Another WP-34S overlay option with costs - Printable Version +- HP Forums (https://archived.hpcalc.org/museumforum) +-- Forum: HP Museum Forums (https://archived.hpcalc.org/museumforum/forum-1.html) +--- Forum: Old HP Forum Archives (https://archived.hpcalc.org/museumforum/forum-2.html) +--- Thread: Another WP-34S overlay option with costs (/thread-182717.html) |
Another WP-34S overlay option with costs - svisvanatha - 04-20-2011 There are a few overlay options presented so far for the WP-34S. I contacted a company specializing in custom overlays for a quotation. They provided the following: Re: Another WP-34S overlay option with costs - Paul Dale - 04-21-2011 I could live with this price. The time saved cutting the holes makes it worthwhile I suspect.
Re: Another WP-34S overlay option with costs - Walter B - 04-21-2011 :-) If I understand Svisvanatha correctly there will be no holes, just 3 cuts per key. If true I can live with that offer, too. Thanks, Svisvanatha! Nevertheless, a second offer (or more) will be interesting.
Walter
Re: Another WP-34S overlay option with costs - Walter B - 04-21-2011 Svisvanatha, Quote:Please specify: did their worries concern the height of the print or the width of the lines within the letters?They were reluctant to attempt the labels for the keys for two reasons:
TIA, Walter
Re: Another WP-34S overlay option with costs - Paul Dale - 04-21-2011 Quote: My reading of this was that the keys would have holes not flaps (i.e. four cuts per key, although likely die punched). I can live with too, blanking the keys is easy.
Re: Another WP-34S overlay option with costs - svisvanatha - 04-21-2011 Sorry if it was not clear in the original post. The overlay would look like a 41C overlay, with 4 cuts per key. It is adhesive-backed Lexan with graphics as supplied by us. No attempt at providing labels for the keys. They did not specify if it was die punched, but I believe that to be the case due to the specification of 'tool' in the NRE.
Re: Another WP-34S overlay option with costs - svisvanatha - 04-21-2011 Here is where having exact dimensions of the keys would be beneficial. They need to provide a 'rebate', if you will, from the edge of the physical keys so that the labels do not lift off easily. Since they do not have an actual unit, and are judging from pictures. They thought the overall size (read: Font size) of the lettering on the keys was too large for the size of label they could produce. If the font size was smaller, then they were worried about the readability. I believe this concern is more for the angled faces than the flat tops. Also, they were concerned about the durability of the labels on the keys - in their experience such small labels do not last long. They recommended that the keys be labeled during the manufacturing of the unit!
It would be nice to get further feedback from other suppliers, and users of this forum if they have experience in this area.
Re: Another WP-34S overlay option with costs - cyrille de Brébisson - 04-21-2011 hello, did you look at skin-it? they can do stuff like that relatively cheap...
Re: Another WP-34S overlay option with costs - svisvanatha - 04-21-2011 Nope - I will look into that and contact them. Thank you!
What's your opinion? - Marcus von Cube, Germany - 04-21-2011 Bonjour Cyrille ! What do you think of our work? When you prepared the SDK, did you ever imagine, it would be exploited the way Walter, Paul and I did?
The same question goes to Tim, of course.
Re: What's your opinion? - Tim Wessman - 04-21-2011 I personally am excited there is finally a full project taking advantage of what cyrille fought hard to get included. While I personally feel the keyboard is a bit complicated and this would never be something that would sell well the the average consumer, it looks great for the enthusiast! TW
Edited: 21 Apr 2011, 10:53 a.m. after one or more responses were posted
Re: What's your opinion? - Marcus von Cube, Germany - 04-21-2011 I think Walter has to comment on this. The keyboard is a compromise between directly accessible commands and menu driven access. It's as always: So many functions, so little keys! At least there are no hidden keyboard functions as in the 50G.
One additional remark: wp34s is based purely on open source software, no expensive development tools are necessary. To be on the safe side, when implementing the hardware parts, I certainly did have a look at what Cyrille had done in the SDK in order to understand how things should work, but I haven't copied a single line of HP code. Edited: 21 Apr 2011, 11:08 a.m.
Re: What's your opinion? - cyrille de Brébisson - 04-21-2011 Hello, I am happy and glad to see that stuff beeing used. It took a lot of work to enable all of that and I am happy to see people taking advantage of it! great job.
cyrille
Re: What's your opinion? - Walter B - 04-21-2011 Bonjour Cyrille, merci pour providing that tool kit and the interface - it was the basis of all our work :-)
Walter
Re: What's your opinion? - Walter B - 04-21-2011 Hi Tim, Quote::-) Two points:
Walter
Re: What's your opinion? - Marcus von Cube, Germany - 04-21-2011 And thanks to you, Tim and HP for your kind words. I'm proud being part of the project.
Re: What's your opinion? - Jake Schwartz - 04-22-2011 If you guys would enable the "Donate Money" button at Sourceforge, I am sure that a few of us would be willing to help offset any costs you might have incurred up to this point....even if it simply represents time spent. As Chris Farley (late of "Saturday Night Live" fame) might have said, "This project is AWWWWSOME!!!"
Thanks, Re: What's your opinion? - Marcus von Cube, Germany - 04-22-2011 Jake, I love these comments!
It's by far not only time spent. I've invested a considerable amount of €s in Visual Studio and my Olimex adapter. But I did it without any direct financial interest. I'm hoping that my work will support my career. (I'm a freelance programmer with experience ranging from micro-controllers to HP NonStop hosts.) So it's sort of a PR investment concerning myself.
Re: What's your opinion? - Walter B - 04-22-2011 Thank you, Jake! For me it's almost exclusively "time spent", though it has been quite a lot since Pauli and me started in December 2008. Personally, the driving force was to prove it can be done - something as close to a hypothetic 43S as possible can be made with next to no resources compared to the budgets of the companies being in that business. And it has materialized - no more "only vaporware" d:-) though it's not finished yet. Thanks again - after all it's a nice reward
Walter
Re: What's your opinion? - Jose Poyan - 04-22-2011
I think too that the project is Spectacular ! I plan to get my wp34s in some time when it's completly finished and the issue of the ovelay is solved. Hopefully I'll get my hands on the uCalc when Dave Jones complete his project and starts selling them. I also agree with the view that you shoud get donations, that will show how much people appreciate your idea. Thank you guys for this great calculator !!
Edited: 22 Apr 2011, 6:55 p.m. after one or more responses were posted
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