Pinsound "No More Reset" and the Rob Kahr board

Yeah, I wonder how many sales of other products PinSound has missed due to this blatant stealing of Rob's reset board. I know I'm not buying a Pinsound board for my Dr. Who due to this sleaziness. Speak with your wallet - it is the loudest voice you have.

Been a lot of that going around. Last count, there were 5 or 6 people copying my LED adapters. It’s one thing I really appreciate in the pin community that guys like all of you are willing to stick up for people like Kahr and I.

Stopped me from getting a PinSound board as well. Picked up a TiltAudio board instead. Have the Altsound standard sounds on it now for testing but got a Dr Who Mix from an author of the mix before submitted to pinsound so will try to use that instead. Once there are more sound sets it should be a viable option.

I was considering pinsound sound boards for a couple of my favorite games before this situation was first reported, but then decided against giving them my business.

It's one thing to bring back a product idea that was discontinued, no longer available, and that the original developer has no interest in producing anymore (which is not the case here). It's something else to make a knock off of an active product without the original developer's blessing.

I like Rob. He's a good guy. I've enjoyed chatting with him at shows. Treating a fellow pinhead in this way--especially one of the good eggs in the hobby--doesn't sit well with me.

The bad guy & the good guy huh? Funny how it's easy for everybody to decide who is right or wrong, even though you don't know the whole story.

We consider more options are better for everybody, as it's the case for all the products you can find around you.
Speaking of stealing is definitely not acceptable as we do have a completely different product, thank you.

Pinball is a fantastic community and I thought Rob was a close friend, but as we say, ego is the enemy...

Homepin also jumped on the bandwagon.

It's not about what you have now, It's about how you got there... copying another product to advance your product is cheap, lazy and greedy. Just think for a moment if someone did this to you and your product. Not so nice eh?

PinSound guys are best buds with the German rasp pi sound guys

Especially you though.....

The great thing about this forum is you can tell the whole story if you wish.

Those who steal ideas and business out from under someone else, usually do.

In WHAT sense, exactly, is it 'completely different'??

Please explain, why your product is completely different.

Let me help about the descriptions from webpages:

Kahr.us:
This circuit creates a unique 5 volt power source for the MPU board.

Pinsound:
No More Reset guarantees a stable 5 volts power supply to the CPU board of your pinball machine no matter how hard and often you flip!

You’d think with all the negative feelings toward PinSound about this they would have tried to save face. I mean is this board so important to them that they need to keep selling it at what cost to the company they started. I was in on the PinSound preorder when they started up years ago and knew they were on to something by offering a great new product. But my views on the company now have soured as this debacle has left a bad taste in my mouth.

Sort of sealed it for me when you doubled down by trying to claim that Rob is now the bad guy who supposedly did something wrong to destroy a friendship. Honestly, Rob has said very little, other than to say that he did not work with you to license or create a directly competing product built on the same design and with the same final function. The fantastic community that you speak about are the ones that are coming on this thread to defend someone who put his IP into a product for all of us. There was no un-met need that you are now trying to fill.

If there are parts of this story that we do not know about, please share.

Are you for real? What kind of sociopath steals the concept and design from a "friend" and then blames the victim for not being a good friend? Wow, you are a snake in the grass.

Hey Pinsound. Every time someone mentions Pinsound to me I bring up this thread and let them read your responses. Was it worth losing me *and everyone who is reading about it* as a customer in order to make whatever extra profit you’re making off your version of Rob’s board?

I kinda feel this way too. Plus the fact he said it's totally different and won't tell is how .... I wanted a pinsound board for my funhouse, so I'm hoping that maybe, you know for the good of us all in the hobby, someone can make a sound board that is totally different but does the same thing and sell it to me cheaper?

Still waiting for questions to be answered bump.

Not sure if it is possible, but did Rob patent this idea?

Following this thread because I met Rob briefly at SFGE a few years ago, purchased his product and he was a great guy. I've used it for debug and it's great.

Regarding the patent... I don't know if Rob attempted this, but my 2 cents...

I think getting a patent for this would be very challenging and, if successful, would end up being a very narrow patent. Narrow patents aren't that useful because they are easy for someone to avoid.

More importantly, there's no global patent. You need to get individual countries to approve your patent. Even if Rob did get a patent in the USA, it doesn't mean it's applicable to France. He could, of course, try and get protection in the USA and France, but that's more money and more effort.

Finally, even if he did have a patent that covered the appropriate locations, that's not worth anything unless you are willing to spend $$$ and go after people.

All that said, I think the best Pinsiders can do to help Rob is to purchase from him and not from egregious and unnecessary copycats.