I had the beta and a final Coin and neither one were reliable enough to to trust. You HAVE to carry backup cards which more or less defeats the purpose. Then there is the slightly embarrassing, extremely annoying "Your card didn't work/Do you have another card this one isn't swiping". I've stopped carrying my coin altogether because if you have the cards you might as well use the real ones (I tried for 7+ months to use coin first).
Agreed. The coin absolutely failed me. It didn't work far too often for me and I always had to carry backup cards (my debit card because BofA's ATM can't read it, and my credit card because I still want my rewards on purchases when my Coin fails). Needing to carry 3 cards completely defeated the purpose of the Coin, and I ended up ditching the Coin just to have one less card in my wallet. The irony.
They probably didn't have the ability to test it on nearly enough readers, given that there are literally thousands. They may also be running into some timing issues based on how people swipe. Those are things you sometimes just can't work out barring wide scale testing and adoption.
Right. But file this away in the "not my problem" draw. You can make all the excuses you want, but this is ultimately up to them to resolve, not for the consumer to deal with.
The concept is inherently flawed. Never mind changes in the payment infrastructure—the cool factor has apparently outweighed engineering challenges.
This is a (probably less severe) variation of the problem that iCache [1] had. The dynamic magnetic stripe tech was immature then, but mostly, it's just really difficult to put a computer in a thin (read: flexible) object that people are used to abusing. Then consider the need for near-perfect reliability next to the promoted benefit of not carrying other cards, and you're screwed.
Even worse, I've had servers flat out refuse to accept it. I couldn't even imagine opening a tab at a bar with it either: It looks too fake to be taken as collateral, and I don't know if the magnetic strip still works if the card is locked, meaning I would have to have another round-trip interaction with the bartender.
I've actually been meaning to try google wallet (pretty much everywhere visa/mc tap to pay and apple pay are available too) for some time, and just never think to do it... when I saw the coin card, I thought it was an interesting idea, but to be honest, I think having something along with your phone is probably more useful, since anyone with a coin card is likely to also have their phone.
The specs aren’t listed on the FDK site but the safety
data sheet shows it is a 3V battery although amperage is
unclear.
All lithium-ion batteries have a nominal voltage of 3.7V, like how all alkaline batteries have a nominal voltage of 1.5V. It's just how the chemistry works.
And to be somewhat needlessly pedantic: you want "amp-hours" there, not "amperage". Amp-hours is the unit of capacity, amps is how much current is being drawn at that very moment. In the automotive metaphor, amp-hours (or watt-hours) is how big the gas tank is, while amperage is engine horsepower.
What Coin has managed to do in such a thin package is really impressive. It’s a shame they weren’t able to do it more reliably.
It's a really cool idea. I actually wonder what the technological hurdle was that held them back - mechanical (reliably magnetizing the coils, easy-to-break components due to narrow size), software (programming issues), or QA (reliable SoCs, reliable builds, reliable solders)?
Flexible substrates are not a problem - the industrial solution is polyimide (Kapton) or just really thin FR4. The problem is inflexible components. As soon as you bend a curved surface attached to a small flat rectangle (IC), it pulls at the joins.
You might get better results with bare die+wirebonding, then encapsulating with slightly flexible epoxy. That would allow the bondwires to flex and take up the bending. Doesn't help with the discrete components or the battery.
Very often, the merchant would just assume I was using an Amex e.g. Amex Black....even though the display read VISA. This, of course, caused a decline...not worth the trouble to argue.
I was so damn excited to use my Coin - the idea was brilliant. I tried to so hard to use it, but with a 30%+ failure rate, it became completely useless. Simply not worth the embarrassing "Sir, your card didn't work" or "Is this real?". And if I have to carry backups anyways, what's the point?
I like it because it got me down from several cards (debit, credit card A, credit card B, business card, business debit card) to two (debit card, Coin). The debit card is my backup to Coin.
I formerly did the same, but it became insufficient.
