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55% Positive
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#software#silhouette#machine#cricut#cameo#design#works#machines#app#able
Discussion (24 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
The provided software is clunky, and the plugins suck. I’ve been building an app for designing stickers, and what I really want is to either be able to drive the Cameo from the app directly, or output a design file in a format that can be loaded straight into the software to start cutting.
The thing I’m stuck on is… how do people reverse engineer these devices protocols, without fear of bricking the device? My understanding is that reverse engineering like this is a lot of “try shit and see if it works”. It seems to me that a few wrong commands could get the cameo in some irrecoverable state. Obviously that’s not a risk I’m willing to take on a machine I use very regularly.
They are cool machines mechanically, but the software is an absolute nightmare, DO NOT BUY.
Source: i bought one. Regret sunk in the moment i tried to do anything even slightly interesting. This isn’t a bambulabs situation where it’s mostly a philosophical objection to a closed ecosystem. It’s bad software that makes it hard or impossible to use the machine except in a very narrow set of ways.
I’ve not firsthand used any of the competing machines (silhoutte, et al) but i hear they are a bit better - and i don’t know how they could be worse.
The Electron app felt a bit weird, but I was able to accomplish the goal of cutting out my design at a desired size, so I didn't think any more about it. <shrug>
It seemed more to me that their app leans hard into getting people to buy vector designs through them, and making it easy for those who might not even understand what a "vector" graphic is, but it didn't seem to preclude me from cutting out my own stuff.
This is this is one of those situations of knowing their audience. The machine is nice and does some impressive things for the price. Their software works fine for the people that the hardware was designed.
I too have designed things in Illustrator and imported them into their software. It took a bit of getting used to, but I've designed retail packaging with cuts and scores so I can create custom boxes that I was not able to find premade and having the custom design made was too expensive. Could the design software be better? Of course, but that software would be out of reach for their target audience. So instead, I've stopped holding it wrong, and work within its constraints.
We get a new 3D-printing machine and install our own build of Marlin on it, or move it all over to Klipper. Sometimes that involves replacing the entirety of the brain-box controls and that's just par for the course.
At its root, it's only some stepper motors, fans (more motors), sensors, and heaters that are used in very particular ways.
That's pretty similar to a Cricut machine, isn't it?
There is no longer any reason to put up with hardware like Cricut that doesn't do what you want, or that includes artificial dependencies on remote servers. If worst comes to worst, then yes, have the clanker write a new controller.
drive 'em with inkscape, drive 'em with the silhouette studio, hell, there's a bridge graphtec model that can also take silhouette studio jobs...
Getting the unit to work again in the Cricut "ecosystem" just means Cricut can disable it later when they catch on.
Companies that "lock" or otherwise brick viable hardware as part of the business model (I'm thinking about Sonos here, too) are really terrible. People shouldn't be rewarding them by buying their garbage to begin with.
Oh and illegal. Highly illegal and probably would get you in prison for a very long time + come with crippling debt too.
So don't do that, unless you're like.. idk terminally ill and die tomorrow or something like that. Then still don't do it because it's illegal and causes real harm to real other people that didn't do anything wrong.