I ordered a touch dro less than three months ago. It set me back more that $200 just for the box and a tablet and it's already obsolete. Now I need to pay extra $25 and shipping to get my brand new dro updated. I emailed touch dro sevetal times and they are not even bothering to respond to my emails. Very frustrated. I should have gone for a dro off aliexpress instead I guess. I could have gotten a full package for that money and aliexpress gives you some protection when you buy from them.
Hi Parker,
I am pretty anal about replying to emails, direct messages, etc. Sometimes it might take a day or two when I slammed, and from time to time I might miss an email if it goes into the spam filter. I can't find any TouchDRO-related email threads or messages more than 2 days old to which I haven't replied. I don't know where you sent your emails, but it probably wasn't me. My email is yuriy at touchdro dot com, and there is a link to the contact form on every page on the website.
The new board has some new functionality. Compared to the previous generation of glass/magnetic scales adapters those are:
- Support for a reference track
- Brownout detection circuit that will save last-known position if the adapter looses power
- Two additional configurable inputs (if you get the TDA-420 model)
- Native USB connectivity
- Time stamps in the data stream, so things like chipload and feed rate are more stable (Android's timing is non-deterministic due to power management stuff. Since now each position stream includes hardware time stamp with millisecond resolution, TouchDRO can better calculate things that are time based).
- Very slightly faster touch probe response time (used to be 4 microseconds always, now it's 2 microseconds on average, and 4 if you're unlucky)
- Unlock for the Plus version.
- Ability to get over-the-air updates later if/when new features are added to the firmware. Right now the list of future improvements includes Bluetooth LE support, support for serial protocols (like the ones used by Mitutoyo DRO scales, and various capacitive scales).
This now costs $240-$300. The old boards sold for $159. For $25 plus one-way shipping (so call it $35) I'm offering to upgrade people's units so they would get items 5-8. By the way, from my perspective, this is a free upgrade. The $25 covers shipping the item back ($8-$12 on average), $2 in credit card fees, and $11-15 to cover the labor to take the unit apart, program, re-test, package, print a new shipping label, and drop the package at the post office.
Given that I have 47 messages and emails just from today asking about the upgrade, it appears that at least some people deemed it useful.
Then, I have 32 emails complaining about:
1. Not being able to buy the old board and the new board being more expensive
2. Not wanting any upgrades, thank you very much, their DRO is working just fine and I should keep my grubby hands away from it
And 3 additional emails + 1 forum thread complaining that I'm making their current TouchDRO obsolete.
Honestly, I don't know how to better handle product updates. So far, no matter what I do, it will upset some people. The thing that is interesting to me is that when people get upset with TouchDRO, they tend to threaten to buy a Chinese DRO from AliExpress. A few things come to mind:
1. I am not competing with Chinese DROs. I put a lot of effort to keep TouchDRO affordable by optimizing the crap out of every little inefficiency in my process. That lets me keep the price low enough that you might confuse it with a Chinese DRO. To give you a perspective - LMS is selling a knockoff of my very first DRO design for $114 (
link). Besides being very primitive by today's TouchDRO standards, they didn't even get the memo on not placing the BlueTooth antenna in the middle of the board, so now I get a few emails per week form LMS customer asking for help with dead BlueTooth module. On the other end of the spectrum is Acu-Rite's DROpwr iPad DRO that sells for $680 for 4-axis and $1080 for 6-axis (
link). Even the older adapter model ran circles around DROpwr, and the new adapters + TouchDRO Plus are not even a fair comparison (tell me if I'm wrong here). My units are built to a better standard than is required for automotive applications (automotive stuff is IPC-A-610 Class II, my units pass IPC-A-610 class III, which is required for life-cricital system, aerospace, etc.). Every single PCB get flying probe e-test, and when assembled 100% AOI inspection (automated optical). After that I inspect each board, and test every connection and function on every single board.
That said, I really (and mean REALLY) don't care for how much you can get a 1980's era DRO from AliExpress. The reason they can sell those for $80 is because they spent almost nothing on R&D, use the cheapest parts they can find, have no quality control to speak of, no after sales support, pay pennies-on-a-dollar for labor, CCP is subsidizing the shipping costs and other things (I can't ship a padded envelope across town for the amount it costs to ship stuff here all the way from China). If you don't understand the difference, you probably don't need TouchDRO and really should get a cheap Chinese DRO.
2. I would absolutely love to see an example where a Chinese company would sell you a DRO and then for years give you free upgrades and new functionality. Heck, I'd love to see that from any company. The name brand DROs are excellent. I have a drawer full of Newall, Acu-Rite, Magnescale, Mitutoyo, etc. scales. I've talked to their support and even engineers many times, and they are great. Just yesterday Magnescale sent me a bunch of documentation about their sine/cosine interpolation units. But I haven't heard of any cases where they would contact their customers and offer to spend time upgrading their DRO consoles for $25. Not even talking about the fact that many of them keep changing the protocol or connection scheme every few years so their own scales don't work with their display 5 years after the release. Just take a look at this
https://www.magnescale.com/en/product/catalog/DRO_Connection_Table_Ver4.0_E.pdf.
3. Just today I shipped back two units that people sent for repair. One customer dropped his mill on the TouchDRO unit, crushed the case and broke the USB connector. He bough this unit in 2018. I fixed it and sent it back to him at no cost. Second customer had a unit that she bough in 2020 that stopped working suddenly. The problem was a failed voltage regulator, which I considered to be my fault, so she got a new replacement unit. Have you ever tried getting any sort of warranty support or repair service from any Chinese seller? Let me know how that went.
Anyway, I'm sorry that you're frustrated, but I don't really know how to run a business and keep giving things away. I don't think I was secretive about the coming upgrades. I posted it on this forum months ago:
https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/touchdro-adapter-lineup-and-price-changes.108222/.
Regards
Yuriy