There are at least 4 cards that I need working at all times: (1) Debit card, as you mentioned, to be able to withdraw cash in a pinch, (2) Chase Sapphire Preferred - card with no FX fee, (3) Corporate Amex for charges I don't want to take on personally, (4) Starwood (SPG) card to amass a non-negligible amount of points on hotel stays. And maybe a 5th on which I'm trying to spend a large amount on quickly (for example - I might be planning to put $1500 on a random card with a big signup bonus, and it might be critical for me to get points I need for an upcoming reservation)
I of course have all of these loaded into my Coin, but each has failed enough times (forcing me to use the debit) that I started carrying the others as backup. Then I found myself carrying 5 cards....plus the Coin. And if Coin is targeted to users like me (who carry multiple credit cards, optimizing for different uses)....then what's the point?
I think that the coils that drive the magstripe are only activated when the buttons to the left or right of the stripes are depressed (e.g. by the process of swiping).
Also, I believe coin only transmits track 2 [2]. Why it looks like there's 2 coils is curious to me as well.
Some merchants require your full name (also known as Track 1 card data) as a part of the transaction process. Coin does not transmit Track 1 data and may be rejected at the point of payment.
It seems like a logical thing to do, especially when you're trying to a) save power and b) time the speed of the coil's "stripes" to make the reader think it's seeing a physical card. It's probably also the source of a lot of rejected swipes.
Conductive rubber pads and/or membrane switches are always a bad thing. Necessary for this design, but they'll always fail you in the end.
I received my Coin about 2 months ago. I was excited to test it out after preordering almost 2 years in advance. The concept of having all my cards on one central card was a great idea. But having it not work at some locations was rather embarrassing and frustrating. I have decided the Coin was a fail and I will not carry it anymore. But, Coin, keep innovating. You tried.
It sounds like just another startup hardware offering with a spotty launch. But I've always been confused about the perceived "embarrassment" of a card not working at the point of a transaction. This seems to be a common marketing trope in payments, but I don't know what it comes from. It's a piece of technology, and tech often doesn't work quite right. Sometimes my phone restarts itself. What's the big deal?
I have been super broke and unable to pay bills at two points in my life - just out of college and trying to find a job after the dot-come bust, and again when my startup failed. During those bad times, I'd lose track of my finances and a few times couldn't pay for my groceries.
I can't describe in words how much I felt like a total, utter failure. All the fears I had about how I was going to pay my bills that month, the pressure from family to pay them back for money borrowed, the pressure from roommates to come up with rent - all came bubbling up in those moments.
After all, I was the first kid in my family to go to college. I was the smart one who was supposed to have his shit together, but there I was - totally broke. It creates a fear that is not rational and hasn't gone away (at least for me).
About a year ago, I forgot my bank card at TJ's and only had $20 bucks on me. I was embarrassed in ways I can't describe. I was cold sweating to the point I was soaking my shirt. I had to leave everything except for some essentials I needed for that night. One of the cashiers lent me $5 to help me pay for my groceries (I paid him back). I feel weird that I accepted the $5, but I wasn't thinking rationally. I wanted to scream "no, really, I have my shit together now." I kept telling myself that this is not a big deal... chill out... But I just couldn't calm myself down. It was like poverty PTSD.
Even though I now have paid off all my debt, school loans and have a healthy nest egg, I still have these fears. Whenever my card won't go through on the first try or I type in the wrong pin number, my heart jumps.
I've been there too and my wife (who is also the first college graduate in her family) has it worse than me. The fact that you know it isn't a "technical glitch" but might be the "human glitch" of not having the money in your account is the big difference I think. It is embarrassing to go and pay for gas or groceries and have it be declined because you can't pay for it at that moment for whatever reason. (I think that with the advent of mobile banking this isn't as much of an issue, because you can check your live balance before you go shopping.)
I know plenty of friends who can't (for one reason or another) imagine what life would be like where their credit card is declined due to a "human error." Maybe they haven't had to live paycheck to paycheck or maybe their brains aren't wired that way. I'm inclined to lean to the former but I'm sure for some it is the latter.
I can relate to your feeling, and this ONE WEIRD TRICK will greatly increase your positive feelings: get a credit card with no fees that you pay off every month. Once I got my Amex, I never again wondered if that swipe would go through -- it just does, every time. That of course comes with its own set of problems (ahem, budgeting).
A lot of the world is moving/has already moved to chips in cards and PINs. However, this comes with tap-to-pay/PayPass (for low-value purchases at least) which removes the need for a PIN in some cases.
(That said, it sounds like the person you're replying to is in the US.)
