Tige TouchPad Upgrade Project Thread

[ChrisSnow]

Sounds good. Though I must say 10 hours use is a bit meaningless. My factory one lasted 10 years before failing [emoji14]

But certainly if you have a failed unit a great way to fix it. I'd certainly not be rushing to buy one just in case though!

Just to reiterate what idb said. If your buttons work this will have zero improvement in the accuracy or functionality of the speed control of your boat.

Look forward to some finished product photos :-)

I feel your pain on the regulatory stuff. CE marking in EU and all the paperwork costs a fortune. No doubt fcc stuff is just as bad for you.

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[IDBoating]

TG618, thanks for the feedback!

Ten hours isn't meant as an indication of longevity. Think of it more like pounding, "life happens" time on the new design. You can Engineer as careful as you wish, and it's still been my experience that you don't really know how a new design is going to work out until it makes contact with {gasp} users. I think that's why Microsoft has such poor product releases, and is so quick to issue that first Service Pack for each version of Windows... all of their internal testing is no substitute for releasing it into the "wild" and seeing what happens. They learn a lot in those first few hours/days of exposure in the real world.

It's worth mentioning that this is why good product development takes so much time. Even something as seemingly simple as this touchpad (hey, it's "just three switches", right?) takes a while to coordinate everything. You can do a one-off in your garage, sure... but if you want to do a professional product, it takes time. And then there are the unknowns and unexpected things, like discovering that spacers are needed for certain elastomers. Right now, in fact, we're chasing down a weird question on the backlight and cruise LED's. We thought we had it, but we've run across a sample touchpad that has thrown our assurance into question. Grrrrrr.

ChrisSnow is correct: The touchpad doesn't "run" your cruise control. It is the human interface TO the cruise control. The cruise control itself is implemented by either the engine ECU (pre-Medallion boats) or Medallion themselves. But you can't use cruise if your touchpad doesn't work! And you can't use the Medallion menu system either. The touchpad is pretty important to those Tiges that have it.

Thanks!

[killerbren]

Apologies for the absence, about 2 weeks ago IDB sent me one of these panels to test in the early 06 model V and Ve boats. I have logged roughly 10 hours of panel use and simply put....AWESOME! Panel functions perfectly, holds speed very well within .1 - .3 Mph of set speed verified with GPS. The increase and decrease speed buttons work flawlessly, each push gives about .3 - .5 mph per push and acceleration or deceleration is very smooth again verified with GPS. The snap domes are very deliberate and very easy to tell if you have in fact pushed the button. After about 6 straight hours of surfing holding speed and minut adjustments to speed while surfing I am beside myself pleased with what IDB has created. I was given specific instruction to "use" the panel, meaning some of use are more rough on our gear than others. Short of dousing in water hitting it with hammer, I truly without fear "used" the panel. The significantly more stout panel doesn't budge, doesn't flex, it just keeps working. Keeping in mind this was bouncing alot in the rough chop of a windy day. At this point I am 100% confident in saying if this panel breaks we need to look at the user not the product. If you are still on the fence about replacing...do it I have no idea how I made it this long without one.

What kind of speedometer do you have TG? I know IDBoating has the medallion which has the menu screen on the speedometer (I think?). I have the Faria Speedometer (and I think you do too) which just shows depth, temp, etc but no speed settings. I just want to be sure they work with both systems. I don't think there should be any problems, just curious.

[Thegerman618]

Killer Bren you are correct I do NOT have the LCD screen just the Faria gauge and still working off the paddle wheel for speed. This was partly why I have a panel to test the systems on the earliest model (gen 1 so to speak) of the Speedset. I am directly through the the ecu with no medallion in between.

Chris, it's all about peace of mind and simplicity. When I am driving, I know everything about the boat and how to make changes to speed, direction, ect. For the best results. What about when someone who doesn't have a complete understanding of the systems? Would having a functioning cruise control eliminate a major worry for the driver while your surfing or boarding? Just saying... rather have a working one, then not.

[Thegerman618]

Okay big update...notify me if you have any changes or I missed you.

Here is who I have that has contacted me for panels:
Brianmonique
Gasoline_24
Little_cricket
Jmitchell
Throttlebody
Efrickle
NickWWS x4
Zany
DT535xi
Ttul
Luke Evans (may not be on the forum)
Texastige22v
Tigeunrest
JLogan
Skippabcool
JMS
PacewithGrace
Jmhatchett
Majestic

Let me know if I missed anyone.

[ChrisSnow]

Killer Bren you are correct I do NOT have the LCD screen just the Faria gauge and still working off the paddle wheel for speed. This was partly why I have a panel to test the systems on the earliest model (gen 1 so to speak) of the Speedset. I am directly through the the ecu with no medallion in between.

Chris, it's all about peace of mind and simplicity. When I am driving, I know everything about the boat and how to make changes to speed, direction, ect. For the best results. What about when someone who doesn't have a complete understanding of the systems? Would having a functioning cruise control eliminate a major worry for the driver while your surfing or boarding? Just saying... rather have a working one, then not.

My point was more that your post was suggesting how good the performance of the speed control was. I wouldn't want anyone to think there was going to be an improvement there.

Similar with the 10 hour comment. You were suggesting that if You didn't manage to break it in 10 hours it would last forever.

I have no doubt IDB will come up with a nice well made solution.

IDB I totally agree end users are evil people [emoji14] they will break anything given enough time :-)

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[IDBoating]

Update:

* The spacer stencil is at the fabricator in NY. A call tomorrow should nail down quantities, prices, and schedules.

