4/3/02 - New prices? Hackball shipping? Maybe... Okay, thanks to a tip, I have a line on some dirt-cheap Kensington USB mice. The problem is, I really can't justify buying a bunch of these things, unless I know I can turn around and re-sell them as Cheep products. I also don't want these to disappear before I can get my mitts on 'em either. So, I'm sort of stuck. . So here's the question. How many of you would be seriously interested in buying: . A Cheep Spinner, if I could get the cost down to $39 (plus shipping and handling) . and/or . A Cheep Hackball, if I could set the price at $99 (plus shipping and handling). . I just can't get the Hackball any cheaper. Including tax and shipping, the parts from Happ alone cost me $66.50, and that doesn't include any of the rest of the parts I have to buy, or labor. Of course, the same trackball from Happ with a USB interface and mounting bracket is $155.25 without tax and shipping. So we're still over $50 cheaper. . Something else to keep in mind, for those of you waiting on the long-delayed Control Freak. If you buy a Hackball and/or Spinner now, it will drop straight into the Control Freak later. Meaning, you would save that amount of money off the cost of whatever the Control Freak ends up being in the end, since you would already have those parts. It might be a nice way to spread out the cost. . Anyway, I need to get an idea of how many of these mice I can buy soon. I won't buy 'em, if I can't sell 'em. So e-mail me, if you're interested. . 3/27/02 - What? It's March already? Man... did I oversleep. No, we didn't go all Enron on you and run off to Cabo with the company's money. That would imply that we had money in the first place. Rather, we've been pretty busy here, working up two new "how-to" guides for building the Hackball and the Spinner. All the photos have been taken (over 500), so all I have to do now is write the things up. The revised Spinner guide will make it much easier to build your own Cheep Spinner - in fact almost every step of the construction has been simplified. Hopefully, I'll have these ready soon - but they tend to be real time-consuming. . We recently had the chance to test out the Spinner and Hackball under OS X. Both work just fine without any additional wonky software - just plug and play! We seem to be just about the only game peripheral company that can make that claim, too. As a result, we'd like to send a big "thank you" to Apple for not making an OS X version of InputSprockets! Anything that helps us sell more stuff is just fine with us. (Yes... we're being sarcastic. C'mon Apple - get with it!) . Speaking of the Hackball, it's still not for sale yet. The only hold-up right now is that Kensington has stopped making the mouse that we use for all of this good stuff. So... we're now looking for an alternative mouse that works as well, but is also dirt-cheap. If we can't find one, we'll have to go with the more expensive USB Mouse-In-A-Box. So we just don't know what the prices are going to be, and that's sort-of important when selling something. I've been planning to cut the price down on the Spinner to under $50, but it all depends on the mouse we end up using. As for the Hackball... well, that's going to be quite a lot more than the Spinner, simply because the cost of the parts from Happ runs (steady yourselves...) $53 without tax and shipping. And that doesn't include the rest of the parts and labor either. Zoinks! But, it's still going to be a lot cheaper than buying a complete Happ trackball with USB interface for a whopping $150 + tax and shipping. (And theirs doesn't even come in a nifty stand-alone case, either.) . I've posted up a couple more testimonials from Cheep People in the Cheep Info section, including one from our first Hackball owner - Patrick McFarland, who actually got his for free! In case you don't frequent the MacMAME Message Board, the fine folks at Cheep Technology have held a couple of contests over there, giving away some of our products as prizes. Free stuff! How cool is that? (No... this is not going to happen with the Control Freak. Get real.) We have to financially recover for awhile before we do it again though. . As for project updates, until the new "how-to" guides go up, there really isn't much to report. Dave Weston and I have been kicking ideas back and forth for the Cheep Stick, which looks very promising. But I don't have anything built yet. The Control Freak is in limbo until I can afford the woodworking tools to build it. And I've been working on a new as-yet-unnamed controller, but I'll keep the wraps on it a bit longer until I can actually get it to work. Again, that's another one of those "sort-of important" things. . I did a minor update to the FAQ, also on the Cheep Info page. . Oh, almost forgot. I moved the old updates into the News Archives on the Cheep Info page. Like anyone ever reads that stuff... . 