I was living in my car for a month, seems like a short time, but 30 days seemed like years, so I know what intant pang of being unsure. I;m much better off now, but I think that feeling never actually goes away.
I actually create that feeling now by moving all but the bill paying funds to savings. Every 2 weeks it feels like I am broke. It gives me a sense of ownership and a feeling I am in control of the situation.
For me the big deal is that if my card doesn't work—my actual plastic card, that is—then it's the retailer's equipment that is faulty. They fumble around with it—using a plastic bag sometimes, or they move to another terminal—and it works eventually. But the issue is almost always on the reader side, not with the card itself.
On the flip side, that retailer has just seen 100 people in a row use their plastic just fine, then you come along with your whiz-bang phone or Coin card or whatever, and start failing. The embarrassment comes from everyone else waiting behind you thinking to themselves, "Why not just use a card like everyone else instead of your complicated technology?" Or, "HEY EVERYBODY! LOOK AT THIS GUY WHO THINKS HE'S TOO GOOD FOR REGULAR CARDS!"
To be clear I don't pooh-pooh these things. I totally understand why people would like to ditch a stack of cards for a phone or Coin replacement. Just explaining why it might be embarrassing to rely on these replacements, and then have them fail.
They'll wrap your card in it and swipe again. It's supposed to counteract a weak strip (or weak reader?), but I'm not sold on the technical explanation[1]. Popular Science has a more vague explanation, that I also don't follow[2].
It wastes your time, it wastes the cashier's time. It wastes the time of the people in line behind you. Isn't wasting people's time embarrassing?
Another common cause of credit-card-swipes not working is card declines. It's fairly obvious to the user and cashier, but potentially embarrassing if the people in line behind you assume you've maxed out your credit card/drained your debit card.
It's definitely awkward to have to re-run a card, for a lot of reasons:
At least in the US, there's sort of a social phenomenon of de-emphasizing the payment process at restaurants. Checks are left on the table with a 'whenever you're ready' attitude, and often are not brought until requested. Cards are left on the check and taken away, often silently, to be processed. Checks are kept out-of-sight, for each payer to process individually without a lot of discussion, and tips are usually kept private. All of this amounts to awkwardness if something brings attention to the whole process.
Additionally, since cards are picked up and processed elsewhere, it's awkward for the payer if the waitstaff has to come back and explain that your card didn't work and wait for you to bring out another. Doubly so if they seem busy already, or if you already feel guilty for inconveniencing them by, say, splitting a check in a complex way - which is common for a large class of people, including me. Though I've noticed there's a different large class of people who find this guilt ridiculous.
On top of all this, there's a very real stigma around cards being declined for having insufficient funds. This doesn't really happen in the world of fairly well-off techies, but, running out of money (/ maxing out a credit card) is a very real problem for many people.
Not to mention the awkwardness of 'being the person using newfangled tech'.. and then having it not work on you.
The line behind me wondering why I'm not done yet. Also, by using a Coin, I'm positioning myself as somebody who uses great, new technology. When that fails, it reflects poorly on me. Now I'm the guy who spends money on something that doesn't work, but keeps brandishing it, perhaps for some ego reason.
>I've always been confused about the perceived "embarrassment"
Imagine you've asked someone out on a date and you offer to pick up or even split the check but your card gets declined. I think most people would find this at least moderately embarrassing especially if they don't have a backup payment ready.
I think most nascent tech are buggy. It's part of growing pains. If I'm using something like that, it's mostly to encourage the people behind them by my patronage and for providing them with data from usage outside the controlled environment. I suppose its similar to why there is a community around product hunt, kickstarter etc.
I believe the "embarrassment" trope crops from the misunderstanding behind the motive.
It's embarrassing because it usually/often indicates you have emptied your checking account or maxed out your line of credit. It's an indication for everyone in earshot that you don't have the means to buy what you're trying to buy. At least, that is where many people's minds go first.
If the mag-stripe emulation is just a simple electromagnet, I'm curious how they detected the position of the read-head in order to modulate the magnet correctly to emulate the data that would otherwise be read at that point of a traditional mag-stripe. Or is it more sophisticated still?
My guess is that this is why they have so many problems. I'd guess that there's probably an accelerometer somewhere to give them an idea of what the swipe velocity is, so they can know how fast to play everything back.
