[IC] Oxalis 1 - A minimalist rotary encoder peripheral

[Old_Gold_Hand]

Pancake
Discord https://discord.gg/CPSCnE
IC Form https://forms.gle/A5SqizVFo3qDe4sB6
Website https://www.american-haptics.com/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/americanhaptics/

Hi everybody, hope yall are staying safe and taking care. I want to introduce you to our rotary encoder peripheral, the Pancake.



The Pancake is a minimalist heavyweight. It is solid aluminum, with a presale only brass version.



It is 3 inches (7.62 cm) in diameter, 1 and 1/2 inches (3.81 cm) tall, and weighs about 10 oz (283.5 g). It drives a QMK flashable atmega MCU with a high quality Bournes pushbutton rotary encoder. The weight and size coupled with the quality of the machining gives the knob a very smooth action.

Where are we in the development cycle? WAIT! AREN'T YOU ALREADY RUNNING AN INTEREST CHECK ON YOUR SILICONE MAT?!

One at a time! We have been developing the Oxalis 1 for almost a year. A lot of attention has been paid to the proportion and shape, verifying it's comfort and haptic response. The PCB is prototyped and working, and we have iterated through several solid models and now have a near final shape in machined aluminum. We expect to enter presale as soon as we exhaustively test our manufacturing. We will likely be manufacturing this in house.






When I say "we", I mean it. We are a team and are highly skilled in our trades, and capable of efficiently dividing work between us. I wouldn't imagine posting this if I wasn't completely confident that our team can handle manufacturing both products at once. If you want to know some specifics, look into palletization, specifically how it refers to CNC machining.

With that out of the way, we are looking into building out a Cerakote station in our shop, to offer more finish control. These are the initial color ideas:



Still early in development is a mold set that will allow artisans to make decorative knobs. We are almost done with our breakfast pancake model. We have a resin positive and are designing a machined aluminum mold box that should allow artisans to effectively make resin cast knobs that will always fit and always work with the base and pcb. Pics to come as updates.

Supply Chain

As of now, I have gotten a lot of quotes from other shops, as this part is so suited to a CNC lathe. However, we feel that ultimately we can produce these parts in house on our mill, and possibly take a hit in our production cost, to ensure on demand manufacturing, better quality control, and ease of revisions. We are in talks with a few PCB houses in USA, as we love to keep as many components as possible American made.

[ Specified attachment is not available ]

Presale When?

We will likely run the presale directly from our website. We would welcome vendors in other regions. This IC will run for maybe 4 weeks, which should be enough time to hammer out all the last little details. After that, presale will run for maybe 4 weeks. Once every presale order is filled, expect to see the pancake for sale, retail (get brass during the presale if you want it!) on our website.

Thank you for your precious time, and we look forward to any and all feedback.

EDIT We have renamed our peripheral. The device will now be called Oxalis 1. We wanted to move away from any food related name. Oxalis is a plant native to our region, and model 1 represents how many input components there are. I hope this settles any confusion or ill will with the MKUltra ortholinear board called Pancake. Our apologies again to MKUltra.

[ilikerustoo]

Cool

[Old_Gold_Hand]

Cool

thanks! working on getting the kinks out of this post, Geekhack has done some strange things with my attachments!

[Darth_munkee]

Might want to rethink the name so as to not have this confused with a keyboard that already exists.

https://mkultra.click/collections/pcbs/products/group-buy-pancake-keyboard-kit

[harlekein]

Might want to rethink the name so as to not have this confused with a keyboard that already exists.

https://mkultra.click/collections/pcbs/products/group-buy-pancake-keyboard-kit

To be fair, that one should have been called waffle.

[Dumblescore]

I assume the encoder shaft isn’t bearing the entire weight of the knob — are three bearings or bushings between the knob and the base piece that reduce the weight on the shaft?  Is there anything besides the encoder shaft preventing lateral movement of the knob?

[MKUltraCorp]

Which part of your team was in charge of checking to see if any other IC or GB or In Stock product was already called a Pancake?

[Old_Gold_Hand]

Which part of your team was in charge of checking to see if any other IC or GB or In Stock product was already called a Pancake?

