Busy, busy, busy... that what describes my life best right now.
That's also why you haven't seen me posting a lot at the boards... I had a lot of projects (with my TV company) which had deadlines I had to keep, so I worked on them during the daytime and on Pyra-related stuff during the nighttime.
Now most of those deadline-projects are finished so I finally find some time to give you some updates!
1. Boards and more prototypes
zmatt has already received his prototype and has already submitted quite a lot of patches.
One of the most important one probably is that he enabled the 4GB RAM in U-Boot.
We haven't done extensive testing of that yet in Linux, but there's no reason those 4GB RAM shouldn't work fine. We might need to optimize the timings a bit, but that's probably it.
He also enabled one feature of the OMAP5 which made all prototype boards we have now run at 1.5GHz as well (Nikolaus even tested some up to 1.7GHz)!
Yep, you read correctly: We've got them running at 1.5GHz now!
Does that mean all that optimizing and testing was for naught?
No, certainly not. Two of the prototype boards are pretty unreliable - and the unoptimized PCB could be the reason for that, as each OMAP5 has different tolerances and it might be "too noisy" for some.
The better your board is optimized, the less likely are problems deriving from that.
So, Nikolaus has tested all boards and made a few fixes to them (nothing major) and gave them to me so I can assemble more prototypes.
I've only got four clear cases left right now (more on that further down) so I can't build that many prototypes yet, but each prototype in the capable hands of a dev is a great addition.
Nikolaus also made the changes to the mainboard (including Wifi antenna optimizations) and already sent them to Global Components.
Which means: We can order these as well - so much for the main hardware
2. The cases
We've found another two last-minute changes for the cases:
Both issues have already been fixed in the mold and according to FormAction, the new cases will be produced on Monday and then sent to us.
Hopefully the final revision as well!
3. The keymat
The company that produces the keymat was also working very hard to find out the reasons the keymat was a bit inconsistent.
They also noticed the issue of the case I mentioned above
The reason for the varying quality of the key was the use of a primer.
The primer makes glueing the keycaps onto the keymat a lot easier, however it seems to affect the keymat.
They will use a stencil layer so that the primer will ONLY be where the keys are glued, so it can't affect the keymat itself.
Additionally, the material will be changed as well: Did you know that there exists a silicone made especially for gaming pads? I didn't - and they also didn't. But they'll use that now.
The new samples are planned to arrive here in week 12 - and then they REALLY should be ready for mass production as well.
4. The LCD Cable
Nothing special here, just a quick note of a small improvement of the LCD Cable:
We increased the length by 5mm and added small ears at the display-board side of the cable as well.
This doesn't have anything to do with functionality, it just makes assembling the unit a lot easier.
So much for todays news.
Pretty good ones, I think. And showing that we're getting there in a good pace. Always moving forward
That's also why you haven't seen me posting a lot at the boards... I had a lot of projects (with my TV company) which had deadlines I had to keep, so I worked on them during the daytime and on Pyra-related stuff during the nighttime.
Now most of those deadline-projects are finished so I finally find some time to give you some updates!
1. Boards and more prototypes
zmatt has already received his prototype and has already submitted quite a lot of patches.
One of the most important one probably is that he enabled the 4GB RAM in U-Boot.
We haven't done extensive testing of that yet in Linux, but there's no reason those 4GB RAM shouldn't work fine. We might need to optimize the timings a bit, but that's probably it.
He also enabled one feature of the OMAP5 which made all prototype boards we have now run at 1.5GHz as well (Nikolaus even tested some up to 1.7GHz)!
Yep, you read correctly: We've got them running at 1.5GHz now!
Does that mean all that optimizing and testing was for naught?
No, certainly not. Two of the prototype boards are pretty unreliable - and the unoptimized PCB could be the reason for that, as each OMAP5 has different tolerances and it might be "too noisy" for some.
The better your board is optimized, the less likely are problems deriving from that.
So, Nikolaus has tested all boards and made a few fixes to them (nothing major) and gave them to me so I can assemble more prototypes.
I've only got four clear cases left right now (more on that further down) so I can't build that many prototypes yet, but each prototype in the capable hands of a dev is a great addition.
Nikolaus also made the changes to the mainboard (including Wifi antenna optimizations) and already sent them to Global Components.
Which means: We can order these as well - so much for the main hardware
2. The cases
We've found another two last-minute changes for the cases:
- The shoulderbuttons were okay, but I could easily improve them by removing about 0.3mm plastic with a knife.
- The keyboard area was a bit too narrow (for some reason, the molds were off 0.6mm compared to the 3D data) and therefore made the normal keyboard keys a bit harder to press.
Both issues have already been fixed in the mold and according to FormAction, the new cases will be produced on Monday and then sent to us.
Hopefully the final revision as well!
3. The keymat
The company that produces the keymat was also working very hard to find out the reasons the keymat was a bit inconsistent.
They also noticed the issue of the case I mentioned above
The reason for the varying quality of the key was the use of a primer.
The primer makes glueing the keycaps onto the keymat a lot easier, however it seems to affect the keymat.
They will use a stencil layer so that the primer will ONLY be where the keys are glued, so it can't affect the keymat itself.
Additionally, the material will be changed as well: Did you know that there exists a silicone made especially for gaming pads? I didn't - and they also didn't. But they'll use that now.
The new samples are planned to arrive here in week 12 - and then they REALLY should be ready for mass production as well.
4. The LCD Cable
Nothing special here, just a quick note of a small improvement of the LCD Cable:
We increased the length by 5mm and added small ears at the display-board side of the cable as well.
This doesn't have anything to do with functionality, it just makes assembling the unit a lot easier.
So much for todays news.
Pretty good ones, I think. And showing that we're getting there in a good pace. Always moving forward
