I was not going to respond to the post but changed my mind.
I neither believe the design is perfect nor do I believe it can not be improved this is you saying this. But lets look at your issue. We have many thousands of these out in the world in use. I can not get them out fast enough nor keep up with demand. And how many people have had issues with this ?
I will let you guess.
DLA is founded on a few principals that I and a few members that founded it dreamed up and believe was a good way to open up DIY to everyone not just highly technical people.
One of these is that we would not have technical talk on the open forum so it appeared as easy as it really is to new users to build DIY instead of making them think they are stupid and can not do it.
That we not let people redesign existing items so that there is consistence in the builds and troubleshooting so all builders become experts to help others since they would be building identical items. There is really no reason for 5 different layouts for a 4 channel SSR on the forum and just causes more difficultly for the newer users.
That we let people design things the way they want and see what happens with no requirements as to what they must provide (source code, pcb layouts, schematics).
With that said you getting upset because I did not change an existing design of mine that has been out for years and has many thousands working fine the way they are, because a new user got board in a meeting and decided he did not like the way it looked, is something I will have to just live with.
As far as the "inner circle" I can only assume you mean the staff at DLA. You know those people that do all the work behind the scenes for no pay so members like you can benefit. The ones that help start DLA in some cases. Yes they are the inner circle along with all of the users that chip in and help to make it run. Every coop manager that sorts hundreds or thousands of parts so members can save money. The users that jump on the post of a user needing help with an issue or just reassuring them the correct way to put the part on. They are my inner circle. The user that creates the next neat item and puts it out for all to use. They are my inner circle.
But none of them are asking me to change my stuff to make them happy and when they have in the past, If I did not they did not get upset and post similar post.
I understand you were trying to help. But everyone of the 2000 users on DLA have opinions, I can not try to please everyone but make myself happy and if a minor change early on in the life of a design that does not make me unhappy makes some happy I do it. Otherwise I build them for me and offer them to others.
RJ
