GX Typhoon

[Edlo]

I am a new owner of the GX Typhoon (purchased from Kustom PC UK) and have a few questions

1- How can I control display with the remote (I have XP MCE 2005 installed) the supplied remote appears to do nothing, also is it programmable.

2- The Orbital site say's software will be bundled with the device all I received was a external usb connector and the LCD mounted in a drive bay.

Although I have managed to program the device to display the weather and a few scrolling text screens I found the software download for WMP does not give enough detail (for example no artist).

Programming for a stable operation was a bit of a struggle, Manual not included and could not be found on the forums, I have read complaints of unstable operation which from my experiences of getting to grips with the operation of the software are a result of not knowing you have to set up playlist's,

A small start up manual, better software, and a remote that does something would be a good beginning and essential for a product at a fairly high purchase price.

I look forward to receiving some info/answers

Regards Ted.

[Ray]

I am a new owner of the GX Typhoon (purchased from Kustom PC UK) and have a few questions

1- How can I control display with the remote (I have XP MCE 2005 installed) the supplied remote appears to do nothing, also is it programmable.

As stated on ourproduct page the remote is only supported under windows Vista. Its not that we wouldn't like to support XP but microsoft only released to the specifications to intergrate with vista. Kustom PC UK aparently hasn't copied that warning which is unfortunate, I will see what i can do about getting their website corrected.

In the meantime there is nothing I can do for you, we have a firmware update in testing at the moment that allows the IR interface to be turned off on non supported operating systems. The firmware thats on the drawing board right would allow you to use the IR Led as a generic led that you could for instance may light up when you have email but we're just kicking around ideas what we could do with that led nothing solid yet.

2- The Orbital site say's software will be bundled with the device all I received was a external usb connector and the LCD mounted in a drive bay.

Could you redirect me to the page that mentions software will be bundled so I can get that error fixed? Given the wide adoption of the internet nowdays we opted for digital distribution of the software only, it allows us do deliver more up to date software and cut costs by not having to throw away thousands of outdated driver cd's each time we do an update. Resulting in cheaper products for our end users.

I Do agree with you though that there should have been a note included where to get the software.

Although I have managed to program the device to display the weather and a few scrolling text screens I found the software download for WMP does not give enough detail (for example no artist).

The LcdStudio WMP plugin at the moment indeed is a bit minimalistic, but there will be updates in the future that add additional items to the WMP plugin.

Programming for a stable operation was a bit of a struggle, Manual not included and could not be found on the forums, I have read complaints of unstable operation which from my experiences of getting to grips with the operation of the software are a result of not knowing you have to set up playlist's.

I Agree with you on all those points, and we are working on it, A basic manual or quickstart guide will improve the learning curve. The LcdStudio site has a quickstart guide that helps you setup playslists and events, we should have done a better job pointing out the existance of this guide.

A small start up manual

working on it

better software

wokring in it

and a remote that does something

As said before the remote is only supported on vista, I'm sorry you have been misinformed on this one. We explicitly mention the vista only support on the product page to keep the number of disapointed customers to a minimum but there's only so much we can do about it.

Although microsoft has been porting back lots and lots of changes from vista to XP service pack 3 I'm honesly not getting my hopes of getting the documented vista way of handling IR working on XP. But hey they might prove me wrong and pleasently surprise us only time will tell....

would be a good beginning and essential for a product at a fairly high purchase price.

I'm not gonna debate our prices with you, I am gonna say that with the base GX 240x64 graphic lcd model priced lower then our 4x20 character bay inserts the GX is a pretty good deal, this does however not mean we shouldn't have done a better job on the manuals and getting started guides.

I look forward to receiving some info/answers
Regards Ted.

I hope my answers where somewhat satisfying for you,although we are aware and are working on improving many of the points you made I always enjoy customer feedback especially ones that point out area's where we could do better.

[Edlo]

Hi Ray
Thanks for your prompt responce (well done) Below is the Link to the Software included Statement.
http://www.matrixorbital.ca/Members/Nick/gx

You will see the following statement was also made.

'Not only will this remote be able to control the display, but with special IR add-ons, you will be able to control multiple electronics including your TV, Stereo, CD Player, and anything else you can think of.
We're not kidding when we say "Infinite Possibilities". We've done the hard part, and now its up to you to be as creative as you wish.'

