Pandora; open source handheld console II

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Here we go with the latest updates for the hungry masses!
First, my apologies for not updating the site a lot. That WiFi issue really did wear me out, I wasn't able to do much during that time. We all were a bit demotivated, but now that WiFi's working, we've recovered and are working fullspeed ahead!
Sorry for that, but after all, we're only human beings, too... and after years of constant work on the Pandora and our normal jobs... well, things can get a bit hard.



1. The hardware

Michael has finished working on WiFi and did manage to get it working quite well. Stable websurfing at about 500 KB/s. He tried webbrowsing, streaming music, etc.
This put our minds on ease, we really were quite scared when we found out about WiFi.
We now got FULLY WORKING HARDWARE, as we got drivers for EVERY component!

As can be seen on this picture, there's a lot of boxes shipping to UK. Some might go to Turkey, as Fatih got hold of a company who usually does laptop repairs, and they might help to fix the WiFi on the already produced 700 boards to speed things up a bit.

Boxes full of Boards and LCDs
Boxes full of B...
Boxes full of Boards and LCDs Boxes full of Boards and LCDs

This whole WiFi issue did throw as back a few weeks - but I hope you all do agree it's better we took the two weeks finding out what the problem was. Otherwise, you would've been gotten Pandoras with broken WiFi... not a good idea, if you ask me.
This seemed to happen for a big, well-known company whose latest product has serious WiFi issues (and WiFi working much worse than ours...)
We rather ship you something working - even if it did delay things by two or three more weeks!


2. The cases

While Michael was working on WiFi, the Chinese were working on increasing the case quality.
And we really do think it was worth the extra time - especially the final one that has some paint added looks spot-on!
Way better than anything we've seen before!

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Just compare that to an older version of the case...

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Was it worth it? That's up to decide for yourself. We sure do think so.

Unfortunately, adding paint did lead to one thing that has to be done: As it makes the case a bit thicker, Michael needs to approve that case and therefore is waiting for a sample.
To speed production up, Fatih will visit the company in China if necessary to make sure they won't mess around more but start shipping!
They still have a few days to ship, as applying the WiFi fix to the boards will take a while.

One thing that might interest you: You might have seen that they also painted a pink version of the Pandora... Michael will most probably put a Rev 4 board in and sell it on eBay soon!
Yep, that Prototype will probably be out shortly before we assemble and ship!

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So if you want to own this case, keep your eyes on our blog!

Oh, some might think Painting is cheating... well, not really.
A lot of companies actually do it that way - and it doesn't wear off. Remember the old Nintendo DS? Not the DS Lite, but the old silvergrey one? I got one. Never had a carry case, it's really scratched (even the LCD is scratched).
But only on one corner it can be seen it's painted - and only because the base plastic color was white.
So black with black won't wear off - don't worry. It will simply LOOK better.


3. The software

I'm currently doing a lot of neat scripts while DJWillis prepare the image for the NAND.
Today I did create an LCD Gamma Manager - a small tool where you can create, load and save various LCD Gamma settings. I also created one that looks like an old CRT TV. Really cool - emulation on a handheld has never looked better!
To check out what's happening on the OS, simply go to http://git.openpandora.org

As Midori was a bit unstable and FireFox eating up RAM, we changed browsers once again. Arora is now included in the OS. Fast, without any rendering issues and it didn't crash yet for me.
The OS is getting more and more complete.


That's it for now - as soon as I know any more information (shipping dates for the cases, dates when we all meet in England, etc.), I'll inform you!
And sorry to my German readers: I'll translate the post tomorrow, it's 5:50 am now, I want to go to bed...

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Geez, I'm sick of these blog posts with suggestions as fact. Nothing is going to Turkey. Fatih suggested it. ED promoted it. Craig shot it down. End of story. Thousands of dollars have been spent setting up the hall in England and more shipping means more delays, more cost and possibly more taxes. It was a nice idea to spare my sanity having to solder 800 boards (don't forget all those rev4s still ready for devs and the Press) but that is just how it has to be. I'll do what I have to do to get it done faster and that is the reality of my life for the past two years. After reading ED's blog post it doesn't look like he actually said anything other than suggesting things but it's not a fault of the forum to read something and not at least consider it to be the plan. It's not.

The parts from Texas are in the air already and they are going to England. The cases will be shipped on Saturday April 17th (unpainted) or on Tuesday April 20th (painted). Silk screening would mean shipping them on Friday April 23rd and we saw more samples that were a bit better but still not great. Why is that so hard to do? Why haven't they made thousands yet? It baffles me too but from what I hear, they know we are unhappy and keep trying to impress us to no end...and it isn't happening although I have to say seeing the painted cases was the first time I started to feel like this could actually work. I'm pretty picky and perhaps more so than many forumers but I just want a professional product. We'll see what we get in the end. We actually never asked them to keep trying things like they have done. They've just sort of forced that on us by never having anything ready to ship. I'm not sure ED really understood that from Fatih and saying we told them to keep taking their time making it perfect is so not true. It was more like "well, um, if you think that is best...I guess we have a wifi issue we could work on while these delays happen".

