Besides gaming, what do you use your pandora for?

[TDT]

Thanks everyone for posting how you use the pandora.

There's a lot of good ideas here, things that my tablet aren't already doing. I'm going to work part of this weekend getting things setup on there. My goal is, by the time the pyra comes around, that I have pretty much my workflow known, so I make more use of the Pyra than I have with the Pandora.

The big ones that I want to integrate:
- IRC
- Sudoku
- Music
- Note Taking
- Obvious gaming
- KeePass
- GTD (Maybe have a way to sync with OmniFocus2)
- Anki (some...I use iKnow for my Japanese study, may try to integrate more Anki)

The links of 'my day with the pandora' are really useful. http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=switchguiopenbox is something I also plan on doing.

 

[Farox]

the second. I remember I always used to use the first, last night I tried the second.

oops you are right...i was running codeblocks cli in background...so it found all missing libs.
I'll repackage and publish an updated revision.

Thanks

 

[atari_afternoon]

Thanks so much, Farox will report then.
And sorry for OT.

 

[Farox]

Thanks so much, Farox will report then.
And sorry for OT.

it's updated

 

[ElPoco]

- Accounting for a non-profit organization (since my desktop PC was inaccessible for some time (in a room filled with "to sort" boxes), I had to use my Pandora to edit the spreadsheets)
- On business trips when I don't need to do any dev, I just take my Pandora. It's enough for LibreOffice presentation, note-taking and documents viewing/editing.

 

[KickAss]

Especially when combined to the absolute control we have over it (i wrote scripts to underclock my pandora depending on what i do to save power, force the screen off etc). I rarely get less than 80hours battery time on my pandora before i need to recharge and often go in the 130-140hours (not intensive use mind you), but the fact that i dont have to worry about charging it every day and that i know its battery will last me a while is great. Even if the battery is at 15% i know it will last more than long enough for me to do whatever i needed to do until i reach a point where i can charge it .

mind sharing these scripts?
pretty please

 

[FBnil]

mind sharing these scripts?

C'mon... WIKI man! WIKI!

How do I set up a script to run before/after a specific PND runs?
(Using pnd_run.sh or as of Zaxxon HF6 Alpha 1)
The pandora will look in the program's appdata folder for a bash script named PND_pre_script.sh to run before the PND is run, and PND_post_script.sh to run on the PND's closing.
All information pulled from [2] and may be subject to change due to updates.

Now, the problem with these pre/post scripts is that they run as the user, and not as root. And changing the display intensity, or the cpu speed requires root.
There is SUID, where you set the SUID bit (chmod u+s $file) to run the file as that user, even if other users run it. However, it is disabled for hashbang things like shell scripts. So you need a binary (unless you can find one in the newer versions of the OS).
Fortunately, changing these things is just echo to some /sys/* thing, so it is not rocket science C code.

Now, what to write where? from https://pandorawiki.org/Overclocking

sudo -n /usr/pandora/scripts/op_cpuspeed.sh -n X

So, for the backlight, I've never got it to work from the userspace (could not find a binary that worked non-interactively for non root). So, I made my own. I attach it, hopefully you can get it compiled, if not, I can zip it.

CPU speed seems more tricky, as you need to check illegal speeds, but is simple, if you need ready-to-compile-code, just pm me.


ps: I find the current OS so power optimized I do not see a big use for it (screen blanks automatically, CPU goes into micro deepsleep automatically if underused). Most games run fine, and do not need a slowdown (well, except mr Drillux). The sweetspot for me is still a fixed 800Mhz clockspeed on the 1Ghz. Although only with audiobooks/music I get over 3 days worth. With the rest, its pretty much each 2 days I need to charge it... or 1 day, if I watch over 4 hours TV...

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Telegram, and emulation of mostly Nintendo games.

EDIT: Oh, BESIDES gaming! Well, Telegram and web browsing mostly.

 

[Exophase]

I use my old CC Pandora as a brown noise generator. It is connected to speakers and running that program continuously. I turn on the speakers when I want brown noise in my bedroom.

 

[Eight Bit]

Telegram, and emulation of mostly Nintendo games.

EDIT: Oh, BESIDES gaming! Well, Telegram and web browsing mostly.

Did you fix the audio hijacking of telegram?

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Did you fix the audio hijacking of telegram?

