5 ms·

> Reluctantly, he forwarded the question to their technical support, who never answered. Because they don't know off the top of their heads and would have to t

> Reluctantly, he forwarded the question to their technical support, who never answered. Because they don't know off the top of their heads and would have to test it to be sure which is a huge amount of work they don't have to do.

serf 6y ago
>Because they don't know off the top of their heads and would have to test it to be sure which is a huge amount of work they don't have to do. And that's called... poor customer service. Had I been faced with that behavior and had the freedom to switch vendors as OP I would have -- meaning that support behavior isn't without flaw, they lose a certain threshold of customers.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  Not a single company is going to recreate your unsupported setup to see what would happen and let you know unless there was a huge payment being made. Since the only reason OP is doing this is to save time, it would make no sense to spend weeks going around to each vendor trying to work out which one to pick. And often support people give wrong info, you may eventually find a vendor that just says "Sure you can do that" and then you get it and find out you cant.
- varjag 6y ago
  This is just self-aggrandising. No mass production vendor would do R&D for your bizarre use case unless there's clear PR potential or you are ready to pick the tab.
  - nucleardog 6y ago
    Yeah I used to be in a weird position where most of my time was spent figuring out how to use and abuse a bunch of off-the-shelf things to build out one-offs of whatever crazy crap people could come up with. Lots of hardware and software reverse engineering and integration. I’d never in a million years expect a company to do my R&D/integration work for me when I’m buying one mass-produced consumer item and using it outside of its intended use-case.
ponker 6y ago
You can still respond. Even if just to say "that's not a supported scenario and may void your warranty."
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  They literally did say that it wasn't possible to do what OP is asking using the provided interface. Its not the support persons job to explain what would happen if you hack the device to work differently.
  - Agentlien 6y ago
    The supplied interface was actually a connector for remote trigger, which is what I used. The only hack was sending the signal from a programmable device rather than a manual button press.
strogonoff 6y ago
Any manufacturer that’s even remotely serious wouldn’t need to test their own product to find out how it works. Each component in the chain, from trigger button to storage I/O, had presumably been tested and its tolerances documented. Responding to such a query could (should?) be as easy as checking the specs. “In theory this camera can support up to N triggers per second, which is the limit for part X, but you will need your storage to sustain writes at speed S or the buffer will fill up, and by the way this wasn’t tested end-to-end and will void your warranty.” It’s more likely they just wouldn’t tell for whatever reason. A mass manufacturer probably doesn’t want to give an impression that they encourage a way of using the units not explicitly mentioned in the manual to avoid any complaints/lawsuits. Also, some companies require tech support staff to respond to a certain minimum number of tickets per hour (effectively penalizing personnel for doing anything beyond provided checklists, which consulting part specs definitely would be).
- sidpatil 6y ago
  > A mass manufacturer probably doesn’t want to give an impression that they encourage a way of using the units not explicitly mentioned in the manual to avoid any complaints/lawsuits. That, or they may have a product line which is designed for that usage case, and they don't want to hurt its sales.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    In that case they could have linked to that product, right?
    - jgalt212 6y ago
      maybe you don't want the two distinct customer sets to know about possibly similar products.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  I suspect its 1000x easier to just wire an arduino to the trigger and have it pulse rapidly than it is to pour over spec sheets and only end up with a "It looks like it should work"

serf 6y ago

>Because they don't know off the top of their heads and would have to test it to be sure which is a huge amount of work they don't have to do. And that's called... poor customer service. Had I been faced with that behavior and had the freedom to switch vendors as OP I would have -- meaning that support behavior isn't without flaw, they lose a certain threshold of customers.

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
Not a single company is going to recreate your unsupported setup to see what would happen and let you know unless there was a huge payment being made. Since the only reason OP is doing this is to save time, it would make no sense to spend weeks going around to each vendor trying to work out which one to pick. And often support people give wrong info, you may eventually find a vendor that just says "Sure you can do that" and then you get it and find out you cant.
varjag 6y ago
This is just self-aggrandising. No mass production vendor would do R&D for your bizarre use case unless there's clear PR potential or you are ready to pick the tab.
- nucleardog 6y ago
  Yeah I used to be in a weird position where most of my time was spent figuring out how to use and abuse a bunch of off-the-shelf things to build out one-offs of whatever crazy crap people could come up with. Lots of hardware and software reverse engineering and integration. I’d never in a million years expect a company to do my R&D/integration work for me when I’m buying one mass-produced consumer item and using it outside of its intended use-case.

ponker 6y ago

You can still respond. Even if just to say "that's not a supported scenario and may void your warranty."

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
They literally did say that it wasn't possible to do what OP is asking using the provided interface. Its not the support persons job to explain what would happen if you hack the device to work differently.
- Agentlien 6y ago
  The supplied interface was actually a connector for remote trigger, which is what I used. The only hack was sending the signal from a programmable device rather than a manual button press.

strogonoff 6y ago

Any manufacturer that’s even remotely serious wouldn’t need to test their own product to find out how it works. Each component in the chain, from trigger button to storage I/O, had presumably been tested and its tolerances documented. Responding to such a query could (should?) be as easy as checking the specs. “In theory this camera can support up to N triggers per second, which is the limit for part X, but you will need your storage to sustain writes at speed S or the buffer will fill up, and by the way this wasn’t tested end-to-end and will void your warranty.” It’s more likely they just wouldn’t tell for whatever reason. A mass manufacturer probably doesn’t want to give an impression that they encourage a way of using the units not explicitly mentioned in the manual to avoid any complaints/lawsuits. Also, some companies require tech support staff to respond to a certain minimum number of tickets per hour (effectively penalizing personnel for doing anything beyond provided checklists, which consulting part specs definitely would be).

sidpatil 6y ago
> A mass manufacturer probably doesn’t want to give an impression that they encourage a way of using the units not explicitly mentioned in the manual to avoid any complaints/lawsuits. That, or they may have a product line which is designed for that usage case, and they don't want to hurt its sales.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  In that case they could have linked to that product, right?
  - jgalt212 6y ago
    maybe you don't want the two distinct customer sets to know about possibly similar products.
SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
I suspect its 1000x easier to just wire an arduino to the trigger and have it pulse rapidly than it is to pour over spec sheets and only end up with a "It looks like it should work"