A Few Ideas And Observations

[monkeyo2]

I've been following the developments here on the Pandora with great interest over the last few months, and have been very excited about it as it's exactly the sort of thing I've dreamed of owning for years, and one of the first projects I was going to hire some people to make for me when I won the lottery.

I almost got a GP2X in early 2006, I had one one order, but gp2x.co.uk were between shipments, and I got cold feet after waiting a couple of weeks. I had realised it wasn't really what I wanted, and that I'd only really play Street Fighter II on it, plus CPS2 MAME didn't work at the time. One of the few posts I made here in my previous incarnation as Monkeyo whilst I was waiting for the delivery was me moaning about what I thought the GP2X should be: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showt...28042&st=15

The Pandora, along with the increase in SD card capacities ticks pretty much all those boxes (Reminds self of Ali G claiming to have invented the PS2....).

I later ended up getting a Nokia N800 which I use a lot more that I ever would have a GP2X. I really like my N800, by far the main thing I use it for is surfing the web, reading Slashdot on the toilet is now a reality! But as good as it is, it's still not quite my perfect device. I've long thought that if it had the controls to play Street Fighter and may be a few FPS, could play PAL/NTSC XviD files smoothly without transcodeing, and had a built in screen cover, it would be the ultimate portable device, and the Pandora should do all of these things and more! The only thing I'd miss from the N800 is bluetooth for web access via my N95, but I suspect that could probably be done with a micro to mini USB lead and a driver, and I mainly use WiFi anyway.

I am assuming that Firefox and Flash 9 on the Pandora will be a given as they're already running on the OMAP 2420 based N800 and ARM are working on some linux based ports, can any one confirm or deny this?

Whilst I been regularly trawling through these forums, I've had a few ideas of my own that I thought I'd throw out there into the collective consciousness to see if anyone agrees, may be start a flame war, or probably just get completely ignored.

Firstly on the case, I think the clam shell is absolutely the form factor to go with, simply because it protects the screen and buttons. My N800 fits very comfortably into my trouser pocket, but I'm in constant fear of cracking the screen by knocking into something (I can be a clumsy bastard), or putting my keys in the wrong pocket, the Pandora should be fairly robust by comparison. What I've been thinking though is that it would be good if there was a way of cliping things onto the bottom of it.

The first of these things could simply be a box with 2 additional shoulder buttons, and a short wire to connecting them to the USB port for those who need them for PSX games. If you wanted to get more adventurous, it could also contain a USB hub with some additional USB ports, an IR port, an accelerometer, bluetooth and more SD card slots. In the future, may be Uber Geeks could really go to town; I'm thinking an array of cameras with an accelerometer to make a 3D scanner! Anyway I thought a small change to the case design could open up some very interesting expansion possibilities, and make it the control unit of choice for all sorts of projects. As I type this, it occurs to me that the expansion unit could be built into a replacement battery cover....

Second Idea, I work in Graphic Design, so the ability to use may be a cut down version of GIMP, and ideally a vector drawing program would be a huge bonus to me. Something that I could rough out an idea in on the go, and bring into the CS3 Suite where I got home would be great. The trouble is apart from a bit of Actionscript, I don't really know anything about programming or porting applications. So I was wondering how could experts in the field be encouraged to work one such projects?

I couldn't really afford to pay anyone enough to port a usable version of GIMP, but I'd happily put £10 into a prize fund to be won by the first person who did, and may be if a couple of hundred other people would as well it would become a reality much faster than sitting around hoping someone will do it as a hobby. So what I was thinking is that may be the Pandora website could have a page where people can request projects, pledge money to prizes, and see a list of requested projects, along with the current bounty for submitting a working version of the software that includes all the requested features. It could work on smaller projects to, £30 might be enough to encourage a good developer to iron out a specific bug, or add a new feature.

Final idea (I'll be brief, already been typing too long), Quake 3 engine based Second Life/PS3 Home clone purely for Pandora users, with a way of joining/starting multiplayer emu games.

Edit: Oh yeah, almost forgot to say, Dasher could be a preferable text enty method, and should work well with the analoug sticks: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/

Anyway I'm glad I've finally got all that off my chest. They may not be the greatest ideas and opinions, but I sure they're better than some of the rubbish I've seen posted here!

 

[zaffercharles]

I like the idea of a prize fund. as for the gimp port that'd be good too, considering the touchscreen.

Will we be able to use Deluxe Paint III/IV and would that do you? both questions I'd like an answer to.

 

[efegea]

No need to port the gimp, it's already ported to ARM by debian people

 

[atomicthumbs]

Guys, before asking if somebody will port something to ARM, look in here:

http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages

Make sure there's an ARM package for whatever.

 

[monkeyo2]

I've had a look at Deluxe Paint, and whilst it would be usable for some stuff, it doesn't only appears to support full RGB colour. Also I'm not sure if it would be able to use the Pandora's full screen, but admittedly I don't know much about AmigaOS, so I may be wrong.

