So many, many, many people have been, and continue to be, happy with the Cab 1 and the 1L. It's apparent that you don't share this opinion.
Perhaps because there were no other options to choose from. If you don't like it, too bad because it's not evolving until a completely new replacement system is released. Even Nintendo in the 80's realized that their block square controllers needed help and released better options that fit in the user's hands better and with additional control features.
Is this a good time to be hammering on that original design?
Given the complete inability from 30 years ago to think outside of a literal "box" design, I wouldn't put much faith in their ability to build a better "One size fits some" remote today. Even the DCS & CAB2 remotes were sub-par for their time, but we bought and adapted to them because that's all there was available.
Do you have any specific suggestions for improvements? If so, they probably won't be considered anyway since the end, and not the future, for handhelds seems to be near.
Yeah, look at some modern high-end TV remotes and build something that naturally fits in your hand, and don't over compensate with size. If you're going to copy the Intellivision controller, at least incorporate the side buttons to enhance the usability and find ways to make the other four fingers of your hand usable beyond just holding the remote. Maybe make those side button functions customizable to whatever you as an operator want, they were already halfway there with the implementation of the "big red button".
But if you will maybe you can tell us that you have a specific way to make smartphones naturally ergonomic for controlling things that move? There seems to be a need for this.
Connected gamepads so that you can customize specific functions and commands to the buttons you want. Plenty of automation in this world already uses a smartphone interface with analog add-on controls similar to this in many industries. Heck, our seed dealer for our farm uses a gantry crane to load our trucks that run on an Android tablet with an add-on joystick. They can operate it via a touch screen or with the joystick attached to the tablet. Pick the controller that best fits your hands & meets your needs by customizing the buttons to match how your layout operates. Lionel could even build their gamepad interface module for Apple & Android devices and market it in their own catalog. Set it up with a default button layout but also allow the end user to remap button locations to their liking.
NOTE: PHOTOS DELETED PER OGR TOS COPYRIGHT POLICY