I assume the encoder shaft isn’t bearing the entire weight of the knob — are three bearings or bushings between the knob and the base piece that reduce the weight on the shaft?  Is there anything besides the encoder shaft preventing lateral movement of the knob?

There are mating surfaces that share some of the load of the knob, and provide sliding concentric location between the pcb housing and the knob, but still allow the encoder to be pressed.

Again, our product is not a keyboard, and does not relate to your product.

[haystack]

At least the post-2014 Griffin Powermate had Bluetooth.

[fishbiscuit13]

This looks practically identical to the BNR1 from Binepad, except shorter.

[Darth_munkee]

Hell, I mean call it the Short Stack or Silver Dollar. Those sounds way more fitting for what it is because it looks like a couple of small pancakes stacked in each other. You would limit confusion because no it's not a keyboard, but it's in the same realm as keyboards. And next time take the 30 seconds on Google to see if you might be taking a name that someone else beat you to so you don't potentially take away from someone else's work.

[Old_Gold_Hand]

This looks practically identical to the BNR1 from Binepad, except shorter.

At least the post-2014 Griffin Powermate had Bluetooth.

The Pancake, BNR1, and Griffin Powermate are functionally similar, yes. We don't claim to have invented the rotary encoder peripheral. Microsoft has a really cool one also that works with the Surface series of portable computers. The pancake is much larger and is made in USA. The Griffin Powermate has 1 really bad review on amazon related to it's drivers and functionality, and the BNR1 is not currently for sale or in IC.

[dom]

I always liked the "Griffin Technology’s Powermate", just please ensure you are not stepping on someone's toes (from legal point of view). If you'll get clearance from the "initial designers", I will support that. Good luck!

[haystack]

"Functionally similar" is one way of putting it.

[syberghost]

I don't understand why you can't just rename it, if it's "early in the process." Seems the perfect time to act on the feedback you requested by posting it here.

[HeWhoIsValorousAnd]

I don't understand why you can't just rename it, if it's "early in the process."

Agreed. Short Stack is such a great name too!

[Old_Gold_Hand]

Show Image

"Functionally similar" is one way of putting it.

Thanks for taking the time to post. Here are some other knob based peripherals on amazon at similar price points:

https://www.amazon.com/PORSTA-Speaker-Controller-Adjuster-Multimedia/dp/B084RT3TB7/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_all_spx_wp_1_7/140-0858572-8178649?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B084RT3TB7&pd_rd_r=6955a720-f066-443e-83a5-14be84239137&pd_rd_w=J0u0Q&pd_rd_wg=wPjII&pf_rd_p=ffd394b3-6bb0-43ec-8bd8-b3dd44ab44d6&pf_rd_r=DPHSB11RY8M4PE73AKDV&psc=1&refRID=DPHSB11RY8M4PE73AKDV

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SM7NV98/ref=sspa_dk_detail_5?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07SM7NV98&pd_rd_w=i6Dzl&pf_rd_p=48d372c1-f7e1-4b8b-9d02-4bd86f5158c5&pd_rd_wg=a6e6A&pf_rd_r=QYC4W40EVG423BCZSC55&pd_rd_r=70532161-faa7-4b71-8f6f-0283c8da5124&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExRjA0SENEWDk5SVc3JmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNDUzODE0UU1US0E1MVIxRklRJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAwODk5MTkyV0pQN0s5S0haMEgzJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfZGV0YWlsJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

There is also the Microsoft Surface Dial.

We knew there were several rotary encoder peripherals on the market, but we set out to provide a heavy, smooth, beautiful peripheral made in USA. The Pancake is not based on any other design, and is not the result of any reverse engineering. Our PCB and models are designed from the ground up by us, much like many designers in this little corner of the internet that provide designs within a different framework, such as keyboard cases or key cap color ways.

[UggNot]

Again, our product is not a keyboard, and does not relate to your product.

It seems to me that while your product may not be related to the existing pancake product, you ARE advertising to and seeking opinions from the same target audience in the same venues with the same product name.

This seems like a CLEAR copyright issue.