How much of the above is true ? also your answers to my questions were great but you did not say how the remote controls the display, will Vista do this.
I would very much appreciate your advice, 'should I install Vista to be able use the supplied remote or stick with MCE 2005 and buy a compatible remote' what are the pro's and cons ?

Best Regards Ted

[Ray]

Gheh nick left our company over a year ago, his personal page shouldn't have been visible anymore for quite some time, I'll correct that since the information is rather dated.

On the IR I can be fairly straight forward we are implementing the Microsoft specifications.

By default the GX comes with the IR Receiver module which works with VISTA you can use it to change channels, adjust the sound ,browse the menu's anything you would expect from a remote control.

Now MCE has the option to work with set-top boxes and other equipment but it requires the ability to blast out IR signals. Since from our limited market research most customers did not require this functionality we took it out of the core product to keep the price down and moved it to an additional add-on board which is not yet released yet.

So while we do support (with the addon board) sending out IR and changing channels on other equipment it is only to the extend VISTA/MCE supports it. if Vista sends the GX IR data it will happely blast it out but we have no control over how or when vista/mce does that.

On the decision to upgrade to vista or not thats your personal choice, I personally like the VISTA MCE better then MCE 2005 but a collegue of mine disagrees and claims the one who designed Visa MCE should be fired and mce2005 is still king so I really can't tell you what to do, it all boils down to personal taste.

The remote we ship is the stock microsoft remote and it would have worked on XP if they allowed third party vendors to supplly IR receiver hardware confirming to their specifications as they did with Vista. Buying another remote will not fix your problem since the problem is the receiver which XP refuses to talk to. Microsoft does sell their own IR receivers that do work with XP and will work with your remote but it's up to you if you want to do that or not, if you are planning to upgrade to vista I wouldn't, if you are planning to stick with mce 2005 it might be a solution for you.

[Edlo]

Thanks again Ray

Great response to my questions - very clearly explained.

I am a bit disappointed that when I did a search for the GX Typhoon on Google last week Nicks page was the result and the statements made within it's content appeared to be the only Matrix Orbital point of sales information availible for the GX Typhoon.

I was even more dissapointed when I checked again and found the link to Nicks page in large print in the center of your current home page.

Having spent many hours researching various LCD/VFD's I made my decision based on the information contained in this advert, how on earth did this misinformation survive 12 months after Nick left the Company.

It was very important to me to have a useable MCE receiver and display contained within the remaining drive bay of my small PC case.

I am happy with the capabilities of the display and look forward to the new software upgrade and pluggins but from what I have read on the forums upgrading to Vista is very risky with no certainty I will get the full remote control operations that would be availible with a stand alone receiver for my MCE 2005 OS, in short 'I don't know what the hell to do' and feel a tad miffed.

Regards Ted

[Ray]

I am a bit disappointed that when I did a search for the GX Typhoon on Google last week Nicks page was the result and the statements made within it's content appeared to be the only Matrix Orbital point of sales information availible for the GX Typhoon.

I was even more dissapointed when I checked again and found the link to Nicks page in large print in the center of your current home page.

Having spent many hours researching various LCD/VFD's I made my decision based on the information contained in this advert, how on earth did this misinformation survive 12 months after Nick left the Company.

You are making it sound far worse then it in reality is, I agree with you that it should have a note that IR is only supported on vista like the product page / ordering page does which you must have bumped into if you researched for that long. I had the page pulled anyhow so we will not confuse any other customers.

Now that you ordered through a distributer that also didn't put up the warning on their website so you missed your second chance to see the warning is just really really unfortunate. I'm trying to get the situation on their site corrected for future customers.

From what I have read on the forums upgrading to Vista is very risky with no certainty I will get the full remote control operations that would be availible with a stand alone receiver for my MCE 2005 OS

The GX passes the Microsoft Certification tests so the IR support on vista will be as good as microsofts own receiver but like said before XP support is lacking and there is nothing we can do about it. We would like to, but we can't.

in short 'I don't know what the hell to do' and feel a tad miffed.
Regards Ted

I'm sorry about that, It's not like we desperatly trying to hide the IR on XP is not supported and make our customers unhappy you just unfortunatly missed the warnings we did put up.

[Edlo]

Hi Ray
Once again thanks for the prompt reply I will speak to the supplier.

Can you confirm support, software and hardware developement for the GX will continue to be a priority of Matrix Orbital with no risk of it taking second place to other commitments or being dropped.

