My first blog entry, i hope i find the time to write here frequently. Yeah of course something to share, everyone has to find a reason to start blogging.
For me and today it's the legendary Luxeed Keyboard ( Luxeed Keyboard ) , finally available again and i instantly ordered it from thinkgeek. I got the white version which promises more "Bling" then the decent black one. The funny thing is that i was so crazy about it the last few days, i checked the website last week and even saw it myself hours before their email feature informed me about the restocking. Let's not talk about the numerous accidents German UPS pulled on me, tonight i got it and finally held it in my hands.
Well the first impression was very well, it came with a protective rubber cover, a printed manual, a CD, a cleaning tissue and some mysterious cable. OK, plugged the usb cable of the luxeed into my usb port and i could instantly type - it didnt light up though. OK installed the software from the CD and ran the program. I must mention that the software was probably made by some korean kids, it is far away from all western traditional software standards. You can choose between korean and english and if you speak korean this is very probably the much better choice. You immediately get "WTF"-style experiences as the software is anything but intuitive and does not get you far unless you are lucky. Luckily it's basically explained in the printed manual, elsewise it could make you crazy.
It's not really tough to paint colours to your keyboard, a bit "paintbrush" style. However - my disappointment started when i learned that you can not make custom animations with it, or have a winamp plugin. You can choose from basically 3 types of animation (Rainbow colour cycling, lighting from top to bottom/ random). What's quite cool though is the spark mode though that lights each key after you press it.
However - after a while the novelty bonus wears off and I'm getting a bit angry about the poor software. It just crashed a few times this evening and i was probably just toying around too much. But the lack of features is really upsetting. For the spark effect I would have expected to at least be able to set the timing and effect (like keys around the one you pressed light up, explosion style). I want to create own animations, like a pacman chasing a ghost or at least some Knight Rider style scanner light. This keyboard really lacks an SDK to become the hype it promises to be. I want a winamp plugin or a generic sound driven plugin. What worsens things is that when you look at the data folder in your luxeed installation there are a ton of generic winamp plugins, even some documentation (This plugin is shareware, please register) for these. Looking at this i can only assume the programmers (or neighbor's kids) took a look at various plugins because they had the same idea (winamp plugin, cool!) but suddenly realized they don't get it and have given up. The fact they forgot the files in the data folder underlines that impression. I'm not even sad about the fact that my keys look a bit "dirty" and white looks sometimes a bit greenish or purple, but well its not THAT bad. The manufacturer claimed i think like 256 colours or more? Well I would barely let them count as 20 or I'm too blind to see the difference. Bummer, but they still look cool. period!
After some investigation i found out that the mysterious cable is actually a serial cable that is either used for connecting the (useless) numeric keypad or doing a firmware update. Firmware update! hey, ok lets not talk about modern computers and serial ports - i luckily have a serial extension card built in (For my Roland 3D Scanner), so i quickly downloaded the firmware update program. Upon opening the program and some further research i really start to have serious doubts about that companys motives. They released a firmware update program - but no firmware. OK, no new firmware as this one is perfect - but why on earth release the firmware tool then??? To keep customers busy? I haven't talked about the terrible website yet. It is luckily in Korean and english, but even when you choose english you sometimes land on a korean error page or nothing works at all. I really assume my browser crashed by chance and not by that website, at least it only happened once. The registration is already scaring away. To download updates for your software you need to register first - i mean: Hey do they sell hardware or software? I dont need to register with nvidia to get drivers for my graphics card. But oh well lets not complain...
The next bad things is when you finally logged in and want to download the software, you need to register your product first. It asks you for two serials and you might be like "WTF"? but its actually easy to solve, the top one is from your registration card (In the box) and the lower one is from your keyboard's backside. I spare the part where i haggled for hours entering my serial over and over untill i realized i typed the letter "O" while it wanted the number "0" (zero). When you get a blank page after entering the serial this means you entered it wrong. Took me a while to learn. So after a while i finally got the software and it turned out to be the version that came on the CD. With THIS software i really did hope for an update.
After all its still the eye catcher it's meant to be. It also IS cheaper then an Optimus Maximus (Art Lebedev's Optimus Maximus).
Just don't take the "programmable" too serious as its below general expectations. let's hope guys like this (Luxeed Driver disassembling) succeed in releasing an "open driver" or at least enough references to make it possible for hobbyist programmers to catch up with the tech and make some better software/Plugins. Don't count on me, but maybe I will take a look at it myself.
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