Also consider this: both products have been made available to the public and people have purchased them both. When buying they won’t be confused because they are looking at their desired product. BUT, let’s say this person then has a problem with the device. (Could be user error or hardware, doesn’t matter) so they post to the same venues you’ve advertised in r/mk or geekhack, with the subject line, “having trouble with my pancake”.  I ask you, which product is this referring to?  If that is not confusion in the market place I don’t know what is.

[wil]

leave it to geekhack, armchair lawyers upset about the use of a common english name for a product. wild stuff

glwic

[haystack]

There will always be a market for clones and knockoffs, and I appreciate your honesty in acknowledging that you're catering to that market. Since you're in the USA, do check with an actual legal expert to be sure that Griffin's US design patent (USPTO D492311) has expired or does not apply.

[Old_Gold_Hand]

There will always be a market for clones and knockoffs, and I appreciate your honesty in acknowledging that you're catering to that market. Since you're in the USA, do check with an actual legal expert to be sure that Griffin's US design patent (USPTO D492311) has expired or does not apply.

Again, our product is not a keyboard, and does not relate to your product.

It seems to me that while your product may not be related to the existing pancake product, you ARE advertising to and seeking opinions from the same target audience in the same venues with the same product name.

This seems like a CLEAR copyright issue.

Also consider this: both products have been made available to the public and people have purchased them both. When buying they won’t be confused because they are looking at their desired product. BUT, let’s say this person then has a problem with the device. (Could be user error or hardware, doesn’t matter) so they post to the same venues you’ve advertised in r/mk or geekhack, with the subject line, “having trouble with my pancake”.  I ask you, which product is this referring to?  If that is not confusion in the market place I don’t know what is.

We have a contact form on our website. Also after purchase from our website, someone can reply to the email from the receipt and get feedback from there.

Our product is not a clone or knockoff from Griffin

[Findecanor]

I'd think that the most important part of a knob like this is the software. What types of features do you have outlined and which operating systems will it support?
Is there open source software for devices such as this?

I don't understand why you can't just rename it, if it's "early in the process."

Agreed. Short Stack is such a great name too!

Short Stack gets my vote. And it does not discriminate against other styles of pancakes (crêpes, Dutch, poffertjes, blini, galette, etc) either.

BTW. I'm hungry now.

[rionlion100]

There will always be a market for clones and knockoffs, and I appreciate your honesty in acknowledging that you're catering to that market. Since you're in the USA, do check with an actual legal expert to be sure that Griffin's US design patent (USPTO D492311) has expired or does not apply.

Again, our product is not a keyboard, and does not relate to your product.

It seems to me that while your product may not be related to the existing pancake product, you ARE advertising to and seeking opinions from the same target audience in the same venues with the same product name.

This seems like a CLEAR copyright issue.

Also consider this: both products have been made available to the public and people have purchased them both. When buying they won’t be confused because they are looking at their desired product. BUT, let’s say this person then has a problem with the device. (Could be user error or hardware, doesn’t matter) so they post to the same venues you’ve advertised in r/mk or geekhack, with the subject line, “having trouble with my pancake”.  I ask you, which product is this referring to?  If that is not confusion in the market place I don’t know what is.

We have a contact form on our website. Also after purchase from our website, someone can reply to the email from the receipt and get feedback from there.

Our product is not a clone or knockoff from Griffin

It really doesn't matter how you would prefer to be contacted his statement is still valid.

[victorpre]

Interested in see how this develops

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[walie]

Lets be honest, this knob will probably make group buy, finish manufacturing, and ship out before you get your Pancake from mkultra.

[Darth_munkee]

Lets be honest, this knob will probably make group buy, finish manufacturing, and ship out before you get your Pancake from mkultra.

Nah, he's got staff now to help with stuff like shipping. Just ordered some stuff Saturday evening and had a tracking number by Sunday morning.

[Old_Gold_Hand]

Interested in see how this develops

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

Thanks, we are looking forward to finally getting cerakote in house and resolving other manufacturing steps. It's always good to know ahead of time what to spend on if possible.

[ullr]

I like the nice vivid colors

What do you do with such a device, though?

[MKUltraCorp]

Shipping delays haven't been an issue for some time now. I'm not mad - trolls don't always get news as quickly as the rest of us. They also don't know how to stay on topic.