Just one other bit of info to readers of this forum the viewing angle of the GX is not brilliant.

Well done Ray you'r an asset to Orbital 'I hope they appreciate it'

[Ray]

Well I can't guarantee the GX will never be second place. We are a company and we do need to make money, so there will always be tradeoffs where the engineering resources are going to be spend, when we have to choose between doing a custom LCD for a customer that will be buying serveral thousands units a month or desinging a GX Temperature probe addon board that a hand full of people buy the choice is rather obvious, doesn't mean the temperature probe board will never be done it will just be delayed a bit.

That being said we have currently have a new firmware update in the works, updated software, development kit, a larger version of the GX, the IR Blaster addon board and a couple of other add on boards I can't just talk about yet. So support wise I'd say you are good

[markc]

Edlo,

I would not hold your breath, I have had the GX for around 8 months now and there has not been one driver or firmware update.
At the end of the day I was told it supported Vista x64 and it really does not. You have to tweak everything, each time you reboot your system and even then it does not work as it should, no colour changing etc.... Also I have not had any replies to e-mails I have sent asking for support on this issue including once when I was PROMISED someone would contact me after I received an e-mail from their Customer Satisfaction rep. about the purchase I made.

If I were you I would look elsewhere for this type of solution, find a comapany that gets current products working and supports their customers and products rather then develop new ones just to make money. Seems that MO were happy to take my money and leave me with a display that has sat in its box since it was received.

Not Impressed, get your act together, stop promising a firmware update like you have for 8 months now stating that it is nearly finished but you cannot commit to a date, how long does it take to nearly finish something?
Please don`t reply telling me that it is a resource issue as your resources have managed to develop new products in this time.
Get some new drivers out that support the latest OS`s, is essence keep your existing customers happy, actually give them what they should have received when the purchased the GX.

Guess I do not have to add that I will never purchase another MO product, the company is just full of false promises!

[Ray]

Edlo,
At the end of the day I was told it supported Vista x64 and it really does not.

All vista64 issues I am aware of have been resolved and fixes have been made available.

Also I have not had any replies to e-mails I have sent asking for support on this issue including once when I was PROMISED someone would contact me after I received an e-mail from their Customer Satisfaction rep. about the purchase I made.

Issues comming in though sales unfortunatly once in a while fall through the cracks, the support system however assigns you a ticket number once you email it. Tickets do generally do not get closed until issues are resolved or we received no further contact with the customer for several weeks. I am not at the office at this moment but can you PM me your ticket number(s) so I can take a look at it monday?

find a comapany that gets current products working and supports their customers and products rather then develop new ones just to make money. Seems that MO were happy to take my money and leave me with a
display that has sat in its box since it was received.

Again I have no access to support system from home so I can't tell you what happened to those, I only see one forums post from you in juli 2007 which you didn't respond to until today in the meanwhile two other customers that had the problem actually worked with us and got it resolved in a matter of days.

Not Impressed, get your act together, stop promising a firmware update like you have for 8 months now stating that it is nearly finished but you cannot commit to a date, how long does it take to nearly finish something?
Please don`t reply telling me that it is a resource issue as your resources have managed to develop new products in this time.

As you probably know we can only allocate a resource once, if its working on a new product its not working on something else. Now if the current GX firmware was horribly broken or not functioning at all priorities naturally would have been different. But the firmware that ships right now works fine the new firmware just makes it nicer here and there hence it has a somewhat lower priority then other products.

Get some new drivers out that support the latest OS`s, is essence keep your existing customers happy

The Current drivers support both the 32 and 64 bit versions of XP,Windows 2003 and Vista. The 64 bit versions do as you have noticed require a fix that will be included in the next software update but at this moment has been available from our technical supoprt and our forums here

Guess I do not have to add that I will never purchase another MO product, the company is just full of false promises!

It always saddens me to see an unhappy customer. Please apply the fix I linked earlier if you are still having issues please open up a new support incident by emailing support@matrixorbital.ca and PM me the ticket number you recieved so I can personally keep an eye on it.

[Edlo]

Hi MarkC
I have got the display working OK having set up screens and a playlist to cycle through a 'Logo' a 'Large digital clock' a 'screen for current day weather' '2 more for 2nd and 3rd day's weather' a 'Email address and number of emails not read screen' and '2 fan speeds and Temperature screen' also includes auto switch on of winnamp info when playing a CD.