The current problem with the painting idea is that they need to take a PCB I sent them and put a painted unit together to be sure that tolerances still exist. Unlike those pictures you have seen of the black and pink one, doing thousands will be done in a professional and dust free environment should we chose to do that. A few extra days while we prepare other stuff like opening up boxes and soldering resistors? Hmmn, it might actually be worth it.

I asked Fatih to ask them about the durability of the paint. Yes, I go through Fatih again because going direct seems to go no where these days. They answer to the one making the purchase orders. He said they tried applying stickers and scratching the paint with a knife and were happy with the test results. I mentioned that we were more interested in more general rubbing and finger grease/salts. I also asked him to find out exactly what kind of paint they will use so we can research its durability. If this all gets done before Friday, no time will be lost since I guess they are still building final cases themselves this week. Can I get a collective: WTF? I hear ya.

So the deal is still that I fly to England as soon as I know those cases have taken off. I will make sure the hall is prepared as I want it and maybe double check the wiring to be sure stations are properly grounded. Craig and I will go through the boxes from Texas and be sure it is all there and okay. I'm also going to ship lots of stuff from my own office here so that I am certain I have the tools I've used all along. I'll do the resistor mod while the cases are in the air and when they get there, we'll throw hundreds together immediately following that. As long as the case company can finally get it together this time, we can still start shipping these out to customers at the end of the month. That's the real plan.

Oh, I should also add that production of the remaining boards from the 4000 has been resumed. Once the wifi fix had been verified to make wireless transactions work and reliably so (maybe not at break neck speeds but I still think there is some software work to do as download rates are totally variable based on CPU speed), I emailed them to continue on with the part change as part of the remaining build process.


Michael

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Wow! A lot of new informations I didn't know yet!
I did ask for recent stuff happening via mail, but it looks the replies didn't make it in time when I did the post, so all I knew was what we were evaluating.

Thanks for clearing up Michael and sorry to anyone who was scared or pissed off by my blog post.
I should stop posting and do more scripting for the time being...

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Behold, a painted and assembled Pandora. Click to zoom and enhance, and be warned, they’re large. As outlined in Tuesday’s festival of edits, the only verification needed on these painted cases was that they would fit together nicely. The factory has had a set of Pandora internals on hand for some time, so were able to throw this together and confirm that none of the finely tuned case tolerances are upset by the lick of paint. (They’ve also sent MWeston a painted review case, but only because it was easier for him to to say yes than no. He doesn’t need to wait for it.)

Now all that needs to be decided is whether 1,000 cases ship out of China on April 17 unpainted, or April 20 painted (dates provided by case factory, grain of salt and all that). In the meantime, a literal ton of boards, LCDs, nubs and other ephemera will be dumped on Craig’s doorstep any day now. They’ll need several days to unpack it all and prepare the assembly hall for action, days which may be well spent getting those cases painted. With the 17th only two sleeps away, we should expect a decision to be announced very soon.

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[Update] EvilDragon tweets:

50% of the case parts of the Pandora are produced already. So of some parts already exists 1000 pcs and the rest is in production. Woot!

Clarification on that second sentence: There are already 1,000 pieces of some case parts produced.

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Op maandag 19 april 2010 00:02 schreef SinofEnvy het volgende:


En nee, ik verwacht niet dat het ding een volledig OS draait,

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Okay, now for some real news:

As you probably already found out, there was a volcanic eruption in Iceland which caused chaos to the european air traffic. No flights are currently going to and from UK. As the boards in Dallas were already picked up last week, we hoped that they were already in UK, maybe sitting at the customs, when that all happened.
Well, unfortunately, that was not the case. They didn't go on a direct flight from Dallas to UK, but were routed via some other airport in USA. And that's where they are still waiting for the moment. I guess 1t shipments do not go the same routes a small packages

UPS is currently rerouting their shipments, we don't have an update yet when the boards will arrive, but I'm sure UPS is working as fast as possible to get it all sorted out. The production of the remaining boards is still going on, of course.

Next, onto the cases:

Since the volcanic eruption gave us some more time, we decided to tweak the cases some mor.... naaaah! Just kidding!

The first 1000 cases have been fully produced and will be painted black!

I'll let you know as soon a we get more information from UPS on when the shipping will continue. As long as the cases aren't finished painting, we won't have lost any time due to the volcano. Let's just hope it REALLY decides to stop spitting ash into the air and the delivery services will catch up with the lost days soon!

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Op dinsdag 20 april 2010 02:30 schreef Clownbaby het volgende:
Wat een lelijk chinees namaak uiterlijk heeft dit apparaatje, de specificaties zijn ook niet bepaald bijzonder te noemen, wat een tijdverspilling. Erg gênant dit voor de TS.

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cragix twitter:

I'm in a state of absolute rage. UPS left all the Pandora boards outside at a neighboring business - anyone could have walked off with them.