Cnc Data

[hobbyman II]

. I`m feeling a bit bemused, if you want the case dimensions then break out a ruler and some callipers when you get your Pandora, if you can`t be bothered or don`t have the skill to do that for yourself then I doubt you will be doing anything else under your own steam either, not having the case dimensions or cad drawings is a trivial obstacle, I can`t believe anyone thinks its an issue.

. and I realy feel for MWeston, I would be at screaming point if people kept saying "it`s a Beagleboard", yeah! like the Beagleboard has a keyboard, battery management, bluetooth, wifi, game controls, display driver for TV/LCD panel, volume control, speakers, dual SD card slots etc, its like someone saying a Porsche is a Reliant Robin copy cos they both have wheels, an engine, drivers seat and a windscreen, yeah! right!

 

[2097]

I`m feeling a bit bemused, if you want the case dimensions then break out a ruler and some callipers when you get your Pandora, if you can`t be bothered or don`t have the skill to do that for yourself then I doubt you will be doing anything else under your own steam either, not having the case dimensions or cad drawings is a trivial obstacle, I can`t believe anyone thinks its an issue.

I'm not denying that I often can be lazy. However, I was planning to talk to a guy at work that's not as lazy and I figured that it could be good to come prepared knowing which data formats the case models were available in.

It was just a hunch to talk to him, but it turns out I was right; he turned out to be knowledgeable about CNC and that we have a pretty good machine in the next building and that he was planning a similar mod that I had in mind but for an old C64. Small world! I wrote the first post in this thread before I talked to him. I just wanted to be prepared. (He did say that it was a lot of work and that he wasn't that up to helping me—we don't have the best relationship and in his eyes I'm probably even lazier than I actually am—but he was thinking about it. I told him to never mind because I was so shocked over what I perceived as hostility here.)

"An issue"; well, I just thought they would be available! I see nothing inflammatory in my original post! Rabidpoobear brought up the idea of knockoffs and I just didn't think that that was anything to be afraid of. Guess MWeston feels very differently. That was a big surprise to me but I can understand and respect that after thinking about it.

And I had nothing to do with conflating the Beagleboard with this. I know that they're two separate projects, using some of the same hardware but different layouts. Both took a lot of work, I'm sure, but the demands on this must me much higher, squished into a handheld as it is.

[part about “Open”Pandora.“org” deleted which belongs in another thread, if at all]

Listen, hobbyman II. I don't have practical hardware skills. I was browsing some beautiful steampunk projects, wood-and-brass cases, that sort of thing. It was late at night. I've never done anything like that. I thought "Wait! I have an OpenPandora on its way! I could download the model data (even though I wasn't sure if that was necessary or not), talk to [guy at work], and maybe talk to [other guy who knows a lot about both wood work and epoxy]". Those friends could either help me, or teach me, or just tell me "Ugh. Read this." and at least show me in the right direction. It could become a new rewarding hobby; I know nothing about it now but a lot of my best projects have started with just sending out small feelers like that. Some come to fruition, some don't. Last fall I went from not knowing knitting to making a long dress in a week. I was in the right environment where a lot of people were knitting. My furniture projects, on the other hand, have gone nowhere so far. The people I know who knows how to build furniture moved.

The Pandora case thing I wanted to do wouldn't be so good to do with just a ruler. I was thinking of replacing the case with wood (probably not even possible; not to think of heat issues) and turning the keys shimmering red (it was late. I had some ideas about nail polish and epoxy) and do some brass work (which I've never done) to decorate the lid. All the holes for the keys would be difficult (I guess possible) to measure out by hand. If the data was available, which I thought it was, so much the better.

If you want to break me with your "doubt that I'll be doing anything else under my own steam", well, then that's easy to do. I'm easily discouraged by negative opinions like that, and I'm not usually one who does a lot by herself, but I get by with a little help from my friends.

 

[Kramy]

I suppose there is always gonna be a good chance of a shady manufacturer of socialist origin copying the case and sticking some crappy soc inside and selling the knockoff to clueless cheapskates if the Pandora becomes successful enough, but I doubt that anyone will go to the effort of reverse engineering the Pandora in order to manufacture and sell them. I think that would get the creators all litigious like.

Huh? :huh: That seems more like a capitalist thing to do. The more socialist way is what craig and co are doing; they need to sell about 8000 to break even, and after that we can start expecting price drops. Capitalist is more like what the Wii is doing. If demand keeps up at $280, who needs price drops?