I could not get hold of the tri-colour (I have the blue one) from what I can see you can set one of 3 colours but can't see any way to change colour with software control (Ask Ray) adjustment of my blue one is done with the green setting ? the blue adjustment does nothing ?

For the moment I have decided to stick with MCE 2005 although my MB and CPU really need the x64 OS (I don't need the hastle of Vista x64)
so I will mask the existing IR sensor and place the MCE sensor in front of the existing device, there is ample room and the MCE sensor will be exteded on wires to allow the MCE IR board to be istalled behind the LCD.

All PC drive bay displays seem to have their limitations, the GX is not perfect but setup choices (design) are very flexible and so far my screens look very good except poor viewing angle which when improved by contrast adjustment the colour viewed from straight ahead is a bit washed out so it's a bit fiddly obtaining a compromise between the two.

Matrix is not making the best of this product, when you do eventually find the GX product page on their site you are asked to submit any questions to the forums, the forums can be helpfull but this adhoc communication is not the most suitiable way informing the purchaser of the GX's capabilities and specification how about a full technical detail page including dimensions and a clear statement regarding future support and completion of promised supporting products.

[EdwardN]

That being said we have currently have a new firmware update in the works, updated software, development kit, a larger version of the GX, the IR Blaster addon board and a couple of other add on boards I can't just talk about yet. So support wise I'd say you are good

Is there any chance you can give a rough estimate when the firmware update will be available, or if there will be an opportunity to beta-test the update? Currently I am either able to use my Windows XP Pro based media computer with the GX lcd OR the mce remote receiver. if I have just the GX connected, I can't use the remote, and if I have both connected, it causes some sort of conflict and the remote doesn't work either.

I'm not really convinced that upgrading to Vista at this time is the best solution, but until there's a way to disable the IR on the GX, it's either that or leave the GX idle in a box until something else is available.

How complex is the ir-blaster add-on board? Is it something that can be extended with a ribbon cable? I have the GX mounted to the front of my Antec NSK2400 and there's not much clearance behind the board as it stands.

[Edlo]

Hi EdwardN & Ray
I was hoping if I completely mask the GX IR sensor it would allow the GX to operate at the same time as the MCE IR If not I plan to unsolder the GX IR sensor to see if that allows both to operate, have you tried either of these.

If not will Ray please answer the above questions and in the event you cannot run both the MCE IR and the GX unit together when are we going to get a software upgrade that enables switching off the GX IR.

Also Ray I have recently installed the Key recognition plugin and found it would be great if we could toggle some of the function keys on/off and have a playlist control that switched a screen on/off (we already have a on with a timer but it would be nice to have a second control for off) or is there a way of using a keypress to select diferent playlist's.

Also did you know if you delete a screen when it is still listed in a playlist you loose all your info in the playlist and you then need to setup a new playlist because it will not allow you to reinstall to original playlist.

I Look forward to hearing from you both or anyone one else that can help.

[Ray]

Edlo & EdwardN,

As for last week the firmware is feature complete, we're currently running regression tests and preparing the firmware upgrade application if all goes well it should be ready for beta testing near the end of this week or early next week. I'll contact you by email (make sure the email you registered on the forums with with is still active) when it's ready.

This new firmware allows you to turn off the IR interface completely, so it will not collide with any other IR receivers you might have.

Masking off the IR window does not help, the microsoft drivers just get really really confused when two receivers are plugged in.

About the size of the IR Blaster board, don't have any exact measurements at this moment but if you look at the back of the bracket there's mounting holes for 4 addon cards (arranged in a 2x2 grid) running a short flat cable to the board shouldn't be too much of a problem however length and quality of the cable does come in play if you are trying to go 'too far' from the board, gut feeling says 'yeah It'll work' but there's no way we can activly support doing that stuff if it doesn't.

I didn't know it killed your playlist if one of the designs is missing, I'll see if there is still time left to address that issue with the next update although fairly sure there is I can't make any promises.

I have had requests for a more flexible playlist so it is marked for a rewrite, but that will not be in this update.

Did I miss anyhing?

[Edlo]

Hi Ray
Thanks again for the quick reply, I look forward to trying the new Firmware.

Will there be a short appraisal of the changes ?.

Any idea how long before we get a more flexible playlist, I hope it will be availible within a reasonable time scale.

Finally a message to all who own the GX Typhoon - how about some input into the forums, tell us about your experience with this product.