Yeah, open the file "/media/<sdcard>/pandora/appdata/telegram/home/.alsoftrc"and look for the value "drivers = oss" and change "oss" to "alsa".

 

[Eight Bit]

Great! It seems to work now

 

[atari_afternoon]

Thinking of the GP32 while posting in the GP32 section here, it suddenly occurred me again that I also use the Pandora, via SMC card reader at USB hub, as GP32 file manager, to delete files, copy or move a game etc, when I don´t want to fire up the desktop PC.

 

[trevornot]

Emulation all I've used it for. Quite happy with it for that. Criticisms:

Web browsing: slower than my iPhone. On board wifi is slow. Doesn't support flash. Can't stream Netflix Hulu etc. So what's the point?

Music: I wish there was an app(point me in the right direction if there is) that has a viaualizer. I do have some music on an SD card and the speakers aren't bad but something to look at would be nice.

Also the headphone jack doesn't work with my iPhone earbuds. If I hold one of the buttons on the chord in it works in both ears. Otherwise only one ear and sounds like crap. I assume there's a technical reason for this and it tea Just got a new phone and a second set so I can't justify buying a pair just for my pandora. Which doesn't exactly fit in my pocket anyway.

Overall music doesn't sound terrible throughly the speakers so I listen. Mainly when at home.

Videos: the playe I have runs well. Doesn't hold my place in the movie when I exit so it's hard to finish watching something long. Again screen is same size as my iPhone which looks a lot cleaner.

I'd much rather use the pandora to watch movies on the go. Advantage would be not having to hold it. The whole mini laptop thing appeals to me. I really wish the quality and players were better. Pyra seems much more promising.

Criticism aside it's great for gaming. Halfway through duke nukem since ive purchased a Bluetooth mouse. Couldn't be happier. Reliving my childhood one nostalgic gaming experience at a time.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[TrashyMG]

Web browsing: slower than my iPhone. On board wifi is slow. Doesn't support flash. Can't stream Netflix Hulu etc. So what's the point?

Netflix worked fairly good on my Pandora a while ago with the Android PND... But it's a bit of work, not sure how it works now.

Also the headphone jack doesn't work with my iPhone earbuds.

Yeah Apple screwed up the headset standard forcing people to buy apple specific builds and unfortunately the industry sided with apple and most things switched to their standard. The iPhone was released after the Pandora was designed. The Microphone and ground rings are swapped. I have a cheap adapter that fixes this. This won't be an issue on the Pyra as there will be a chip inside that can detect between the two different types of headsets.

 

[trevornot]

Netflix worked fairly good on my Pandora a while ago with the Android PND... But it's a bit of work, not sure how it works now.


Yeah Apple screwed up the headset standard forcing people to buy apple specific builds and unfortunately the industry sided with apple and most things switched to their standard. The iPhone was released after the Pandora was designed. The Microphone and ground rings are swapped. I have a cheap adapter that fixes this. This won't be an issue on the Pyra as there will be a chip inside that can detect between the two different types of headsets.

That's good to know about the pyra. I'm not even concerned with being able to use the buttons and microphone. Just got used the feel of the earbuds


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Swordfish II]

Hey all,

I rarely use my pandora, and when I do, it's only for limited gaming on emulators. I'm curious. What do people do, on their pandora, on a daily/near daily basis? Trying to figure out better ways of integrating it with my lifestyle, especially since we're looking at maybe 6 months before the Pyra is around. Some development, on it, is something I want to obviously do...but what else?

Thanks

Torrents, tv out with emulators and an Xbox controller, light word processing, movies, SFTP, Netflix with android, web browsing.

 

[jontheramer2]

I write most my code on it. Together with a modern tablet and 4g phone it is great. The Pyra will do away with the need for the table and the phone. But for most things I do (embedded, mobile and web), the Pandora is good for 70% of the work. 10% Android for the browser, 10% full Ubuntu, 10% Mac OS X (compile and test iOS apps). Still my workflow is full Linux and most I can do on my Pandora.

Besides that I write z80 code for the MSX-2, play MSX and Playstation 1 games and old PC games.

I use it every day and cannot wait for the Pyra.

My only gripe with the Pandora is the wifi card and as I read there are equal issues with the Pyra it seems like that was a wrong shortcut and I hope this can be corrected to a Pyra v2...