These examples aren't unique, but in both cases cheap knockoffs are seen to hurt the original company, either badly or in IBM's case devastatingly. If OpenPandora made the Pandora design completely open I personally would not want to put any money on your assertion that things would go differently for them. In neither example has the QUALITY of the end user been improved by having multiple manufacturers - only price has been improved, and I don't think OpenPandora are charging an exhorbitant amount for the Pandora as is - I suspect that a company making a product that's technically not inferior would be hard pressed to make THAT much of a price saving foi end users.

Totally agree.

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In neither example has the QUALITY of the end user been improved by having multiple manufacturers - only price has been improved,

The hackability is the main thing that would improve. That would be totally awesome.

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To summarise - I disagree. I think if there were cheaper Pandora knock-offs of lower quality around, people would tend to buy them rather than the higher quality real Pandora.

But the Pandora crew has such a personality. Wouldn't people want to support this very human project that they've followed from idea to finished gadget?

Re: Hackability - I thought this was already addressed? We'll get 3D mould info shortly after release, and all the important modable innards will be documented. Going more open has no benefit - just harm.

Re: Idiot people - Nope. People will go for the cheap option, then sign up here to berate the "fools" that paid full price, and complain about X, Y software not working because of crappy developers. <_< I'd rather not split the community like that. Don't assume everyone going for a cheaper option is as intelligent or supportive as you. Many would be opportunistic idiots.

final board

You're right - they said they'd document that stuff, so I'm sure they will once they're done.

That's the foundation of what capitalism is based on, and in the perfect world, that's exactly how it would work: the Pandora is released to heaps of praise; another company picks up on this praise and investigates, discovers the D-Pad is really, really nice; they then invest a little of their time and energy to figure out what makes the D-Pad so great and proceed to reproduce it. BUT! That would only bring them along side the Pandora guys, so they make other improvements to pull ahead.
And back and forth they go.

Patent trolling is really interfering with this dream. Look at how touchscreens have stagnated, because of the patent minefield. <_< It's stifling a lot of innovation that would happen otherwise.


@Hobbyman: Good post!

 

[_VWV_]

. Sorry, I get a little offended when someone says this just has a Beagleboard inside. It was a completely custom design that took me months of 12-16 hour days to get done.

Can I then ask you what benefits the custom design brings to a customer in comparison with the design of touchbook? I can name the second SD slot, tv out, gaming controls and wi-fi antenna. Do I miss something?

 

[WizardStan]

Can I then ask you what benefits the custom design brings to a customer in comparison with the design of touchbook? I can name the second SD slot, tv out, gaming controls and wi-fi antenna. Do I miss something?
Off the top of my head, the game keys are all wired directly to GPIO lines on the OMAP, something you can't do on the beagle board. The keypad is also wired directly, rather than via USB, if I recall correctly, which is a bonus though I can't think exactly how.
The BeagleBoard only added the ability to link an LCD in the latest revision, which was only out in March: before that everything had to go through the HDMI port (or is that a DVI? I always get the two confused) which limits the screens that could be used.
Finally, MWeston was working on the custom design long before the BeagleBoard was in a state even the touchbook could use, thereby giving us a huge timing advantage and guaranteeing the Pandora makes it to market first. (tongue in cheek humor, please no kill!)

 

[_VWV_]

Can I then ask you what benefits the custom design brings to a customer in comparison with the design of touchbook? I can name the second SD slot, tv out, gaming controls and wi-fi antenna. Do I miss something?
Off the top of my head, the game keys are all wired directly to GPIO lines on the OMAP, something you can't do on the beagle board. The keypad is also wired directly, rather than via USB, if I recall correctly, which is a bonus though I can't think exactly how.
The BeagleBoard only added the ability to link an LCD in the latest revision, which was only out in March: before that everything had to go through the HDMI port (or is that a DVI? I always get the two confused) which limits the screens that could be used.
Finally, MWeston was working on the custom design long before the BeagleBoard was in a state even the touchbook could use, thereby giving us a huge timing advantage and guaranteeing the Pandora makes it to market first. (tongue in cheek humor, please no kill!)

Well, I just tried to compare the design of touchbook with the design of Pandora. Touchbook can drive an LCD and it has keyboard (though it's not embedded into board). The only real flaw in the design of touchbook is that wifi was added with a usb dongle - the signal to noise ratio should be much worse than what Pandora will have. So though touchbook is based solely on beagleboard, the difference from what a customer gets from the custom Pandora design does not seem to be tooooo huge.

 

[WizardStan]

. The only real flaw in the design of touchbook is that wifi was added with a usb dongle - the signal to noise ratio should be much worse than what Pandora will have. So though touchbook is based solely on beagleboard, the difference from what a customer gets from the custom Pandora design does not seem to be tooooo huge.