12/18/2001 - Cheep Technology deluged by holiday orders! This month we've sold more Cheep Spinners than in the last 9 months combined! Of course, it really wouldn't have taken that many to do it... but it did come as sort of a shock. Especially since the same guy bought all of 'em. Whew. Just time enough after the crunch to send the manufacturing department on vacation before we go into production on... . The Cheep Hackball! The final prototype is finally finalized! If I could pick one word to describe how it works - it would be "smooth". However, no one has ever accused me of not having enough things to say, so I'll also throw in "cool" and "rockin'". I was suprised how much better this plays than the one built out of the Atari 2600 trackball. Prices and a "how-to" will be posted as soon as I can get to all of that stuff. The Hackball now takes its rightful place in the Finished Projects section! . The Cheep Spinner is now shipping as Control Freak-Compatible! What does that mean? Well, head on over to Finished Projects to find out. Go on already! . 11/14/2001 - If it's not one thing... I re-re-rendered the Control Freak illustration, based on the mockup and some changes I had to make to the Hackball. Both pages have been updated in Works In Progress. . 11/7/2001 - Man... that is ugly! I posted some pictures of the cardboard mockup of the Control Freak on its page in Works In Progress. It isn't pretty, but it served its purpose well enough. I slightly changed the layout and dimensions of the Control Freak as a result. I won't be building a wood prototype until the new Hackball is finished though, so I'll know how big of a hole to cut out for it. . 11/3/2001 - Fun with 3D and cardboard I re-rendered the Cheep Control Freak concept illustration, to show the latest design changes. The next step is to lay everything out full-sized in cardboard. It's a lot easier to make lots of changes there than it would be in wood. Once I get the measurements nailed down, then it's time to go all New Yankee Workshop on it. . 11/1/2001 - R & D department finally returns from vacation The Cheep Control Freak has moved to the Works In Progress page (read more about it there). The parts are all here, and I'll be working on the first full prototype this weekend. . Projects on the Works In Progress page are each getting separate pages so people with nothing better to do can follow the development of each one. . I've posted some small updates regarding the Cheep Hackball, Cheep Stick and Cheep Spinner Pro, all on the Works In Progress page. . 7/3/2001 - Hackin' something up I've posted a small update (with pictures) on the Cheep Hackball prototype, in the Works In Progress section. Just click on the picture of the Hackball there, for a little info on how it's put together, and where it's going from here. . 6/26/2001 - Not dead, just really sleepy Cheep Technology is still here! Just because I haven't updated the site in a long time doesn't mean I'm dead. (At least I'm still answering my e-mail.) . Today's word is "paradigm". Can you say "paradigm"? I knew that you could. Cheep Technology is undergoing a sort-of paradigm shift (which is an oxymoron - yet another big word). To wit: instead of trying to build everything out of locally available parts, I've decided to cave in and order some *gasp* genuine arcade parts! This was bound to happen with the Cheep Control Freak sooner or later, but it became necessary sooner because of the cost of buying off-the-shelf stuff that really was no cheaper than just ordering the "real thing". So I'm still staying true-to-the-faith by cutting costs to the bone, but I'm just using a better knife. Or something. . The first Cheep Spinners have been sold and have long-since been in the hands of satisified customers. Check out Cheep People in the Cheep Info section for gushing, embarrassing testimonials. Most other stuff has been updated there, too. . The Cheep Yoke has been bumped back to the Future Projects section. Why? Because so much other stuff has been moved to the Works In Progress section! Check it out. More updates should be happening over the rest of the Summer too, so keep an eye peeled (ouch!). . 2/26/2001 - Open for business! Cheep Technology is now open! Not just open, but open for business! Due to overwhelming requests I've decided to build and sell Cheep Spinners to the entire world! Or at least Mac users. Well, Mac users who like playing old arcade games. Okay, so maybe four or five people. I'll take what I can get. . I've done a major update to the Cheep Spinner PDF Guide. This is available in the Finished Projects section. It now includes easier instructions for soldering and for making an encoder wheel, plus all-new sections on mounting the Cheep Spinner in a control panel, and adding arcade fire buttons. . I've also updated everything in the Cheep Info section, so if you have nothing better to do, check it out! . Lastly, I've put up a conceptual rendering of the Cheep Control Freak. It's available in the Future Projects section. (click on the small picture there for more information) . 2/7/2001 - Opening real soon CheepTech.com will officially open (probably) this weekend. I'm updating the Cheep Spinner PDF guide, plus making an addition to it covering how to mount it in a control panel. Once that's done, I'll finish up the rest of the site and open it up.

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