But ultimately the way they've chosen to do this seems to be very difficult, especially if those are two very long single coils. It feels like it would be much easier from the software side if they had made them addressable somehow so that they could control every bit individually by either energizing or not energizing a particular coil. Then you'd have eliminated the swipe speed variable from the equation and a lot of complexity would drop right out.
Honestly looking at this teardown I'm surprised it works at all.
Doesn't seem to be any accelerometers anywhere. There are two hidden membrane switches to either side of the coils. The card is probably using the press and release timing of that button as it travels through the reader to guess at the speed of the physical card.
There are patents for dynamic magnetic stripes that have individual coils for each bit. That is probably way too costly for this design, or perhaps too expensive to license it.
I hear you, I got my $50 refund, got some credit for finding a share link for Plastc and felt $100 was worth it for my single attempt at using the tech.
Nope. And I was offered the chance to get the beta or wait for the real thing. I opted for the beta and never received either. The app when pressed would tell me "just wait it's coming"
This is the first time I am reading about this product but why mag stripe over smart cards? isn't it less secure and deprecated technology? it seems very useful but relying on mag stripe isn't the best move, no? Perhaps they couldn't "switch cards" while using smart cards so mag stripe was the only solution?
In the USA, magnetic swipe readers are EVERYwhere. And the collection of credit and debit networks connect every reader with almost every bank. It "just works" everywhere, and it's "impossible" for a retailer to be unable to connect to your bank.
-Chip-and-pin? The card reader probably can't read it.
-Apple/Google wallet and similar services? The card reader probably doesn't have an antenna for it. (Especially small retailers who can't afford the special card reader)
-NFC Visa/Mastercard? The card reader probably doesn't have an antenna for it.
-Paypal? Most retailers aren't set up for it. That's why Paypal issues magnetic cards in the USA.
-Paper checks? Most retailers don't want to lose money on the possibility of fraud. And most card readers can't auto-ACH a check.
Mag stripe readers are everywhere, but the banks have already started migrating over to chip and pin cards (with mag-stripe for backwards compatibility) for new issues. There are still older cards out there that won't expire for probably ~5 years or so, so I expect to see mag stripe readers around for at least that long. But it's fair to call it deprecated, even in the US.
However, the transition is coming to the US sooner rather than later. Banks want to see this transition happen quickly so that they can reduce fraud rates. Merchants that don't want to spend money on new terminals will be prodded along by the banks pushing fraud liability over to them.
This all ultimately means that this iteration of the Coin Card (mag-stripe only) has a pretty limited shelf life.
I keep hearing this, but I got a new Capital One card in the mail literally 2 weeks ago, and still no chip. Same with my Schwab card which is < a year old. I don't get it. (I live in New York FWIW)
If my bank (credit union) has transitioned to chip-and-pin, they have done so without telling me.
The cards they issue are pressed at the main branch; I had to wait while they printed my latest card. The process they use to print doesn't emboss the card - the little numbers don't stick up - and as such they have nearly rubbed off from the card.
I got that most recent card in September of 2012, and it's already wearing out; the magnetic stripe hasn't been reliable for 6 months, and the numbers are so worn off the front that cashiers have trouble hand-entering it. It doesn't even have the Mastercard NFC antenna.
I really, really doubt that most of the USA's banks are anywhere near ready for a transition.
I got a new card (2 years early) to replace a card with an NFC chip. This was Wells Fargo, so bigger than a credit union. I got the replacement, but my wife didn't. I originally had an NFC card, whereas she didn't. I think that the fact that the first NFC translation in a long time was made a few weeks earlier at an airport may have had something to do with the timing.
Regardless, the changeover has already started. It may take a few years to be complete, but the writing is on the wall.
Some small banks will take longer than others to get ready, but many have already started sending out cards with chips when it's time for you to get a new one.
The silly thing is that the US is mostly standardizing on chip and signature, which means that if your card is stolen, it's still easy for criminals to use it until you're able to block it.
Yep, my latest Amex came with a chip, and when I tried to swipe the mag strip at WalMart (don't you judge me) the reader actually said "Must insert card" which was really confusing until I noticed it had a chip reader. Pretty cool.
Target has very quietly replaced all of their terminals with chip/pin readers. It looks like they started shortly after their huge data breach, which makes sense.