Try pushing a direction key, a jump key, and an attack key all at the same time, and let me know if you think an end user would notice
If you're talking about the end user experience, from what I've seen, that's really the only difference: the touchbook's keyboard can handle 2 (or maybe 3?) keys at a time, and that's due to the limitations of the BeagleBoard. The Pandora, while the keyboard is on a similar matrix, has separate GPIO lines for each of the game buttons, so you have no fear of how many of those you can push at once.
I'm sure MWeston could detail all kinds of inner working things which make a custom board better, but the end user doesn't care about the inner workings, just the outer workings.

 

[_VWV_]

keys at a time, and that's due to the limitations of the BeagleBoard. The Pandora, while the keyboard is on a similar matrix, has separate GPIO lines for each of the game buttons, so you have no fear of how many of those you can push at once.

Nice one! I agree with that.

 

[MWeston]

Can I then ask you what benefits the custom design brings to a customer in comparison with the design of touchbook? I can name the second SD slot, tv out, gaming controls and wi-fi antenna. Do I miss something?

I'm not trying to say there is anything wrong with the Beagleboard design. It's just different. That's all I meant. To be honest, there's no way I could see taking the 6 layer Beagle PCB and bringing out everything used on Pandora. It would need to be more layers and then it breaks a bunch of rules established in the Beagle 6 layer design. The custom design had the benefit of letting me route out everything I possibly could including that A/V connector, seven GPIOs on the PCB and one in the lid. There are very few pins on the OMAP3 chip that I haven't routed and used in some way. The custom layout lets me place things where I want them too, especially with all those game buttons and keypad buttons on the other side of the board. That was quite the effort in some spots.

 

[_VWV_]

Can I then ask you what benefits the custom design brings to a customer in comparison with the design of touchbook? I can name the second SD slot, tv out, gaming controls and wi-fi antenna. Do I miss something?

I'm not trying to say there is anything wrong with the Beagleboard design. It's just different. That's all I meant. To be honest, there's no way I could see taking the 6 layer Beagle PCB and bringing out everything used on Pandora. It would need to be more layers and then it breaks a bunch of rules established in the Beagle 6 layer design. The custom design had the benefit of letting me route out everything I possibly could including that A/V connector, seven GPIOs on the PCB and one in the lid. There are very few pins on the OMAP3 chip that I haven't routed and used in some way. The custom layout lets me place things where I want them too, especially with all those game buttons and keypad buttons on the other side of the board. That was quite the effort in some spots.

Thanks for clarification!

 

[Monk]

edit: I wrote something longish here but I'm deleting it for now. I'm saving it on a file so I can repost it if I calm down and read it through carefully.

Good call as IMHO it was starting to look heated - but it appears to be calming down now IMHO, so I hope sometime tomorrow to discover what your thoughts were, assuming you find a way to express them that won't ignote the more...flammable elements of the forum

 

[Kramy]

Longish? Enormous! Twice the size of my post, but without any quotes.

 

[2097]

Longish? Enormous! Twice the size of my post, but without any quotes.

I sure can ramble.

 

[rabidpoobear]

Longish? Enormous! Twice the size of my post, but without any quotes. ;"]

I sure can ramble.[/quote]But you got the point, right? the hardware being closed doesn't affect what end-users can do with it at all, it just prevents people from copying it. You still have access to GPIO pads and you can still install keyboard backlights and you can still do ... etc. etc. You just can't clone it, unless you have a whole lot of time and probably a lot of specialized tools.

 

[2097]

But you got the point, right? the hardware being closed doesn't affect what end-users can do with it at all, it just prevents people from copying it. You still have access to GPIO pads and you can still install keyboard backlights and you can still do ... etc. etc. You just can't clone it, unless you have a whole lot of time and probably a lot of specialized tools.

I've restored parts of my longish post (one page back), maybe that will shed some light. I only gave it a couple of cursory glances so it might still have some flame kindling left, but I hope not.

 

[Monk]

"An issue"; well, I just thought they would be available! I see nothing inflammatory in my original post! Rabidpoobear brought up the idea of knockoffs and I just didn't think that that was anything to be afraid of. Guess MWeston feels very differently. That was a big surprise to me but I can understand and respect that after thinking about it.

