I think in their testing Alesis must have just worn the hell out of the spring. Its only purpose is putting pressure on the HH controller. If they used a mechanism that provided _zero_ resistance to existing hihat assemblies (...I'd think making the cymbals heavier would be an obvious solution), it would work far better.
On a semi-related note, I'd be interested to talk to a patent attorney regarding the patent on the Hall effect sensor. I had asked a buddy who does EE professionalls how he would make a hihat controller. After I explained which part of the kit a hihat was, he told me about this interesting behavior of perpendicular magnetic fields and how you could easily use it to detect hi hat states. That was his first solution to the problem - which tells me the US PTO granted a patent that doesn't pass the 2 major tests of novel and non-obvious. In fact, if you google "hall effect patent", you'll see a number of ridiculous things people have patented implementing what effectively is e=mc2. A well understood property of physics applied to X. Just like all the ridiculous patents for "... on the Internet" and nearly _ANY_ patent involving software.
I have a feeling Alesis doesn't pursue the legal route because they have some ridiculous patents themselves. In fact - they patented their hi-hat implementation. The problem - again - the notion of making an electronic hihat function like a real hihat, using the exact same principles they utilized on the non-"real" hihat controllers (it's an expression pedal with a spring - I use one to have spring-loaded wah on my Nord keyboard)... but moving the pieces around. The only reason they filed it in the first place was to stifle competition. That way they can charge ridiculous amounts of money for putting $120 worth of parts in a plastic case (the screen is the most expensive component followed by the custom PCBs) and selling it for $1k+. Yeah, Roland does it too - and the most noticeable effect of lack of competition is we, the customers, pay ridiculous amounts for sub-par technology.
A motivated person with basic EE knowledge could take an Arduino unit (2 teensy boards would work well), a Raspberry PI, and one of many available hi-fi audio DACs and build their own sans screen (if you can program an Arduino, writing a software interface becomes trivial) for under $100. Yes, you have to get samples - there are at least a dozen commercially available drum sample packages under $100 that are of equal or better quality to the samples on the Strike. And when I say "trivial", it is for any decent EE with a bit of CS knowledge. The software interface Alesis created is the most naive implementation available. No tricky proprietary protocols or drivers - they just expose the SD card port. Windows has support for SD cards over USB built in. A comp sci student could implement it with an Arduino in an afternoon.
TLDR: Alesis could double what they spend on building the Strike and still make money hand over fist. In fact they could crush Roland in the market by doing so... I don't know what is stopping them.
If anyone from Alesis is reading this post - I write boring L2/L3 networking code for cloud/SDN right now...and while the packet-switched network is the greatest invention of the 20th century, music is the greatest invention of mankind and I'd vastly prefer using my skills and knowledge "in concert" (heh) with a company that has established manufacturing facilities and brand recognition. Else I'm going to save my pay for the next 6 months, quit my day job, and start making drum controllers that the folks at Steven Slate have designs for but prefer not to bleed the golden goose. The ADC routines for triggering are public knowledge and there's a piece of hardware everyone carries with them that would make a fantastic configuration interface. I've already prototyped the "run 2 teensy slaves using the Pi as the master" and am currently evaluating SoCs to replace the Pi. nVidia's Xavier product looks like the ideal solution and I'm just waiting to get my hands on the dev kit...
</rant>