I think it's just that it's more resistant to card cloning. The payment terminal makes the chip authenticate itself in some way that run-of-the-mill carders with a card printer and magstripe writer can't counterfeit. I guess the chip or the payment network then request the cardholder's signature, rather than the PIN that chip-and-PIN use.
It's the same in Europe. You can pay everywhere with any debit card. These cards have both a magnetic strip and a chip. The readers have a slot for reading with the strip and reading with the chip. Most shops have taped the magnetic strip slot shut because it's deemed insecure. Indeed, the only reason that Coin works at all is that magnetic strips can be easily copied, also by criminals with fake readers, or criminals who put a small card copy gadget in front of the reading slot of an ATM machine, along with a camera to capture your pin code.
Then again, the whole credit card system which is popular in the US is even more hilariously insecure (you only need a picture of the card!!) and it doesn't seem to have stopped anyone.
The fraud aspect doomed Coin (and probably the similar competitors) from the start, IMO. It either wouldn't catch on (in part due to fraud or fear of fraud). If it did take off initially, we'd enter a carders' utopia where fraud would be easy because merchants would swipe any magstriped gadget without blinking, which would kill Coin when the card networks clamped down. And regardless, it basically only works in the US, where the clock is ticking towards the death of magstripes -- though I guess if they sell tens of thousands of magstripe Coins before that happens, they don't care.
It may be useful for loyalty cards, but even that has similar problems with the cashier being confused/skeptical, or just the hassle of talking about it when you just want to finish your transaction and leave. Apple Pay has apparently opened the way for loyalty cards over NFC[1], so hopefully that will keep spreading both in merchant numbers and availability on other mobile platforms.
The security that a smart card provides would actually prevent a product like this from working because one of the primary purposes of the chip system in CCs is to prevent cloning, but this relies on simply being able to enter your CC number into it.
I can't remember what it was called, but I remember reading about something that does use a chip card and allows you to switch payment providers using a phone app, but they were actually acting as a payment processor and had agreements with the card providers that they support to redirect charges to whoever you had selected at the time.
This is clearly vaporware, or worse yet, a scam. Have they demonstrated a working prototype yet? Everything on that page is renders. If they haven't, there's no way they're shipping it next month. And features like e-ink screen and Chip&Pin cloning make it even less realistic.
Well for them it is money lost due to fraud vs money spent on tech upgrade.
Until money lost to fraud is tolerable banks are not going to upgrade, it also seems that a lot of big banks are very short sighted, like it was with 2008 housing bubble.
Not at all, sounds like you to need a little review yourself [1]. At no point in my comment did I support mag stripe, just simply explain why it's still in widespread use. If you ever have worked in the finance industry you would understand that. Nobody is arguing that it should stay, but it's important to understand WHY they are still around. Just because it's the major standard doesn't make a good one.
Ignorant? Really? I expect more constructive comments here on HN instead of running around and calling people's comments "ignorant". Perhaps you need to review the HN Guidelines [2]. Specifically: 'When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."'
Alas, it will not be happening based on the latest abuse of downvotes on HN.
Being number one out of two means you're the majority. Being number one out of over a hundred does not. You claimed that because the US is number one (with 15.6% of world GDP), the other >100 countries (with 84.4% of world GDP) have "zero weight".
"The rest of the world is irrelevant" doesn't go over well and gets downvoted because it's obviously false.
Right, except it's not in widespread use, it's only in use the USA.
The USA does have a huge economy. However in this matter it does not dictate the standard, and there are more people doing more card transactions outside the US, with non-stripe technologies, than there are in the US doing them with.
Uhhhh...no? I've lived in the US my entire life, and while I've seen pin and chip readers, I've never had a pin and chip card, never known anyone who has ever had one, and never seen one used. Ever.
That'll change very shortly, first of my US credit cards was just reissued with a chip and you can expect that all of yours will be within the next year or so.
Note that it is Chip and Signature though, not chip and pin.
My bank card expires in a couple of years, so we'll see if my next card is chip and pin (or chip and signature). Hopefully, things will have changed by then.
I've had a chip in my card for many years now, but that's probably because it's a "travel" card and it's there so that you can use it abroad. All new replacement cards I've received in the past year or so have had chips. I also see chip readers on terminals at most retailers but curiously they have them turned off for now.