I see GIMP for ARM is on debian.org, but I'd have to confess I don't understand enough about linux to really know what that means (n00b!). I've been looking out for GIMP for the N800 for some time, and whilst there's a video of some guy running it http://net9.blogspot.com/2007/04/gimp-running-on-n800.html , it all looks hidiously complex, and has never become available finish installable application. It's also apparently has problems with the N800's 128MB of RAM, the same amount as the Pandora.

When I first started working full time in Graphic Design, I got bought a brand new pre-MMX Pentium 200MHz with 64MB of RAM. When I first used it, I though it was amazing, as I only had a 486 SX 33 at home. I did loads of artwork on it using Photoshop 3, Corel 5 etc., and I would have thought the Pandora specs. are easily superior to such an ancient PC.

I would have thought that a version of GIMP (or any other open source graphics program for that matter), stripped down to the bare bones of what will run well on the Pandora (back to 1994 feature sets, woo Retro!), along with a UI that fits 800x480 would work better than than trying to run the full version. You could also make use of the Pandora's other features, may be adjusting the thickness of the line as you're drawing by using one of the analog sticks, a bit like a poor man's pressure sensitive Wacom screen.

As I said, I don't really know much about Linux software development so may be you'll actually be able to just type apt-get gimp, or what ever, an have everything working nicely. I appriciate it's all speculation at the moment, but is it really likley to be that simple?

 

[danboid]

Monkeyo:

I enjoyed reading your posting as it was interesting to hear from a N800 owner. N810 is significantly better by the sounds of things but still lacks the all-important clamshell form factor that stopped me buying one.

The GIMP will be available and fully-functional on pandora on release - no porting will be required as Pandora will run standard Linux with X11 and this is the platform GIMP was wrote for originally. How well it performs will come down on a large part to how good the Pandora's xorg server (graphics driver) support is. GIMP won't be much fun if TV/monitor out doesn't work properly or you're using an unaccelerated frambuffer (graphics) driver.

The alternative to GIMP is Krita, part of the Koffice graphics suite. It supports CMYK properly and is better than GIMP in many ways. Other top graphics apps for linux include inkscape, XaraLX, Blender, KDEnlive, DeVeDe and winff. If you really wanted you could also run Deluxe Paint under UAE.

 

[Karel Jansens]

On a sidenote: Is the Pandora's screen pressure-sensitive? (the N800's is)

 

[monkeyo2]

Wow, I think I'm getting even more excited about the Pandora than I already was! I've not really had much cause to use with GIMP, having always had the luxuary of having Photoshop, but I've been having a play (admittedly with the Windows version), trying to gauge how well it would work on an 800x480 screen, and whilst the interface may need a bit of a tweak, I'm starting to think that the Pandora's graphic design capabilities might be more than just a gimmick, and actually really quite good. I think a lot of it will be to do with how quickly the touch screen can keep up with what you're drawing, but if it's anywhere near as responsive as my old bottom of the range consumer Wacom, it could be like having a pocket sized digital sketch book.

I do think it would benefit for a bit of customisation for the Pandora (Pandoraisation?) to work really well. If the pallets and menu could collapse into a thin strip down the side, Photoshop CS3 style, you could maximise the drawing area whilst still having everything close to hand. If the palettes gracefully slid in and out Mac style, which I gather they could using beryl, I could see lots of designers running out and buying it for this alone, with the mediaplayer, games and web access just being an added bonus. I don't think using a stylus on the top half of a clamshell device is going to be too much of a problem, as the amount of pressure you have to use on the N800 would only move a very loose hinge. I also think, assuming the Pandora is comfortable to hold in one hand whilst using the stylus, using the shoulder button, D-Pad and analogue stick in conjunction with the stylus could open some interesting possibilities for all sorts of things, and not just in GIMP. Could 3D modelling on the go be possible?

I went to a trade show in Amsterdam earlier this year (lucky me), and felt all futuristic taking the SD card out of my camera, and emailing the photos from my N800 on the show floor. At the time, I thought it would be pretty good if I could crop them and do a bit of colour correction on them before sending, and it looks like that should easily be possible with the Pandora. I was also pleased when it was announced the there would be two SD card slots, like the N800, so you can have all your stuff on one card, and have another slot free. I think that could make it very useful for digital photographers.

On the subject of SD cards, does anyone know if SDIO devices will be usable with the Pandora? Last time I looked into it, there appeared to be patent problems in using them with Linux, but there seems to be a few projects working on it now. Using some of these on the Pandora would be pretty cool though: http://www.sdcard.com/usa/TextPage.asp?Page=5

 

[Mr B]

GIMP on this thing would be great, but, as you say, the touchscreen have to be pretty fast to keep up with sketching. However, and the issue has been mentiond b4, i think there will be a problem with intensive touchscreen use on this design. If the screen is pressure sensitive as well, then its even worse. A 2 folds hinge which folds over backwards would give a unit that lets you use the touchscreen only, and have no risk of it moving as you press in to it. The bad thing would of course be that you would have the keyboard, and gamepad exposed to the table, or hand where the Panda is resting. Sutch a design would extend some extra flexibility to the system, but also add some difficulties to the design. How do you make sure it still stands up on its own, when you want to watch a movie? Play a game wit the gamepad? And so on.
B!