Speaking of on topic, I strongly suggest renaming this project, no matter how attached the 'team' might be to the name. Not only was the initial use of the name rude, the current defense of "different product" is insulting. Sure, the ORIGINAL Pancake doesn't have an encoder. Yours is only an encoder. The issue is that you are marketing to the same audience in and on the same platforms that the original was and currently is marketed on.

If you do insist on sticking to the Pancake name, perhaps an alternate spelling? Maybe something like Pankek?

[Old_Gold_Hand]

Shipping delays haven't been an issue for some time now. I'm not mad - trolls don't always get news as quickly as the rest of us. They also don't know how to stay on topic.

Speaking of on topic, I strongly suggest renaming this project, no matter how attached the 'team' might be to the name. Not only was the initial use of the name rude, the current defense of "different product" is insulting. Sure, the ORIGINAL Pancake doesn't have an encoder. Yours is only an encoder. The issue is that you are marketing to the same audience in and on the same platforms that the original was and currently is marketed on.

If you do insist on sticking to the Pancake name, perhaps an alternate spelling? Maybe something like Pankek?

Might want to rethink the name so as to not have this confused with a keyboard that already exists.

https://mkultra.click/collections/pcbs/products/group-buy-pancake-keyboard-kit

I don't understand why you can't just rename it, if it's "early in the process."

Agreed. Short Stack is such a great name too!

Since posting this we have had a meeting about the name of the product, and have agreed to change the name.

Firstly, I (not the team, me, Ryan, one designer of the peripheral formerly known as the Pancake) want to apologize to MKUltra. I hope you can forgive me for not doing the due diligence, and for sticking with the name for this long. My gut reaction, and indeed first reply to you in our discord channel was to change the name. I should have put my foot down with the other members of the team and moved toward changing the name. This project has been in development now since December of 2019, and we have very many documents and organizational files with this name, and had been running with it excitedly for a long while. I hope you understand it is not a keyboard, and we simply never thought to google it along with the term "keyboard".

We will likely move away from any food related naming scheme. Please bear with us as we work our way through all of our social media posts etc and get the changes in place after choosing a new name for our product.

Now, onto the design. As I have said in another reply, we did not reverse engineer, copy, clone, or otherwise model our product after one existing on the market. The fact is, a knob can really only go in so many directions if your design prompt is to be minimal and luxurious. The gentle dish in the top and the thumb divot went through a lot of iterations to get to something we feel is truly comfortable and pleasant to touch. I cannot and will not speak about legal concerns, as I am not an attorney and will not pretend to know when and where copyright and patent law begins and ends.

Finally, I want to say thank you to everyone in this community.

Ultimately I know that our products are expensive and simple, but we stand by high quality and customer service, and manufacturing our products in a way that maintains environmental soundness and values skilled labor.

[Old_Gold_Hand]

I like the nice vivid colors

What do you do with such a device, though?

Anything you would want to control with a knob, such as sliders in software, volume for playback, video playback location etc

[syberghost]

Looking forward to this product. It looks very nice. Any chance of green ano?

[MKUltraCorp]

Since posting this we have had a meeting about the name of the product, and have agreed to change the name.

Firstly, I (not the team, me, Ryan, one designer of the peripheral formerly known as the Pancake) want to apologize to MKUltra. I hope you can forgive me for not doing the due diligence, and for sticking with the name for this long. My gut reaction, and indeed first reply to you in our discord channel was to change the name. I should have put my foot down with the other members of the team and moved toward changing the name. This project has been in development now since December of 2019, and we have very many documents and organizational files with this name, and had been running with it excitedly for a long while. I hope you understand it is not a keyboard, and we simply never thought to google it along with the term "keyboard".

We will likely move away from any food related naming scheme. Please bear with us as we work our way through all of our social media posts etc and get the changes in place after choosing a new name for our product.

Thank you for being reasonable humans guys, we appreciate your quick attention to this. Beyond the naming issue, we think you have a great product in the works and truly wish you the best with it.

[Old_Gold_Hand]

Since posting this we have had a meeting about the name of the product, and have agreed to change the name.