It's deprecated in most of the rest of the world now, we've moved on through chip-cards and now contactless cards. The USA is really behind in credit-card tech.
The Coin card was never going to sell outside the USA (not that that's a small market or anything! But even the US is going to move on eventually).
Well, it's the retailers as well from what I know, national chains in the US have comparatively large existing card-reader estates and they're not keen on replacing them all, or retraining staff. Not that these pressures are unique to the USA but they do seem to have taken prevalence over fraud concerns.
>I was surprised by the number of test pads exposed on the Coin - all those small metallic squares are programing points / test points. This suggests to me that Coin is still going though some debugging since it’s rare to see so many pads still exposed on a shipping product.
Perhaps their tester just couldn't probe the smaller pads/components. In general, any shipping product these days is going to have a significant number of test points, it is just that they are often not explicit.
> It doesn’t look like there are many other products using the 51822
Actually the nRF51822 is starting to pop up in a lot of products, especially those that use BLE. The BBC Micro Bit will be built around it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Bit
How's the toolchain support / dev environment for the Nordic parts these days? I remember the "other" popular chips (TI CC2540 and friends) had a gross and expensive requirement on "IAR Workbench".
Luckily GCC works great with it as it's an ARM Cortex M0. I use the GCC ARM embedded toolchain here and haven't had issues: https://launchpad.net/gcc-arm-embedded The only gotcha is that you need to sign up with an account on Nordic's site to get access to their SDK and libraries, however I'm pretty sure that's just a formality and it's free to sign up (just can't distribute its firmware source, etc).
I'm curious to know whether given proliferation of the NFC alternatives available now like Apple/Google Pay is there a problem that Coin Card addresses which the former don't. Is paying in the restaurants one of those use case or will we see table side point-of-payments in near future which would make it obsolete.
For what it's worth, all of my banks have already replaced my credit cards with chip-and-pin capable ones in preparation for October's rebalancing of fraud liability between merchants and banks. I can't imagine merchants will be too keen to accept these Coin cards.
Are you sure? I ask because the majority of US card issuers have opted to use chip&signature, not chip&pin cards. In my wallet I only have one chip&pin card (Well Fargo). The rest are chip&signature. Whether or not they send you a PIN is a good indicator of which auth method the card supports.
Hmm. Perhaps not... I hadn't heard of chip & signature until your comment. I set the pin online during card activation, and hadn't thought about it closely. So, it obviously must be chip & signature.
Anyway, that doesn't change that you can't clone the chip's contents. Perhaps you could punch the chip out (like a sim) and array a few of them inside a next-gen type of Coin card.
Chip & signature answers the "Amazon laughs at your chip&pin card" loophole I had been sort of half puzzling over.
In Canada, where they have switched to chip-and-pin cards,
the servers bring a terminal to table. Customer puts in card, enters PIN, and enters tip amount. For swipe cards or chip-and-signature, it prints out a receipt to be signed.
Card would still be useful for terminals that don't support NFC payment. Or for larger payments than are allowed with NFC. Or for people who prefer to use cards instead of phone/watch.
It should be possible to use the tokenization system of Apply Pay to have switchable card with chip-only card.
I actually have the Nordic NRF51822 / NRF51 development board and it is super fun to play with. I come from a web dev background so getting into hardware is rough.
The toolchain for building firmware is crazy. It's kind of like in webdev we dynamically generate css through sass and then put it through all these different stages (minification/etc). Except this is all old school Makefiles. Made me cringe a bit.
That is what signature is for, isn't it? If bank can't prove it is your signature then it is a fraudulent transaction. Technically cashier/clerk should not accept the transaction if signature doesn't match but I've rarely seen them check it.
I'm amazed that this idea actually caught on in the first place. "Wait, you mean I can put every single source of (non-cash) money in a single card, for a single point of failure? And if it breaks, I'm effectively penniless? WHERE THE FUCK DO I SIGN UP?!"
Also imagine it gets stolen, good luck remembering all the cards you had in there and banks you need to call. Payment gateway route, like paypal, gives same convenience and less headaches.
Coin is an interesting idea, but I figured https://www.dynamicsinc.com/ would sue the pants off of them for patent infringement once they went to market. Dynamics CEO is a former patent attorney.
dynamics seemed to have all the pieces in place to do the same thing.
