Another week has passed, so it's time to let you know what we've been doing.
1. Physical Dummy
Right now, we got two main priorities: Getting the case designers a PCB with the most important details so they can work on the case and getting the LCD to work.
We received three of those dummy PCBs on Wednesday and populated the parts that are important most important for the basic case design - this includes all big parts like the 3G Antenna, the volume wheel, the SIM Card Slot as well as the ports, nubs and shoulder buttons.
Two of these non-functional PCBs are shipping to the designer in Greece next week.
As you can see, on the back there are two big USB 2.0 Host Ports as well as a Micro USB 3.0 OTG Port (which will also be used for charging the unit).
Then you can see a Micro HDMI Port and the headphones / headset port.
We originally had a USB / eSATA-Combi port planned, but we couldn't find a one that suits our needs (Surface mount).
Also, size would be an issue - we could either fit normal size USB ports or one USB / eSATA-Combi port.
It's probably more useful to have two USB Ports (to connect a mouse and keyboard, for example, or two game pads, etc.) than an eSATA Port - especially as most externa harddisks probably use USB.
2. Qualcomm and AllWinner A80
As you know from the last blog post, Qualcomm and AllWinner might also be candidates to sell the SoC to us.
I've explained what we need, etc. to both our contact at Qualcomm and to AllWinner.
Qualcomm didn't reply yet (I'll let you know once they do!) and AllWinner replied... but the mail sounded to me like they don't know yet when the A80 or any devboards will be available and whether they can sell it in small quantities...
I'll try to find out more, but right now, it still seems like the OMAP5 is our best guess.
3. OMAP5 speed and power usage
Which brings us to our next topic - the OMAP5 speed and power usage.
Well, that's what my focus was last week.
We can't do full power comsumption tests yet, as the power saving features are not yet fully optimized and included in the kernel (basically the same as the Pandora was before notaz implemented them (SuperZaxxon with Kernel 3.2)), but I could do some tests and make assumptions.
Based on my measurements, the OMAP5 uses less power than the OMAP3 for the same processing power.
So basically, you could limit the Pyra to be the speed of the Pandora and the battery should last longer (this could be some low-power mode).
Of course, with full processing power, the power consumption is higher than what the Pandora can do.
Running with full speed and full CPU usage, the battery would probably last 2 - 3 hours.
Don't worry though - in normal use you normally won't have 100% CPU usage all the time with both cores, so in reality, the battery time will quite a bit longer, probably 6 - 7 hours for more-demanding emulators.
Still, we are thinking of increasing the battery size a bit to get more capacity into it - without increasing the case size too much, of course.
With full speed, the Pyra should be about 5 - 6 times as fast as the Pandora (depending on the application), which is pretty neat.
Enough for a snappy and responsive desktop, fast webbrowsing, graphics editing or PSP, DreamCast and N64-Emulation.
4. MIPI - getting there!
Nikolaus was working hard to get the LCD to work - with a some huge steps forward.
The basic communication with the LCD is now working fine (so MIPI is working).
He can read out and set registers - but we didn't get the picture yet onto the LCD.
We're still missing the initialization routine, but hopefully we'll get them from LG this week.
If not, we have some backup plans (like working together with a member of the MIPI Alliance or - in worst case - become one ourselves. This will give us all documentation and tools we need).
Well, at least we can now talk to the display and get a reaction
The hardware part is working fine, I'm sure we can get the rest to work as well.
5. What's next
With the Dummy PCBs, the case designers can now on the case design.
Next week, I'll check all the logo suggestions you made on the boards, so that we'll finally have a logo.
I'll also have a meeting with a company in Munich that produces keymats, so we won't have to go to China to produce those as well.
I'm also following the boards for any questions that occur and discussions that happen.
I've seen a discussion about the price - well, it seems that a no one really knows how a price is calculated.
Since stuff like that is also part of the Pyra experience (follow us and learn how everything works), I'll explain everything about that in one of the next blog posts. It's certainly pretty interesting.
