Griffin Technology PowerMate 1040-PMT USB Multimedia Controller and Input Device (Aluminum, PC/Mac) by Griffin Technologies
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Digital camera reviews of Griffin Technology PowerMate 1040-PMT USB Multimedia Controller and Input Device (Aluminum, PC/Mac)
Digital camera Review: Awesome but seems like a waste of money...
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this Powermate USB universal controller and installed it on my Dell running XP Professional. My initial reaction: Awesome, but a total waste of money. It is hard to give a low rating to something that looks so cool, but honestly, functionality and software make or break a product. I should have waited for improved software. As the other reviewers have articulated, it works great as an expensive pulsating brushed-aluminum volume control, but that's about it. [the price] for a pulsating volume control seems unreasonable. Software: I wish Microsoft wrote the driver and software for this controller and created native messages (like the wheel mouse) for this so quality applications could be written. The software 1.4.1 is very hard to use and surely NOT what you would expect in the XP world. The downloaded driver is not signed for XP and XP pops the usual equivalent of "install at your own risk" warning along with the "older drivers may not work with XP". User interface needs a lot of work. It needs an Apply button badly. I thought it will be an excellent controller in the Microsoft (Visual .Net) development environment to switch between numerous documents I usually have open. I set it up to do that by using (Ctrl+F6 and Ctrl+Shift+F6) but, I couldn't get Ctrl+F6 to work consistently. Also, Powermate does not support key chording (e.g. Ctrl+K followed by Ctrl+P) a widely used feature in a number of Development environments, DV editors and keyboard intensive applications. The settings, user and computer actions could have easily been shown in a tree view so all are visible. The current user interface requires a lot of clicks to setup. The driver does not support multiple Powermates. The controller sends messages to the application's main window; it would have been a lot more useful, if they had sent it to the control with focus, similar to how the wheel on the mouse works. Powermate controller needs the rotary application launcher similar to what Sony sells with their jog control. It it very simple to write such an application, I wonder why it was not included.
Customer service: Professional and courteous; Replied to my question about multiple Powermates within a day.
Digital camera Review: Broke after 11 months; replacement broken too
Summary: 1 Stars
The hardware went bad after 11 months (the LED failed). Got a replacement under warranty. Either the replacement hardware is broken, or the PowerMate's lame driver software for Mac is to blame. In any case, the PowerMate is in the trash, and Griffin is off my list of decent tech companies.Digital camera Review: Cool idea..
Summary: 2 Stars
but not as useful as it might seem.
I found msyelf hardly ever using it. It was mostly just cool to look at.
And if you upgrade to Windows Vista. It becomes a paperweight. Griffin (as of this writing) has yet to offer software for Vista, rendering my PowerMate absolutely useless (unless one needs a cool looking paperweight, that is).
Digital camera Review: Do You Want A Knob That Pulses And Glows Blue In The Dark?
Summary: 5 Stars
If so, the Griffin PowerMate is just the thing for you. In addition to being a nearly-neverending source for suggestive yet lame humor, it's also the first "cool" control peripheral I've bought that actually proves useful (he says, looking meaningfully at a closet full of various Microsoft controllers that all seemed like really good ideas at the time).The PowerMate is, basically, a knob. A big, machined aluminum knob that looks like it fell off an expensive piece of studio equipment. It sits on a slightly rubbery translucent base that gives it excellent grip (on my glass desktop at least). There are two blue LEDs hidden in the base, more of which later. The USB cable is somewhat dinky (maybe 18" long) but it does come with an extender that adds another 3' or so. The desk footprint of the unit is tiny - it's maybe 2" across.
The knob works with all recent versions of Windows, MacOS 9 and MacOS X. I've only tried it with the last of these, so your mileage may vary, but by the looks of the manual the only thing missing when used with Windows (and with some types of Mac) is the "soft power on" feature. Push the knob and the machine starts up. Note that this only seems to be a feature that works on recent PowerMac G4s, if the document is to be believed, and even then only if the PowerMate is plugged directly into one of the machines USB ports (i.e. not into one of the keyboard ports, or a hub).
Both Windows and Mac versions of the software are "application sensitive". This means that you can define specific behaviors for the knob when specific applications have window focus.
The default behavior is to turn the volume up and down, while pressing it mutes/unmutes the sound. If that was all there was to it I'd have been unimpressed - I've got keys on my keyboard to do that. However, it comes with default mappings for a number of applications (iTunes, iMovie, Internet Explorer) that changes its function to be something more suitable.
You can map any of a number of actions (left turn, right turn, click, click and left turn, click and right turn) to generate either an arbitrary repeated keypress, a cursor movement or to instruct the application to scroll up or down. The rate at which the PowerMate generates keypresses can be varied, as can the knob's sensitivity. So, for example, in Internet Explorer turning the knob scrolls up and down the document while clicking pops up the "Open Location" dialog, while in iTunes you have control over the volume (which is separate from the system volume control) and clicking plays/pauses the music.
What's really nice is that you can change these settings, and add new ones for your own applications. I rarely change the volume in iTunes, so I mapped that to the "click and turn" actions, and set the normal turning of the knob to scroll up and down the list of songs in my library. Note that you may need to twiddle with the repeat rate to make using the knob "comfortable" - I found that unless the repeat rate was set to the slowest possible, I tended to overshoot the song I was trying to select.
I've also added settings for Mozilla (specifically for scrolling up and down, clicking the knob to open a new tab, and I've mapped the click and turn actions to the back and forward buttons) and I've got plans to map most of the major applications I use. In short, if you've got an application that has keyboard shortcuts for any sort of scrolling or slider (or even for any sort of button you may want to hit repeatedly), you can use the PowerMate to do it.
Turn it into a zoom knob in Photoshop, or use it to control brush size - obviously there are limits in tools like this where you've got several thousand keyboard shortcuts and only five actions to map them to. I'm not sure if you can connect two PowerMates simultaneously, but if you can this could combine with Photoshop to provide the makings of the world's most expensive Etch-A-Sketch.
There's also apparently a "game mode" where each turn a single keypress rather than a stream. The manual suggests it could be used for Tempest or Space Invaders, my mind suggests it might (in regular mode) have possibilities for strafing in FPS games.
Oh, I almost forgot about the glowing. As I mentioned right at the start of the review, the translucent base hides two blue LEDs. When used as a volume control the brightness of the base directly reflects volume level. The rest of the time it can either be a solid blue or (settable from the control panel) set to pulse at a user specified rate. Pulsing is also the default behavior (on my PowerMac at least) when the machine is in sleep mode. The combination of the power light on my PowerMac, my Studio Display and my PowerMate all pulsing on and off in sync is quite impressive in a darkened room. Clicking the PowerMate adds to the ways you can wake a sleeping system too.
All in all, a really nice little gizmo with a bunch of different uses at a reasonable price (it might seem expensive compared to, say, a mouse, but you're talking nicely machined aluminum here, not cheap plastic), to say nothing of the sophistication such phrases as "my knob glows blue in the dark" can add to conversation at dinner parties.
Digital camera Review: Does NOT provide ability to power up computer.
Summary: 3 Stars
This ability to power up the computer with the device was never was supported for PCs and only for old Macs. Based on descriptions here, you can see the feature has been removed altogether.
http://www.griffintechnology.com/support/powermate/PM-PC-001.php
http://www.griffintechnology.com/support/powermate/PM-001.php