* The production PCB artwork just finished review. The circuitry is fine; we have a few silkscreen details to correct that will aid in assembly. Hoping to order production PCB's by the end of the week.

* Our assembly team wants a shot at getting the backing plate fabricated from plastic. That will proceed in parallel with final PCB silkscreen rev's, we should have an answer by the end of the week.

Based on TG618's list it looks like we have ~20 boards in this first run. We'll probably do an extra 2-3 (a couple of our own team have these touchpads in our boats, we want to be prepared for the inevitable factory failure!) and let that cover things until Fall or next Spring. We'll get the order paperwork ready in the next few days and get that out to the people on the list.

Thanks!

[Thegerman618]

I have all the contact information for everyone IDB, just let me know when you want me to send it

[IDBoating]

Getting close. Right now we're focusing on the final technical details. Let's handle people's actual contact data offline to preserve privacy.

While I'm on here: Spoke with the spacer fabricator this morning, they should ship by Monday.

[Dandy]

ID - would you be able to provide pricing before placing your order? I know this may seem a bit odd, but we do not currently own a boat with this, but are in the market for a used boat (so we can pay cash) and it looks like we may be in that 2006-2008 year range. Depending on the cost, I am considering ordering one so that I have it in the event we get a boat with speedset, then I have the back up. Who knows, I may not need it, but the boat we find may have a bad speedset and we can use that as a negotiating piece.

[IDBoating]

ID - would you be able to provide pricing before placing your order?

Yes, it looks like the price will be the $250 we estimated earlier. Had we been able to get the quantity up nearer 50 pieces or so in this run, the price could have dropped toward $200. As with many things, there is often more theoretical interest than actual buyers when the time comes.

We are seeing a much higher cost for liability insurance than we expected, we are having to include spacers due to OEM elastomer variances, and so forth but we're confident we can control the other costs to keep the price to $250 on this run.

We'll probably ask folks to order in a week or two. We have a few final details to nail down before that point.

Thanks!

[Thegerman618]

My point was more that your post was suggesting how good the performance of the speed control was. I wouldn't want anyone to think there was going to be an improvement there.

Similar with the 10 hour comment. You were suggesting that if You didn't manage to break it in 10 hours it would last forever.

I have no doubt IDB will come up with a nice well made solution.

IDB I totally agree end users are evil people [emoji14] they will break anything given enough time :-)

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Thanks for the clarification ChrisSnow, please don't take my post as hostile by any means. I haven't had cruise control since I bought my boat last year, so to go from basically nothing to a working prototype I was excited to say the least. I can understand that 10 hours in retrospect is nothing compared to what these units will be subject to in the future, that being said what IDB has done with the design is extremely well thought out and in my opinion will stand the test of the time and elements to include the (gasp) user. Having spend some time in a R & D department when I was younger I can attest that things always work in the engineers mind and often in a controlled atmosphere, but I have seen some products come back from end users and strictly out of curiosity called the end user to find out the conditions that resulted in a product failure.....always good for a laugh.

I will hold off on sending anything to you IDB till you give me the word in a few weeks.

[IDBoating]

Here's an update for those who care!

This is the production PCB:
productionpcb.jpg

We finished the final artwork review yesterday. The view here is from the snapdome side; the grey is the "top" (snapdome) surface of the board. All components except the LED's are on the "bottom" (back) surface of the board; their outlines are shown in green and their labels are reversed because you're looking "through" the board. The labels would read correctly if you were looking at the other side of the board.

There are a few differences here between this production version and the beta test version. Several test points have been removed that aren't necessary in production, component footprints are smaller, certain components have been removed/added/changed based on what we learned during beta testing, that sort of thing.

The corners around each snapdome are a last-minute addition. We originally intended to have our assembly house place each snapdome individually and then cover them with this special 3M adhesive backed mylar. That has proven difficult to do reliably. The next option, which is very common, is to have the snapdome company make a custom mylar cutout with the snapdomes already in place; during assembly you just peel off the backing and stick the entire sheet down, domes and all. Sounds great, but it turns out this is really only cost effective for high volumes and large arrays of snapdomes. The tooling alone to do this panel approached $1K (!!!) and the per-piece price was significant too. Given the small number of panels it looks like we'll be shipping, this was just too expensive unless we really wanted to bump the price. We dug around for alternatives, and the one we've chosen is to have the snapdome company ship the snapdomes with 0.5 x 0.5 inch squares of mylar on them, in sheets. The assemblers peel each dome off the sheet and place it on the PCB, with the corners helping them to locate and align each one properly. We have to order a minimum of 1000, so we're stocked for well over 100 units, but of the options available this is the fastest and most economical.

Those with sharp eyes will notice that the outermost backlight LED's (D2, D3, D5, and D6) have had their separation increased just a bit. This is to allow clearance for the snapdome mylar next to them; if you mentally draw a straight line down each side you can see that the LED's will now clear the mylar for SW2 and SW5. We checked the elastomer to insure there is plenty of clearance for the new LED positions.

More soon... thanks!

[mcosenz]

Is it to late to get in on this? Took the boat out for the first time today. Speedset of course decided to stopped working this year 😞

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[IDBoating]

Is it to late to get in on this? Took the boat out for the first time today. Speedset of course decided to stopped working this year

Yep, but whew - that's shaving things really close! Should be getting quotes for the final pieces Monday and placing orders shortly thereafter.

Send a PM to user "TheGerman618" here on TO, he's maintaining the list of buyers in this first production run. Ask him to put you on the list. By next week the quantity will be locked in.

I wonder how many more people will pull their boats out of storage soon, and find that their panels have stopped working....