No one bought a product, they invested in a project. There is a difference. It is the way Kickstarter works. You hope for the best and you get what you get with the developers doing what they can to try and deliver what the goal was. Maybe they will come up with a different diffuser that will be more satisfying but for now it is what it is. There is a limit to what you can get from individual LEDs. If people cannot handle this they should not use Kickstarter.
Agree I would never use Kickstarter for a company I didn’t have any experience with. I have heard too many horror Kickstart stories.
However I really like the GEN1. It’s awesome. Sometimes a bit hard to read. The Tidbyt company had been great so far. So when they promised a GEN2 with a sharper display I jumped on-board. Huge disappointment.
This goes along with the decision of launching the simulator app and charging a fee. Customers complained and they made it free.
Perhaps decisions are being made too fast? Not enough thinking before commiting to something?
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My problem is with the people who don’t know how Kickstarter works and are asking for refunds. At least you are not one of them. You just happen to be the one engaging.
We did not receive what was shown/promised and is not of good quality without damaging the unit to remove the top cover. Further, your claims that most people seem to be happy is a wild assumption because 1) not everyone reads these forums or posts in them and 2) these units are just now being sent out. I almost wonder if you are either an employee posing as a customer or just out here to troll-people did not receive what was promised and Kickstarter investments do not give creators/providers carte blanche immunity for shipping poor products.
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Looks like removing the diffuser does indeed improve (or at least makes it feel like the Gen1) on this issue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TIDBYT/comments/1fbk66d/defuser_removed_wow_i_love_the_v2_looks_amazing/
and some useful info on what a different diffuser could look like:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TIDBYT/comments/1fb835u/diffuser_example/
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I have my grievances with Tidbyt as a whole but I feel lots of people were unaware about the nature of this new version (I did not buy nor do I intend to) The whole point of the display was that it was softer, in this case pixels blend instead of being space in between. I am honestly trying to apply the same technique to my Gen 1. There is a community post about folks trying that out. Surprisingly someone got a good very sharp effect just by using tracing paper Layout customization + Clear acrylic glass - Feature Requests - Tidbyt
The thing here is that it looks like, maybe in the Tidbyt 2 production, the diffusion wasn’t applied that well. Poor quality control as I see, from photo examples on reddit, blurriness vary wildly from user to user. Like with diffusion layer you do and should expect some softness, its the whole point of it. However it does look too blurry. Specially next to example of projects done with Adafruit kits:
- Overview | 32x32 Square Pixel Art Animation Display | Adafruit Learning System the vid on there shows the process of adding a 3d printed matrix and then the diffuser to make it work
- Black LED Diffusion Acrylic Panel - 10.2 x 5.1 [0.1 / 2.6mm thick] : ID 4749 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits example of the sort of diffuser
- Overview | Moon Phase Clock for Adafruit Matrix Portal | Adafruit Learning System sometimes you can actually just go with the diffuser by itself without matrix
PS. Guys, please do read carefully the product descriptions of the things that catch your eye online before buying it. Especially when the thing you are buying is in the 3 digits realm. It is crazy to me that some people thought it was gonna be OLED 8bit level type stuff, when displays like this are soft by design. Or that even thought it was a peelable protector. Although those with clearly faulty units had all the rights to think so (I am not letting them off the hook for the poor Quality Control tho)
This is within the realms of what a typical led display with diffusion looks like:
This unacceptable in my opinion. It is crazy that all of these are the same product but came out of the same factory looking differently.
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It will be interesting to see which “version” gets shipped to me, I hope it’s the first picture and not the last 2 ! The heat gun procedure looks scary to say the least from the post from the reddit thread.
Quality control really ? Oh no…
Just received 2x of the gen2; unboxed and setup the first. The second was originally destined to be a birthday gift but the delay put that out of the window - not that I’m blaming anyone for that, I’d rather have a better final device. Unfortunately, I now have two pieced of blurry junk.
I keep looking back at the one in my office trying to decide if I can just mentally switch to expecting ‘retro CRT’ - but it’s just so bad!
I know kickstarter is to back a project not to buy a product (as another posy mentioned), but it really is horrible. Does anyone have a link that really describes the surgery required to change the diffuser before I just drop these in the bin?
Thanks!
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https://www.reddit.com/r/TIDBYT/comments/1fbk66d/defuser_removed_wow_i_love_the_v2_looks_amazing/
Thanks to TNLNYC above for posting this link. This looks a scary process to say the least and the LED board looks more obvious if you take off the front as done here. As you see he took off an LED during the process. A better solution perhaps would have been to make a clip on / off diffuser ?
Oric can you post some photos would be interesting to compare with others.
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The fact that this topic has the most action on this blog tells you that there is an issue. I’m very disappointed and shocked this is what they decided the upgrade would be. You can get rid of the pixels and still have a clearer screen. Feels like I’m watching through plastic!
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As a few people have said in this thread… we only “invested” in a product and perhaps we should have “expected what we got”. But…regardless, the end result is the Gen 2 product just doesn’t look good. Tidbyt Gen1 had a cool retro pixel look that people loved. Gen 2 just looks like something is wrong with a cheap LCD screen. I would absolutely trade my Gen 2 for a Gen 1 in a heartbeat.
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I’ve had my unit a week and finally unboxed it excited… I couldn’t be more disappointed. Clear, crisp bright? This has gone so far away from what made the first unit cool and unique. This is like a plastic fake pixel display. The blurry look is so distracting I don’t think Im going to keep it.
Sucked after waiting for a year+ for it.
Cleaner crisper brighter?
The diffused look emphasizes the cheapness of overall experience
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Originally, it was marketed as double the resolution. I don’t see that on any of the pictures. I have mine here still in the box and I’m afraid to open it. I would greatly prefer sharpness over diffusion. That just makes it harder to focus on the content. Why don’t I remember any reference to diffusion, but I was also one of the first to get Gen 2. I bought for my son but if it’s this bad, both Gen 2 and Gen 1 will go into the trash and this will be the last Kickstarter I ever get involved with.
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From the Website:
Enhanced Display
Our gorgeous new display brings you sharp text and clearer photos. It looks perfect up close, and is still easily readable from all the way across the room.
Note SHARP and CLEARER both prominent words in the description. I think this would warrant a refund.
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Wow - this look very poor - I thought it was just me, It looks so blurry…
Would like to send it back too, would rather have another V1 - even people who come into office, think the original one is the upgrade…
What a disapointment!
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Mine arrived today and thankfully looks OK. Build quality looks nice, although I did find I needed to slightly push the screen around the edges and in the middle perhaps to reseat it slightly. It’s defiantly not as bright or “sparkly” as the V1 but I would say easier to read particularly scrolling text.
Diffuser stays on (for now at least)
I’m very disappointed with this blurry screen. I see some people in here justifying it bc it’s a Kickstarter project but that’s not fair. The pictures of the product did not show an extremely blurry screen which is what I received. It actually looks better in these photos but in reality it looks like I’m viewing a screen without my glasses on. I waited a year for this!?
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Interesting, might be an assembly issue then. I wonder if that misalignment is happening on all the orders
