorter than the Harmony 1000 which has the same battery in it but doesn't do as much.

Have things improved since you have been able to upgarde the firmware?

[andynormancx]

Originally Posted by egd

Probably because it shipped with r1425 of the firmware and I'm guessing yours shipped with a newer version. I have it working now (firmware upgrade), but I'm pretty damned sure the average consumer would have sent it back and assumed it was faulty. Battery was charged overnight and drained flat within 4 hours.

My first couple of charges lasted only 4-5 hours as well, but I don't think I was down to early firmware as my firmware was updated automatically within about 15 minutes of taking it out of the box.

The initial low battery life was down one think, the fact that I was using it a lot in those first couple of days. I was picking it up and playing with it all the time, trying out all the features, installing new plugins and testing those, skipping up and down my music library. As such the first couple of charges we under non-typical use.

As soon as I settled down battery life shot up. If I use the Controller "normally", queuing up music throughout the day, it makes it through a full day and into the next day without a charge. If I don't use the controller for a couple of days it survives quite happily and still has some charge when I come back to it.

So I think some documentation is probably needed to explain this to the average consumer.

Sure it would be nice if the battery lasted even longer, but that would mean a bigger and clunkier Controller and I like the nice slim form that it has.

[Apteryx]

Mine arrived in NZ last week with the same pretty old r1425 firmware. Cannot find my Wireless network which works for any number of pc's, laptops, squeezeboxen, n800 etc. Had to upgrade firmware via SD - wouldn't recognise one of my two cards, but finally got that done. Still doesn't recognize my network, or more specifically the password (sees the network). Given up for now - will bash my head against it again when I've finished pulling my fingernails out.

[Trumanswater]

Received mine in NZ yesterday. A very frustrating experience, the controller would not update and it would take minutes to connect to my existing Squeezeboxes (I have 2 Squeezebox 3s) if at all (most of the time it wouldn't connect even if it was next to them and the wireless network router).

If I used Squeezecenter on my PC to connect to Squeezenetwork everything worked but if I tried to use the controller to reconnect any of the Squeezeboxes to my music files it never connected. Even when I used the web interface to connect to my local music and on the rare occasion the controller connected to one of my squeezebox 3s, it showed what was playing but had no menu options to browse my music library and change what was playing. This was all using the latest Squeezecenter 7.0.1.

Finally today out of desperation I installed the 7.1 alpha. The controller then updated properly for the first time and now everything works perfectly. Changing player takes about 2 seconds and my music library is available and works fine on all of them. Switching between Squeezenetwork and Squeezecenter also works fine. Only minor problem is the standard Squeezecenter web interface is corrupt (it is alpha software) but changing from Classic to Fishbone has sorted that for now.

Worth a try for those with problems. [I have an XP PC and a USR9106 wireless router]

[egd]

Originally Posted by MuckleEck

I find it worrying that the first person from down under to review the duet has one with out of date firmware and dead pixels.

Heh, perhaps the beta units were shipped down under

Originally Posted by MuckleEck

Have things improved since you have been able to upgarde the firmware?

I upgraded the firmware via SqueezeCenter Version: 7.1 - 19758 binaries. With the updated firmware it's functional and I can use it to interact with my library. The overall build quality is pretty poor though - the battery lid has play and squeaks as your palm closes around it when pressing buttons etc. The scroll wheel still leaves a lot to be desired when compared to any iPod device. Oversteering is pretty easy once it gets going and I find that it's not particularly responsive getting it going.

I don't mean to bash the product, but I reckon a native application running on an iPhone or iPod Touch will make for a much nicer wireless remote.