That sounds great. Get the price point down around the $1k USD mark and they’ll be a contender.
Can't be done so I won't bother. I guess I am in a position to take such a view. I am not actively marketing my system.
My point was that it was incorrect to state that we other ET designers needed to "catch up". A couple of us are way ahead of what you have on offer on North America right now and have been for some years.
I could probably get a system out there for $1k if I was prepared to tolerate basic cheap display devices with unreliable wifi to be used with it. But my blood pressure (already high) would suffer from all the support calls resulting. I can live with out all that! You see, my system includes the display devices (and other hardware) that are purpose built for the environment they are intended to be used in. That doesn't come cheap. They work, and keep working. Those that use them love them. However, when I look at the cost of an iPad these days, I'm not too far away when it comes to dollars.
Mine is not intended to be a "personal" system - it is designed and intended for club and/or competition use where a these features are probably of more use - and value. It can't compete against cheap "personal" systems designed for use out on the farm (or wherever) that do little other than show a shot position, but are being used in club or competition environments that really have a different set of engineering and operational requirements. So I don't bother. Why should I build all these features in and give it all away? Is my time and effort in putting all these features in worth nothing? Should the people who make quality hardware give it away? Do any of you work for nothing? Are you all happy to use the cheapest technology available lacking in all sorts of features and capabilities that lend well to major high stakes competition events where you expect shooters to spend literally thousands of dollars to turn up and use the cheapest display devices, hardware, whatever, available? And then make up all the excuses when it fails? Wifi doesn't work properly (or at all)? Batteries are flat. Too many people with wifi gadgets on the mound behind shooters chewing up all bandwidth resources of the [cheapest] wireless technology availablei even when not actually using them - because the things automatically want to connect because they did so once before - thus starving shooters of this resource? Damn! Let's make excuses.
Put simply, do you really expect cheap laptops, tablets, the cheapest wifi technology, what have you, to perform in crap weather, dust, grit, heat, cold, wet, for any length of time? Most of the tablets I have seen can't last the length of time required to run through a stage of three hours without the battery going flat - due to the high brilliance required for it to be seen in sunlight? Eventually batteries in these devices die. Some of them can't be replaced - you need to buy a new device. Is this what you expect shooters to come from afar at great expense to have to deal with?
Things like presenting competition shooting to the world at large, via the internet for example. You want the sports to grow but there is no spectator value in a $1k system. Do you want it to be a spectator sport that might entice young people (and not just young) to see what it is all about without having to actually be on a firing mound somewhere looking at a mobile phone on the mound? Or do you want it to simply remain an insular activity that satisfies only the immediate participants? This sort of technology and capability costs.
You get what you pay for. For the most part. If your standards and expectations are low, then I suppose paying bottom dollar and living with what you get (and expecting everyone else to do likewise) is how it is.
Its simple, we all play by the same rules. 7 second delay, only last shot visible, mimic as close as we can manual pit service. Keep a standardization to our sport. Don't understand ANY of the points trying to be made by those that don't agree with that position?
Thank you Jade for getting this important discussion going. It has been very civil!
