I’ve been a user of the Tracker mini almost since its release, it’s been my first tracker from Polyend, but I have used a DirtyWave M8 before that.
I’m in love with the product, especially considering Polyend has been very open and listening to their customers and have added a lots of the features I and others have requested in the wishes forum.
The only thing I dislike about it is actually the enclosure and the buttons. I find the soft plastic enclosure not looking very robust and not feeling very nice in my hands. I would not mind if it was a tad bit heavier and sturdy looking. A metallic enclosure and easily actionable buttons would bring it a way better feeling
The ability to upgrade our current units would be an appreciated move for the loyal user base, while boosting the product’s sales lifecycle.
What should this feature achieve?
That would consist of :
A metallic edition of the Tracker mini to the market with different feel of the buttons (switch buttons that would easily click would be the best). I guess aluminium is the best candidate.
An upgrade kit for current users to upgrade their original Tracker mini, at a reasonable price.
Additional remarks about the solution :
Black would be the best looking option. I don’t know how much anodizing or painting a color on it would be difficult and costly to manufacture. In that case, the raw silver aluminium color would already be a big improvement in terms of feel
In case it’s not easy for both the edition and the upgrade kit process to change the material of the back of the enclosure, the change of only the front plate and buttons would already be a big progress on the feeling while using the unit
Considering this product does not have any wireless capabilities by default, I believe there should not be any issues with interference when using a metallic enclosure. At the occasion, it would also let us elegantly stick CME’s WIDI (Bluetooth MIDI/Host) adapters or other accessories through their magnets.
Are there any workarounds?
Trying to find an existing skin (probably would be vniyl though) or build one with a CNC machine
Fixing the switches would require more work of searching for switches compatible with the PCB and creating an actual faceplate that can accommodate these switches.
Any links to related discussions?
Any references to other products?
Some of the og Polyend Trackers (if I am not mistaken)
I can’t see it happening, but I sure would love options. I really liked when they did the artist series og tracker. Would be awesome to have swappable skins or faceplates. I want a translucent colored shell like all the other retro handhelds are doing. That would be pretty sweet. I was considering taking mine apart to prep and paint.
I haven’t opened my mini to see how much space the internals take up, but as someone that manufacturers stuff for a living, making an aluminum case for the mini would probably be a bigger expense than a projected return. And bringing new buttons and mechanical switches into the picture is just more added costs. I can’t imagine it would be feasible unless every single Tracker Mini owner voted on this. Who knows, maybe Tracker Mini Plus will come in a platnum edition, kind of like the gold og tracker. The play plus and tracker plus both have textured metalic faces, but the same soft rubbery feeling backs. Ive had a lot of products with failed rubberized coatings, so hopefully that’s been sorted out. If not I’ll do what I always do and clean off the broken down coating and paint it a fun color.
The easiest and most cost effective way would be if Polyend just provides the stl file so you can print or manufacture your own back and perhaps front cover. There are a few print or cnc services. An aluminium case sets you back around 150-200 potatoes.
If its copyright conform and with the disclaimer for no/loss of warranty and support of things that can happen with that mod.
Companies like PWM (Malevolant, Mantis) do this with their side cheeks. With an stl file you can even cnc wood
And because it has been clarified in another thread, the coating is silicone and will not get sticky. Even isopropyl was used by someone to clean the case (i would NOT recommend this😂) with rubberized material, you would end up with a clear plastic case. So tldr: technically the material should be good for years to come. If you dont like the feel or weight of it, well stl and print service should be cool enough.
My thought is even if they shared the stl, at best it would let me print another plastic case with terrible 3D printer finition. Or will require a lot of work to refine the finition.
Ordering 1 unit of CNCed metallic enclosure based on the .stl would be so costly that it does not make sense.
Only Polyend can do a CNCed case because they’re the more likely to mass-order and then sell in a minimum volume. Hence the above wish.
I know that the soft plastic they use is not known to be prone to becoming sticky like we’ve seen with other products. But still the hardware feeling of this unit is the only thing I don’t like. Maybe because I used the M8 before.
So, don’t want to influence votes but I believe you should vote based on if you’d like this to happen. If this was totally impossible to do, probably the wish would have been rejected by Polyend.
The new vote system opens up new wishlist entries without moderation afaik. According to @Mitch they wont happen about 1 year now before approval and can then get denied if its not feasible.
We are going to restructure how we work the voter forum. First, we have increased everyone’s vote count to 15 votes!
Next, we will approve all wishes (that are not duplicates), and the moderator team will continue to moderate them to ensure they are in the proper format. The development team will no longer review or approve wishes but may decline them if they are not technically feasible or do not fit the product’s vision. Please do not write a new request if you made one that is in draft wishes; allow about a week to implement all these changes.
We will move current “draft wishes” to the wishlist as long as they aren’t duplicates and remove the “draft wishes” category. You will be able to draft and vote for wishes under “feature requests”. I’ll comment here when this changeover has been completed.
Since all requests will be automatically approved for voting, please draft proper feature requests and use the appropriate wish format. A clearly explained and titled wish is more likely to get votes!
Last year, a lot of developer time was spent debating 1. If a wish was technically feasible, and 2. if a wish was within the scope of development. These changes have been made to optimize our development team’s time and focus more on getting the updates out.
In line with these changes, we are changing the name of the “Wishlist” to “Feature Requests.” The voter forum is very helpful in determining what the dev team might choose to implement next, but a feature request having a high number of votes does not guarantee it will be added to the product.
