Introduction

First off, before I get very far into this article, I'd like to take some time to thank Massworks for their efforts and patience on my behalf. For reasons which will become clear toward the end of this review, the testing for this device has been, well, rather involved. At the same time, the time has also been rather slow in going.

When I first heard about the Massworks ID-75, I was ecstatic and filled with geeklust. I mean, lots of us these days have our own little special touches with our computers. Some have their neon lights and windows, while others have special LCD computer status readouts mounted in their drivebays. Other people have gone as far as putting computers in their cars for use as MP3 players and other such assorted functions. The Massworks LCD controller is such a device that evokes within us the primordial Lego-building instinct: to come up with all sorts of cool and nifty uses for it! Any of you who own more than one Cue:Cat know *exactly* what I'm talking about.

Previously, if you were a geek and wanted to adapt an LCD screen to your desktop system for whatever reason, you needed to have some pretty serious electronics background, and some serious dough to shell out for parts from your Maxim or Digi-Key catalogs (That's Maxim ELECTRONICS, guys…). After that, break out the soldering iron, and then your favorite developer toolkit, since you'd have to write yourself an interface/driver set to be able to use your new-fangled hardware. The Massworks ID-75 LCD controller changes all that.

Features/Specifications

The first thing you'll obviously notice about the Massworks ID-75 is its LCD screen. The screen measures 5.1" on the diagonal, and has a native resolution of 320x240. The LCD screen is a relatively inexpensive passive-matrix type, so don't expect anything sharp enough to watch a DVD on. Still, it helps to keep the costs down. A higher-quality LCD screen would drive up the costs even more, and you'd be a lot more heartbroken about it if you pushed those pixels a bit too hard one day.

The Massworks sits on an angled support bracket that's adjustable to 21, 28, and 35 degrees. Adjustable is your call though. Personally, it took me three or four minutes to attach the bracket to the device, and a nice bit of fighting to adjust the bracket itself. The plastic is lightweight, but it's VERY rigid, and was VERY resistant to being bent or pushed in where it needed to go. Furthermore, the adjustment of the bracket within a 14-degree range just doesn't make much of a difference. I always used the ID-75 at 35 degrees because at anything less I was afraid to topple it over. The ID-75 is designed this way, though, and sits at such a steep angle so as to prevent overhead glare from interfering with screen visibility.

The back of the device has a small cooling fan as well. This is very nice, as it ensures the longevity of the device, but while the specifications say that it's included to help reduce "LCD smear", don't be fooled. LCD devices don't generate that much heat. Take a look at your laptop screen and tell me where the ventilation holes are. It's actually the core logic that runs the device that's generating all that heat. Still, without knowing what kind of processing components are in the ID-75, it must be running some serious number crunching to merit an active cooling solution.

Here's a look at what's in the box.

Relatively simple offerings. Strangely enough, the CD for the ID-75 managed to escape that photograph, but for those of you who haven't guessed it by now, yes, the ID-75 does come with drivers. It also includes the AC adapter and a USB A-to-B cable. No extra frills or anything, but that's probably a good thing considering how much the device costs.

Software

As I mentioned before, the guts and core of the ID-75 lie in its control application. The ID-75 has the ability to monitor what the active application is in Windows, and switch its layouts accordingly. Thus, if you're using Winamp to listen to some MP3s while playing Quake II, you'll have the Quake II layout loaded, but once you close Quake II, the Winamp controls should become active. This is, of course, dependent on how Windows decides what application is now going to be active, since it will sometimes defer to the desktop.

The ID-75 wouldn't have any of its useful controls without any tools to design those controls, so the ID-75 also comes with the layout design software. Basically, with the layout design software, you paint a picture of what you want to appear on the ID-75, and then assign target zones that perform keystrokes, macros, mouse movements, or even load whole new layouts! If you were masochistic, you could program the thing and run your entire OS with it - It's that powerful.

At any rate, the layout designer software is a powerful application that lets you design a whole slew of functions and macros to assign to your ID-75 pad. My only problem with it is that it seems kinda cumbersome to use at first, but later on, with the help of Jason Hoy at Massworks, I was able to figure out how to yoke the layout designer and make some layouts with ease. If you can't figure it out right away, don't sweat it. Lots of ID-75 fans out there are already designing some pretty good layouts for some of your favorite games.

When they say it's a snap to learn, they mean "snapping your neck".

The secret in getting your layouts to work properly lies in ordering your screen elements properly. The easiest way I found to do this is to insert all your pictures, and then draw target zones over each area. When you've finished them all, right-click on each one and send it to the back. This means that it'll be drawn with first priority, and that the image on top of it will overwrite the gray box that normally represents a function pad.

Personally, I think it'd have worked better if the software would keep the target zones separately from the images in the rendering process. Granted, it might look messy in the layout manager if your target zones are all over the place and covering up your screen, but it won't render that way on the ID-75 itself, so it should be well and good.