A fair (unfair?) amount of duck hunting goes on here. that is to say, that if it walks like a duck and quaks like a duck we tend to shoot first and cook dinner later. sadly, there have been a number of issues which come up time after time and which have become our "ducks". One is "Isn't is supposed to be OPEN man?" which seems to have been a chord you struck, and people have been pre-emptively answering the typical points that come up time and again in these threads. An even more common one is "I have this game I want to play on it - the system requirements say it needs Windows Vista and 2GB of RAM, can I run it on Pandora?" and, well like I say - there are a number of differrent fowl.

Personally, I thiink you've maybe assumed more hostility than has actually been MEANT (it's mostly automatic fire, after all) but have dealt with it pretty well (usually there's a lot more howling and screming)

The forum isn't free of hostility, but since most of us want pretty much the same thing it's not too bad most of the time as long as you don't start another poll or mention the keyboard layout (more water fowl)

Ta,

 

[2097]

amount of duck hunting goes on here. that is to say, that if it walks like a duck and quaks like a duck we tend to shoot first and cook dinner later. sadly, there have been a number of issues which come up time after time and which have become our "ducks". One is "Isn't is supposed to be OPEN man?" which seems to have been a chord you struck,

Sure, a valid chord to strike in my opinion! But if it's been discussed before, I guess I can search the archives. It was what the thread turned into because I was so surprised. It's valid to apply this duck to me since I do love open stuff (even if I have no cloning plans). However, I want to distance myself from the "it's just a Beagleboard" ducks.
QUOTE
and people have been pre-emptively answering the typical points that come up time and again in these threads. An even more common one is "I have this game I want to play on it - the system requirements say it needs Windows Vista and 2GB of RAM, can I run it on Pandora?" and, well like I say - there are a number of differrent fowl.

I have some arm devices already (one original GBA and one crappy e-ink device that I regret getting), and I've already seen this question pop up here and, since I switched from windows back in the nineties, I've never understood it. (What's “open” about Windows?)

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Personally, I thiink you've maybe assumed more hostility than has actually been MEANT (it's mostly automatic fire, after all)

Possible. I interpreted some of the responses as very hostile, but I'm known to be hypersensitive like that.
QUOTE
but have dealt with it pretty well (usually there's a lot more howling and screming)

I could've dealt with it even better. I'm just so disappointed. Just as I can imagine the Windows kids being when they find out that their games won't work.
QUOTE
The forum isn't free of hostility, but since most of us want pretty much the same thing it's not too bad most of the time as long as you don't start another poll or mention the keyboard layout (more water fowl)

I don't mind it. One thing I was going to ask in another thread when the Pandora has been out for a bit was if it's possible to configure xorg (or whatever gui Ångström runs) to use another layout for big keyboards connected to the USB. If that's not possible automatically I can easily write a small one-line alias for setxkbmap.
One of my teachers in senior high was a dvorak-using yoga-hippie and I've never looked back. Except for the yoga part.
Then when I came up with the nail-polish/epoxy idea, the keyboard layout issue became even more moot. The way I see it, thumb boards are thumb boards and, taking a page from Norman's The Design of Everyday Things, it's fine if they're qwerty. When I touch type I need my dvorak, but that can be fixed easily in software.

 

[fireball87]

One of my teachers in senior high was a dvorak-using yoga-hippie and I've never looked back.

One of my teachers in senior high was a mac-using green-peace-hippie and I use macs now... I wonder if hippie highschool teachers just have some tech draw. I've tried to switch to dvorak a few times, but can't seem to stand the speed drop even temporarily. I do fine and then 5 people start talking to me at once on msn and I seem to switch back to qwerty. Plus I don't really like where some of the symbols I need to write code go to, just throws me off.

Also plenty of reasons the topic went the direction it did. Most of it probably just is rooted in the fact that almost none of us can discuss details we don't have, we certainly can discuss the open-ness of the platform, so the topic was pushed in that direction. Doesn't help that the forums are sortof non active atm and people are looking for stuff to talk about. But whatever, forums are dangerous, why it's always best to speak softly and carry a big stick...

As for being discouraged, that'd be pointless... why be discouraged when you can show people up. Spite is such a good motivator (perhaps it's next to lazyness as a heavenly virtue of hackerdom, who knows)... Just wait for someone to take the time to measure everything and then use that info. That wait will give you some time to get a feel for the pandy anyway.

 

[pelrun]

to use another layout for big keyboards connected to the USB. If that's not possible automatically I can easily write a small one-line alias for setxkbmap.

That's quite easy; you can set up udev to run whatever command you want when a specific usb device is plugged in.

 

[2097]

That's quite easy; you can set up udev to run whatever command you want when a specific usb device is plugged in.

Thank you. I know that's how it works with desktop distributions but I don't know so much about Ångström yet.