Looks like dbrand are not having a great time with Project Killswitch, their bundle of accessories as they had to pull it from sale shortly after going up for reservations due to it causing problems.
It was a little confusing, as a reservation holder myself the link in the email to buy it just ended up going to a Twitter post. Confused, I reached out to dbrand but didn't hear back until their public announcement about what happened. Sent in an email and posted in public on Reddit too, they made a "Million-Dollar Mistake".
They shipped out a bunch of them to various content creators and news websites (not to us though…) which they said had people whose knowledge "ranged from 'casual' to 'built their own Linux distro'" and all seemed fine. Then they shipped some out to The Verge, who emailed back to note there were problems with the magnetic kickstand and the Steam Deck fan. It was slowing down their Steam Deck fan! After more testing, another unit saw their fan speed-up.
In short, the whiney Delta fan was the one affected, the Huaying was not and according to dbrand they've heard that Valve are apparently no longer using the Delta fan. So this is why they pulled the launch, as their magnets screwed with any Steam Deck with a Delta fan and obviously they can't just let that happen. To be clear, everything else is fine, just the kickstand causes issues.
So now they're going back and changing the kickstand to a "mechanical interlock system", which will probably end up a little like the fantastic DeckMate. Everyone who purchased it with the magnetic version will get a "free replacement of both their case and kickstand" which is great to see.
It's going to take a while though, with any new orders now not shipping until sometime Q1 2023, but they will still be shipping out orders of those reservation holders who did manage to get through initially.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
TheRiddick Sep 29, 2022
I don't understand how that kickstand in the image above can mess with the fan.. Unless it was putting pressure on the fan area causing fan spin issues (shouldn't be a issue to begin with!)
IMHO, it is caused by strong neodymium magnets in the stand that interfere with the fan rotor.
I don't understand how that kickstand in the image above can mess with the fan..
Apparently the kickstand has a magnet in it. The magnet is what interferes with the fan.
TheRiddick Sep 29, 2022
slaapliedje Sep 29, 2022
That's a very easy thing to fix. Just make it a stick on pad with a click-in solution, I could prototype one myself with my resin printers even.. lolI actually ordered one and have it on the way, but they're basically sending out the fixed version with a non-magnetic kickstand to replace the magnetic one. And eating the cost of that, which is impressive. They suggested to hang the magnetic one from the fridge to represent some major fail.
But yes, since the fans have metal bits in it, if the magnets were strong enough, I could see them slowing down the spinning of the fans. It was only specific manufacturer's fans as well.
Edit: Sorry, let me clarify, they are sending the magnetic ones out for those that pre-ordered already, and will later be sending out the fixed chassis / kickstand free of charge, which is pretty awesome.
Last edited by slaapliedje on 29 September 2022 at 7:47 pm UTC
StalePopcorn Sep 30, 2022
slaapliedje Sep 30, 2022
A company owning their mistake up front—I don't own a Steam Deck but it makes me feel like buying a skin for my phone from themI bought from them based on their humor alone. Their PS5 case is awesome. Plus flipping the bird to Sony made me laugh. I should be getting my Killswitch soonish, I'll post here and let people know how it is.
slaapliedje Sep 30, 2022
nice of the verge to do dbrand's job for themI got the email detailing out the whole thing. Literally just randomly was someone at The Verge happened to turn on the performance setting all the way up to be able to see the fan speed and wondered what was going on. dbrand still couldn't reproduce it, and then a bunch of back and forth and the discovery of the different brands of fans came down. So this is more on Valve than it is dbrand. No one but Valve is going to know how many units were shipped that had the worse fan.
slaapliedje Oct 1, 2022
Valve could have known who had gotten the Delta fans and let the customers know at least.nice of the verge to do dbrand's job for themI got the email detailing out the whole thing. Literally just randomly was someone at The Verge happened to turn on the performance setting all the way up to be able to see the fan speed and wondered what was going on. dbrand still couldn't reproduce it, and then a bunch of back and forth and the discovery of the different brands of fans came down. So this is more on Valve than it is dbrand. No one but Valve is going to know how many units were shipped that had the worse fan.
It's on both companies as dbrand should have done more in-house testing and Valve shouldn't have used the Delta fan.
I got my Killswitch today and it is phenomenal, by the way!
The coil in a fan produces multiple electro magnets. The coil is suspended between physical magnets of opposite polarity. When current is fed to the coil, the magnetic repulsion causes the motion. If you introduce an extra magnet in the vicinity, it will affect the magnetic field, and should affect the speed of the fan. If the dbrand is using a strong magnet, the greater the chance of affecting the magnetic field in the fan.
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