Panasonic A32181 doesn't support advertised 10 levels of backlighting.Still reading through, but where was it posted that this is the chip they used? I notice that the reverse engineering of the protocol information is pretty informative and appears that the software is only throwing 3 bits (out of a possible 4, looks like 0000 is white and 0777 is black) at it.
actually making each key 8-bit would involve rewriting the PWM channel register very very quickly as it scans the matrix, something that is likely not happening (and dare I say impossible?)It could in theory support that with a firmware update but if I understand correctly it would be quite hard for the KB hardware to actually support that. It could be done if you switched the brightness very slowly. I think they wolud need to change from PWM to current limiting to get it to support enough colour as well as be fast enough to work at all. or superfast PWM frequency and I don't think any chips support that. I'd have to do some looking and reading datasheets.
The issue is false advertisement. It doesn't matter if you can get the color you want or if the board looks good/bad or any of the other points you're trying to make, NeedAFix. It matters because the RGB back-lighting is the biggest selling point of the board and it can only create a fraction of the colors it's advertised to be able to make. It would still be huge problem if it made 65536 colors (16bit) instead of 16.8 million (24bit), but being limited to 512 colors is light-years from what they are advertising.
If I bought a Porsche that was supposed to put out 700hp but I find out it can only create 200hp that's a huge issue. It doesn't make the car look less cool and it doesn't prevent me from driving from point A to point B, but it does make the product significantly different from what was sold to me.
it's ok guys, 512 colours won't help you win:
(http://i.imgur.com/boTmfd8.png) (http://i.imgur.com/boTmfd8.png)
source (http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=736404&postcount=84)
also note reddit discussion linking back to corsair thread.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/)
It was posted by a CM Storm representative (http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/clc796r), after all.it's ok guys, 512 colours won't help you win:
(http://i.imgur.com/boTmfd8.png) (http://i.imgur.com/boTmfd8.png)
source (http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=736404&postcount=84)
also note reddit discussion linking back to corsair thread.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/)
:)) :)) :))
#shotsfired
Pretty interested to see what the actual issue is. Maybe a firmware/software oversight? Maybe straight incompetence? Either way, the investigative/technical work on the Corsair forums is pretty awesome.
Pretty interested to see what the actual issue is. Maybe a firmware/software oversight? Maybe straight incompetence? Either way, the investigative/technical work on the Corsair forums is pretty awesome.
Considering how horrible Corsair is with firmware and software, I'm guessing that could be a huge part of it. Link has had massive issues and they had some huge firmware issues with their SSDs in the past.
Pretty interested to see what the actual issue is. Maybe a firmware/software oversight? Maybe straight incompetence? Either way, the investigative/technical work on the Corsair forums is pretty awesome.
it's ok guys, 512 colours won't help you win:
(http://i.imgur.com/boTmfd8.png) (http://i.imgur.com/boTmfd8.png)
source (http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=736404&postcount=84)
also note reddit discussion linking back to corsair thread.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2jhe9h/corsair_rgb_keyboards_only_capable_of_512_colours/)
:)) :)) :))
#shotsfired
Seems likely that the engineering department and marketing department weren’t communicating very well, before this thing got built.
Anyway, leaves some nice room for someone else to come in and make a keyboard with a more capable LED controller, and advertise how many extra millions of colors it supports.
(Personally I think backlighting in general is a silly gimmick, aimed at a demographic who loves silly gimmicks.)
Seems likely that the engineering department and marketing department weren’t communicating very well, before this thing got built.
Anyway, leaves some nice room for someone else to come in and make a keyboard with a more capable LED controller, and advertise how many extra millions of colors it supports.
(Personally I think backlighting in general is a silly gimmick, aimed at a demographic who loves silly gimmicks.)
The only issue with that is that Corsair has a one-year exclusivity agreement with Cherry so for the next little while any competitors would have to use knock-off switches. I will be more curious to see if Cherry has anything to say about this ordeal than Corsair. I cant imagine them being too happy that their brand new RGB switches had a bungled launch due to Corsairs incompetence or cost-cutting.
Competitors will just have to use Matias switches... but that’s okay, the keyboards will thus end up nicer to type on as well as supporting more colors.
During development of the keyboard and prior to the release of the RGB keyboard, we came across an issue regarding the possible color combinations. In an effort to get the product out to our customers as committed, we made the tough decision to resolve the issue in a future software release as we believe our customers would enjoy the product as-is.
Here are the specifics that detail the issue:
Due to USB stack size and performance issues, we had to reduce MCU processing overhead in the best and quickest manner. The LED controller gives us greater than 8 bits of color depth but we use the 8 bits that give us what we believe to be the best color granularity. Our controller architecture provides for over 100 million color combinations out of which we select 16.8 million to display. We devised a color palette scheme to encode and compress the RGB color data and the data to select and control the “current sources” that drive the LED array. An unfortunate side effect is that it prevented us from utilizing the full color depth available from the LED controller.