That's it for today. As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them here
1. Physical Dummy
Right now, we got two main priorities: Getting the case designers a PCB with the most important details so they can work on the case and getting the LCD to work.
We received three of those dummy PCBs on Wednesday and populated the parts that are important most important for the basic case design - this includes all big parts like the 3G Antenna, the volume wheel, the SIM Card Slot as well as the ports, nubs and shoulder buttons.
Two of these non-functional PCBs are shipping to the designer in Greece next week.
As you can see, on the back there are two big USB 2.0 Host Ports as well as a Micro USB 3.0 OTG Port (which will also be used for charging the unit).
Then you can see a Micro HDMI Port and the headphones / headset port.
We originally had a USB / eSATA-Combi port planned, but we couldn't find a one that suits our needs (Surface mount).
Also, size would be an issue - we could either fit normal size USB ports or one USB / eSATA-Combi port.
It's probably more useful to have two USB Ports (to connect a mouse and keyboard, for example, or two game pads, etc.) than an eSATA Port - especially as most externa harddisks probably use USB.
2. Qualcomm and AllWinner A80
As you know from the last blog post, Qualcomm and AllWinner might also be candidates to sell the SoC to us.
I've explained what we need, etc. to both our contact at Qualcomm and to AllWinner.
Qualcomm didn't reply yet (I'll let you know once they do!) and AllWinner replied... but the mail sounded to me like they don't know yet when the A80 or any devboards will be available and whether they can sell it in small quantities...
I'll try to find out more, but right now, it still seems like the OMAP5 is our best guess.
3. OMAP5 speed and power usage
Which brings us to our next topic - the OMAP5 speed and power usage.
Well, that's what my focus was last week.
We can't do full power comsumption tests yet, as the power saving features are not yet fully optimized and included in the kernel (basically the same as the Pandora was before notaz implemented them (SuperZaxxon with Kernel 3.2)), but I could do some tests and make assumptions.
Based on my measurements, the OMAP5 uses less power than the OMAP3 for the same processing power.
So basically, you could limit the Pyra to be the speed of the Pandora and the battery should last longer (this could be some low-power mode).
Of course, with full processing power, the power consumption is higher than what the Pandora can do.
Running with full speed and full CPU usage, the battery would probably last 2 - 3 hours.
Don't worry though - in normal use you normally won't have 100% CPU usage all the time with both cores, so in reality, the battery time will quite a bit longer, probably 6 - 7 hours for more-demanding emulators.
Still, we are thinking of increasing the battery size a bit to get more capacity into it - without increasing the case size too much, of course.
With full speed, the Pyra should be about 5 - 6 times as fast as the Pandora (depending on the application), which is pretty neat.
Enough for a snappy and responsive desktop, fast webbrowsing, graphics editing or PSP, DreamCast and N64-Emulation.
4. MIPI - getting there!
Nikolaus was working hard to get the LCD to work - with a some huge steps forward.
The basic communication with the LCD is now working fine (so MIPI is working).
He can read out and set registers - but we didn't get the picture yet onto the LCD.
We're still missing the initialization routine, but hopefully we'll get them from LG this week.
If not, we have some backup plans (like working together with a member of the MIPI Alliance or - in worst case - become one ourselves. This will give us all documentation and tools we need).
Well, at least we can now talk to the display and get a reaction
The hardware part is working fine, I'm sure we can get the rest to work as well.
5. What's next
With the Dummy PCBs, the case designers can now on the case design.
Next week, I'll check all the logo suggestions you made on the boards, so that we'll finally have a logo.
I'll also have a meeting with a company in Munich that produces keymats, so we won't have to go to China to produce those as well.
I'm also following the boards for any questions that occur and discussions that happen.
I've seen a discussion about the price - well, it seems that a no one really knows how a price is calculated.
Since stuff like that is also part of the Pyra experience (follow us and learn how everything works), I'll explain everything about that in one of the next blog posts. It's certainly pretty interesting.
That's it for today. As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them here