Multi-Monitor Action

Another nifty feature that's currently in beta-testing is a display driver so that the ID-75 can be used as a secondary display device. For an example on how I used this, take a look at this shot.

As you can see (kinda), I've got Winamp running in the ID-75 window, and the playlist for Winamp is shown on the main screen. It's really only there to point out that the two are tied together, and that the main Winamp window is on the second display window. The ID-75 is only 320x240, though, and the display driver sets it as 640x480. To account for this, the driver software samples down to 320x240, allowing it to show 640x480 contents in a smaller window. Also, the ID-75 only displays in 16-bit color (The website specs say 12-bit, but the beta notes say 16-bit), so it drops down the color depth of the image as well. To make Winamp look/run normally here, I toggled Winamp's double-size view before moving the window to the ID-75 screen.

A couple of things to point out here - The ID-75 uses USB, so its refresh rate is rather slow when moving windows and cursors and thingys. As the beta note says, don't expect PCI/AGP graphics speed on this. It's best used in cases where minimal screen manipulation/changes are required.

The touch-sensitivity for the screen functions like a pen-mouse here, so, using Winamp as an example, I can press the Next Track button on the Winamp pad, and the mouse will instantly jump over and hit that button. Adjusting smaller elements is tricky, though. For example, I was able to manipulate the volume slider once out of fifteen tries. You might want to seek out Sonique and some good skins for it to take full advantage of the ID-75 as an MP3 player control.

While the display software is in beta, one feature I hope they add to the driver is a mouse snap-back feature, so that whenever I hit a button on the ID-75, the mouse automatically snaps back to where it was in Windows. This way, I don't have to scroll the mouse all the way back onto the screen.

But How Does It Quake?

A fundamental problem with this device, in my opinion, is that it's being marketed toward gamers. From a marketing standpoint, this is a good thing. Gamers typically have the discretionary cash to be able to afford gems like these, and they usually have a good amount of collaboration when it comes to tools customization and development. In other words, the gamers will know how to tweak these devices to make them work to their needs.

Ken Schmitt's Emperor: Battle for Dune layout

Unfortunately, though, games aren't really what the ID-75 is best used with. In some games, it's true that the ID-75 can provide access to some commonly-used functions, or set up a macro-system to perform various functions systematically within a game. For instance, you could set up a rocket-jump button for Quake. The problem is, would you stop playing Quake long enough to look over at the ID-75 and hit the rocket-jump button? Probably not. Furthermore, the ID-75 provides a lot of functionality for games, but when it comes down to it, the ID-75 is really just a good device to shore up the problems left behind by a bad user interface. Most really good games don't need any extra gadgets for controlling because everything's already a mouse-click away. Some of the more advanced features are useful, though.

Ultimately, the ID-75's usefulness to gaming is what you make of it. TechTV summed it up rather well when they previewed the device at E3, saying that it would simplify game control because you'd be able to come up with customized controls that work intelligently because they're designed by you. So, with that in mind, the ID-75 works best with games when you're willing to invest the time and effort to design your own custom profiles for games.

Conclusion

The ID-75 is neat. Very neat. Extremely neat. But, like any neat toy, it requires some ingenuity and imagination to get it to work the way you want it. Furthermore, like any good company that listens to its customers, Massworks will give you the development source just for asking! This allows you to do all sorts of nifty things with the ID-75, such as developing Mac/Linux drivers for it (Don't laugh), and customize it to perform various other needs and applications. For instance, with some programming know-how and a magnetic card reader, a restaurant owner could adapt one of these into a simple point-of-sale system for employees without having to buy a specialized solution.

As a gaming solution, however, the ID-75 just isn't all that useful. I suppose it's what you make of it. For most of today's applications, I can't see how the ID-75 would really make a game more enjoyable, aside from the coolness factor, and using it to execute macros. However, games of the future might be able to take special advantage of devices like these in much the same way that Windows multi-monitor support was to revolutionize gaming by offering gamers different displays on each monitor. Unfortunately, while this would certainly be a worthwhile practical application for the display, the USB interface it incorporates would most likely be unsuitable for such uses, due to the slow refresh rate of the display.

Most of the bad points (Along with the price, $300 US currently) are merely issues of practicality, however. In other words, if I were trying to sell this device to someone, or argue a case to my girlfriend for her to let me buy one, then I'd have a tough case on my hands in justifying $300 for this. However, if I were to simply throw caution to the wind, then this would be one of the coolest toys for me to own in a long time.

Again, with the Lego analogy, this device is what your imagination makes of it. The possibilities are all but endless. If you can spare the cash and are looking for something cool to hack, then this should be right up your alley. I have to dock some points due to the unwieldy software and the steep price tag, but otherwise, this device offers a Pandora's Box of fun.

Rating: 7.5/10 SystemLogistics

Re-Printed From SLCentral

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