We are in the process of making the necessary improvements so that we can send the uncompressed RGB data to the keyboard. Additionally, we are optimizing the data protocol and LED driver/display algorithms through the display control firmware to handle the uncompressed data, and to more efficiently program the “current sources” that drive the LED array. This should give our most “resourceful” customers an easy way to identify the data and be able to easily send standard RGB 8 bit values.
This enhancement had already been planned and will be implemented in a few weeks by the release of a software update, which will be announced and be made available to download here and at Corsair.com.
- Corsair Team
tl;dr ****, you guys found out we released yet another product before it was ready. We're going to release an update that will fix some problems, but will likely **** up things even more; however, since we're releasing an update, we can say we're working on it and we didn't really deceive you in our marketing, it was just a feature we were going to roll out in the future.
This is typical of Corsair. It's why I refuse to buy anything they sell. They cover up problems until they're too big to ignore, half ass "fixes", then eventually get the issue resolved all while charging an arm and a leg and passing the blame.
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=736567&postcount=109Quote from: PirateguybrushSo... there's a reasonable chance they can pull it off?More than a reasonable chance, our hardware is much more capable than what has been suggested so far (which was why we wanted to ensure our engineers could describe it properly for everyone to understand).
So basically they need better software engineers to make proper use of the hardware?
On a side note I spent about 45 seconds with a K65 at best buy and if nothing else, I liked the case.
It doesn't sound easy at all, but if they optimize it well, yes. With the new numbers we have 144 LEDs updating at 194Hz. 144*194 = 27936 LED scan frames per second. That means 35uS per LED frame. Considering that the palette supports 7 (possibly 8 but I'm not certain) independent PWM values at once, that means you only have to update the palette every 7 LED frames, or 7*35 = 245uS. That is more lenient than the 115uS I came up with earlier. Since we know now that the SPI clock frequency can be up to 10MHz as opposed to 1MHz, that cuts our previous bit time of 1uS down to 0.1uS. The SPI write takes 16 bits (making my 2-byte assumption correct) which is 8 bits for write flag and address and 8 bits for data. It looks like you must specifiy address for each byte written. 16 bits * 0.1uS = 1.6uS per write. However, now you're updating the entire palette rather than just one LED, so that becomes 1.6uS * 7 = 11.2uS to update the entire palette (not including delays between transfers). Now you need to do this three times because there are three drivers to update. If they wired all of them on the same bus, this takes 11.2uS * 3 = 33.6uS but if they are using three independent SPI busses this could still only be 11.2uS plus a bit of processing time. That means updating 11.2uS over a period of 245uS, which seems more reasonable. This still seems to be a very high demand on the CPU and will require perfect synchronization, but if they optimize well it does seem doable, though pushing the limit.from http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showpost.php?p=736563&postcount=107
So basically they need better software engineers to make proper use of the hardware?To be fair, I’m convinced that almost all electronics hardware companies are totally incompetent at programming and user interface design. For evidence, just look at the atrocious UIs and buggy broken software on TVs and stuff that plugs into TVs, game consoles, car stereos, non-iPod music players, wireless routers, drip coffee makers, refrigerators, every phone before 2007, etc...
It is disappointing that people are getting so jimmy rustled because their keyboard only 512 colors. Think about it. That is 512x more colors than you used to be able to get in a mechanical board.
Yeah, I understand that there was some false advertising, but more colors has absolutely no functionality while in your analogy, FPS does effect functionality. Anyways, the only thing that will not look as good with 512 colors apposed to 16.8 million is that the mode where you fade between colors might look a little choppy.It is disappointing that people are getting so jimmy rustled because their keyboard only 512 colors. Think about it. That is 512x more colors than you used to be able to get in a mechanical board.
People got jimmies rustled because of false advertising.
Think of it this way, imagine if Nvidia released a great big, awesome, and expensive video card. They tell you it will play anything on the market flawlessly and that you'll easily get 60+ FPS when you play. Then when you go to play a game with your high end system, everything is a choppy 30FPS. That's what you see here. You have people who were expecting color matching and flawless color transitions and instead got choppy, stuttering color changes.
Now tell me you wouldn't be disappointed and you wouldn't have your jimmies rustled.
This happens all the time with lots of companies because people build up so much hype around a product that the company feels pressured to release it earlier, and they end up releasing a broken product. A great example is BF4. They rushed to get it done so it had loads of issues.tl;dr ****, you guys found out we released yet another product before it was ready. We're going to release an update that will fix some problems, but will likely **** up things even more; however, since we're releasing an update, we can say we're working on it and we didn't really deceive you in our marketing, it was just a feature we were going to roll out in the future.