 

[magicman5421]

maybe if there was some way of manually locking the screen in a specific position while you were using the touch screen for whatever would be a good option.

 

[monkeyo2]

I got round to printing EvilDragon's life size render today and having a go on it, and it seems to me that you'd need to have the almost Pandora fully open (flat) to be able to draw on the screen comfortably. I can't get my wrist close enough to the screen with it in a laptop like, half open (L shape) position. As long as the screen doesn't go back too far when fully open for tablet use (may be 165° or so, a bit less than fully flat), and can hold it's own weight and stay where it is at any other angle for watching films, games, internet radio, etc., I don't think using the touch screen is going to be too much of a problem. I'm not sure holding it in one hand, with your thumb and finger on the analouge stick and shoulder button is going to be comfortable for extended periods, but I hope it will be as I like the idea of changing the thickness and colour of you stroke independantly as your drawing by using the X and Y position of the thumb stick.

I've been playing with Sketch (a very basic drawing program that comes with the N800), and whilst it not the most feature rich of applications (there's a paint brush, a line tool, a couple of shapes (square and circle if you must know), and an eraser, it makes MS Paint seem advanced), it is still possible to draw reasonably well with it:

It's not perfect (see above... rubbish drawing's all the rage at the moment, don't you read Computer Arts!), and you can't draw too quickly, but I think it shows that the Pandora's screen should be capable of being used for graphics, assuming it's as good as the N800's. Just by adding multiple undos, layers, a zoom and additive painting to Sketch, you could do some pretty creative stuff. Running GIMP or Krita would be superb. If there's a GNU vector program that could smooth out your strokes after you've drawn them, and remain editable, like you can with Flash, you could get some really good results.

I had a look at the other open source packages danboid suggested, and if Koffice, XaraLX or Blender are really feasible, the Pandora is going to be amazing. I'm trying not to get too excited, as it all seems a bit too good to be true, but the idea of carrying a graphics studio in my pocket is very appealing. I've always been aware of the open source alternatives of the graphics software I use (mainly all the CS3 packages and Cinema 4D), but I've never really had any impetus to learn or use them as they didn't really offer anything I couldn't already do. But the possibility that I could have a device in my pocket that runs all these programs changes everything, as you can't do that with Adobe software. May be the ability to use these creative packages anywhere will open them up to loads of people who would normally have stuck with with commercial packages, especially if they could potentially at some point in the future buy a Pandora with them all pre-installed for a measlier £200.

If Beryl could run on the Pandora alongside a couple of creative applications, the spinning the cube to switch between different desktops thing could be very useful for dealing with the limited screen space, and that along with all the menus squirting in and out would make onlooker gasp in amazement.

So is this actually possible? Again, I realise it's all speculation at the moment, but would anyone care to speculate whether running, GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, Koffice or XaraLX (ideally with Beryl spicing things up), falls into the "Yeah, well have that up and running in no time" category, the "Well may be, in time, we might be able to do some of those things, but they'll be really slow" category, or the "You must be out of your god dammed mind!" category?

 

[monkeyo2]

I've just been looking at Colors! for the DS, and I'm now more convinced that the Pandora is going to be a great device for digital artists. Anyone who doubts this is possible on such a small device should have a look at their user gallery. The only question that remains is how well the Pandora's touch screen compares to the DS's or the N800's. If it is as good, and (hope of hopes) is also pressure sensitive, this thing is going to be great!!!!!!!!!

Vision of near future:

It occurred to me a while back that, approximately, with computers, if at any time you get the most powerful computer available to businesses, give it around ten years, and you'll be able to have something similarly as powerful on your desktop. Give it around twenty years, and you'll be able to have it in your pocket. In the Eighties computer got to the stage that they were powerful enough for commercial DTP, looks like we've now reached the stage where we can have it in our pockets!

When I first started reading "the monster thread", I was very interested, but though the Pandora risked ending up being design by committee and that the Pandora team risked ending up like Osbourne Computer, preannouncing the product so far in advance of release when some of them sell GP2Xs. I'm now starting to think it could end up as Spectrum / Amiga of the new millennium! The biggest problem I can envisage is a big company stealing the idea, and making a cheaper sexier version, but who? Sony and Nokia wouldn't want to eat into N-Gage and PSP game sale by releasing an open gaming system. Apple's never really been big on gaming and would have to DRM the thing to death. Dell and ASUS and the other big name PC makers wouldn't want to upset Intel and Microsoft. Possibly Samsung? But anyway, Craigix, MWesten, EvilDragon and Co. might be able to become the new Clive Sinclairs. I salute you sirs! (I'd suggest not going onto the C5 for the new millennium if the Pandora's a success though).

When I found out about the Pandora's impending existence, I thought I want one of those, but I'll probably wait til the MK2 comes out, but now I'm thinking (especially after Craigix's recent comments on the distributors thread) I want to get on that train as soon as possible, I WANT TO BE ONE OF THE FIRST 3 THOUSAND!!!!!