Firstly, I (not the team, me, Ryan, one designer of the peripheral formerly known as the Pancake) want to apologize to MKUltra. I hope you can forgive me for not doing the due diligence, and for sticking with the name for this long. My gut reaction, and indeed first reply to you in our discord channel was to change the name. I should have put my foot down with the other members of the team and moved toward changing the name. This project has been in development now since December of 2019, and we have very many documents and organizational files with this name, and had been running with it excitedly for a long while. I hope you understand it is not a keyboard, and we simply never thought to google it along with the term "keyboard".

We will likely move away from any food related naming scheme. Please bear with us as we work our way through all of our social media posts etc and get the changes in place after choosing a new name for our product.

Thank you for being reasonable humans guys, we appreciate your quick attention to this. Beyond the naming issue, we think you have a great product in the works and truly wish you the best with it.

Thanks, I wish you well in your endeavors also.

[Old_Gold_Hand]

Looking forward to this product. It looks very nice. Any chance of green ano?

If everything goes to plan, we could possibly offer any off the shelf Cerakote color for a small add on fee. The actual Cerakote jars are really expensive, so we plan to base our bulk purchases of interest check and presale numbers.

[haystack]

So the new name, carefully chosen to avoid similarity to other product names in the keyboard space, is Oxalis 1? You are aware of the Oxalys 80 keyboard, right?

[Old_Gold_Hand]

Actual fiasco

[johnnysstash]

I NEED this.

[paperassgasket]

Actual fiasco

If they just renamed it the Trainwreck I would buy it in a heartbeat.

[beigeandbrown]

Could you do a clear coated sandblasted brass top? I feel like it wouldn't be too hard as opposed to aluminum and man would that feel nice and weighty.

[noorejji]

Just name it something long and unprofessional, like KnobbyMcKnobface. Or Big 'ol Knob.

On a serious note there is actually a serious gap in the market for this exact thing, especially in the audiophile world. It looks like a very appealing product for those looking for a big, high quality discrete volume knob, or whatever you wanna use it for.

[Old_Gold_Hand]

Actual fiasco

If they just renamed it the Trainwreck I would buy it in a heartbeat.

It's getting super close, my dude.

Could you do a clear coated sandblasted brass top? I feel like it wouldn't be too hard as opposed to aluminum and man would that feel nice and weighty.

Yes. The presale only brass version we will definitely do a satin finish for you. All brass ones will be lacquered unless specified. Some people may want them to develop a patina.

I NEED this.

Me too that's why we designed it like this.

Just name it something long and unprofessional, like KnobbyMcKnobface. Or Big 'ol Knob.

On a serious note there is actually a serious gap in the market for this exact thing, especially in the audiophile world. It looks like a very appealing product for those looking for a big, high quality discrete volume knob, or whatever you wanna use it for.

Yes it is really pleasant to have a huge heavy volume control.

--------------------

We are working on a new name, yet again. The google result for "Oxalis Keyboard" did not show the Oxalys80. Out of respect for NIX STUDIO we feel like we should re name our product as the name is too similar. Thank you haystack for pointing this out to us!

[paperassgasket]

Actual fiasco

If they just renamed it the Trainwreck I would buy it in a heartbeat.

It's getting super close, my dude.

After much consideration, the name "Actual Fiasco" is really quite good and I think you should go with that instead.

[dddeeaatthhh]

looks more like a macaroon than a pancake anyway 🤷‍♀️

[EXOgreen]

I am interested as well. Hope to see some more info in the coming weeks!

[gorbachev]

This seems like a CLEAR copyright issue.

No it's not. Copyright doesn't come into play with naming conflicts like this at all. You may be thinking of trademarks, which still wouldn't be an issue because there's no trademark for "pancake".

[jm8080]

Is it possible to make that wireless while still staying the same size?

[fishbiscuit13]

I like how you're pointedly ignoring the fact that the new name is a single letter away from another, even more recently run board, that's arguably more well-known than the Pancake. Are you doing this on purpose?

[paperassgasket]

They're not though.
They just said they're changing it.

We are working on a new name, yet again. The google result for "Oxalis Keyboard" did not show the Oxalys80. Out of respect for NIX STUDIO we feel like we should re name our product as the name is too similar. Thank you haystack for pointing this out to us!

[beigeandbrown]

How about AFOP-1 (Actual Fiasco Oxalis Pancake)