This is typical of Corsair. It's why I refuse to buy anything they sell. They cover up problems until they're too big to ignore, half ass "fixes", then eventually get the issue resolved all while charging an arm and a leg and passing the blame.
Yeah, pretty ****ty that they released them broken, and even worse that they didn't even say anything at the time..
Cherry has got to be real happy right now to have set up an exclusivity deal with Corsair... What a shame.
People buy the card for smooth framerates without choppiness and they buy a backlit RGB keyboard for the full range of colors and smooth color transitions. In both cases, it is an aesthetic thing. Both products work and do what they're supposed to do at the basic level, that being output video and provide input to the computer with attractive backlights, but both do it differently than advertised and in a way that provides a less than satisfactory experience. I felt the analogy was apt since, in both cases, you end up with choppiness that your paying a premium price was supposed to avoid.You can not play a game with low framerates as well as you can with high framerates, but you can use a keyboard with slightly choppy color transitions just as well as you could use a keyboard with smooth color transitions. I am pretty that the premium price was due to the fact that it was the only RGB mechanical board for a little while, and it is still the only genuine cherry mx RGB board out there. I am not saying that people are wrong for being a little jimmy rustled because they bought a product expecting something that was not provided in reality, but they should get over it. Corsair has acknowledged their problems and said they would work on fixing it.
Corsair has acknowledged their problems and said they would work on fixing it.
You can not play a game with low framerates as well as you can with high framerates, but you can use a keyboard with slightly choppy color transitions just as well as you could use a keyboard with smooth color transitions. I am pretty that the premium price was due to the fact that it was the only RGB mechanical board for a little while, and it is still the only genuine cherry mx RGB board out there. I am not saying that people are wrong for being a little jimmy rustled because they bought a product expecting something that was not provided in reality, but they should get over it. Corsair has acknowledged their problems and said they would work on fixing it.
OK, will do. Probably won't happen though since I usually don't buy stuff like that until I know it will do what I want/need it to do. I am done with this thread.You can not play a game with low framerates as well as you can with high framerates, but you can use a keyboard with slightly choppy color transitions just as well as you could use a keyboard with smooth color transitions. I am pretty that the premium price was due to the fact that it was the only RGB mechanical board for a little while, and it is still the only genuine cherry mx RGB board out there. I am not saying that people are wrong for being a little jimmy rustled because they bought a product expecting something that was not provided in reality, but they should get over it. Corsair has acknowledged their problems and said they would work on fixing it.
Remind me to tell you that next time you're sold something that doesn't perform as advertised after you paid a premium for it. People have every right to have their jimmies rustled for being lied to about a product. Just because Corsair said they're working on it doesn't mean they'll fix it or make it right. Just look at their products that used Link to get an idea of how Corsair "makes things right" and "fixes things".
Yes, I understand this...Corsair has acknowledged their problems and said they would work on fixing it.
People get all mad when they are lied to. It's understandable.
Corsair promised a keyboard with 16.2 million colours. Turns out they are actually 512 colours, While that's 510 more than other keyboards, its 16 million less than they were promised.
Why does this matter? Well corsair says they'll fix it, but when they come out with the new version of the software and say it's fixed, why should we trust them again? They promised me 16 million colours when I first bought it, why shoudl I trust them now (or ever)? That's the issue here.
I'm just going with the information I have access to and this is what I Get for trying to help people.
Whatever dude, whine and complain about an amazing keyboard while I have fun with it -- I don't care anymore, Have a Good Day.
Only until the end of 2014Yes, but that is not my point. The purpose of the deal was for Corsair to showcase Cherry's product. I doubt very much Cherry are happy about the execution.
Only until the end of 2014Yes, but that is not my point. The purpose of the deal was for Corsair to showcase Cherry's product. I doubt very much Cherry are happy about the execution.
In other news: They seem to have dropped the 16.7m colors thing.Probably hoping to sweep this under the rug.Show Image(http://gaming.corsair.com/en/~/media/97F880F105AC44C6BBC0F9EDD5C76933.ashx)
In other news: They seem to have dropped the 16.7m colors thing.Probably hoping to sweep this under the rug.Show Image(http://gaming.corsair.com/en/~/media/97F880F105AC44C6BBC0F9EDD5C76933.ashx)
In other news: They seem to have dropped the 16.7m colors thing.Probably hoping to sweep this under the rug.Show Image(http://gaming.corsair.com/en/~/media/97F880F105AC44C6BBC0F9EDD5C76933.ashx)
Typical Corsair thing to do.