I'm currently sitting on the plane on my way to Greece.
Once again.
That gives me a bit of time to write a quick newspost to let you know what has happened and what the status is.
Forgive me that I didn't have much time to participate at the boards myself a lot. Besides preparing the Pyra massproduction (yes, you read that correctly), I upgraded my shop to the latest version of PrestaShop, migrating all orders, vouchers, etc.
I've started doing that last year in August and made the switch end of June, following a couple of weeks of bug squashing (for example, AmazonPay wasn't working).
Well, now the shop is back in a fully working state and has some new features. You can now easily throw out links to the shop or a specific product and get reward discount codes if somebody buys a product coming from that link.
So go and spread your affiliate links now - it's good for everyone
I still need to add some more products and sort some categories, but at least it's now fully functional.
That, of course, took some time. And while I still had the time to work on the planned Pyra production run, I didn't have any time left to do an extensive newspost.
Hopefully, this one will be enough for you.
And: We'll fill it with pictures during the next two days!
So, where to start...?
1. The cases
It's the reason I'm sitting on this plane right now:
azouls and his team worked hard on the remaining case issues, redesigned the shoulder buttons and now it's time to check it!
That's why I have some parts for prototypes in my bag and we'll check out everything in the company, as that means we can also do some last changes / fixes directly there if need be.
And of course, I've got a camera with me so you'll be able to see proper pictures and maybe videos of the result as well.
This thread will be updated
2. The hardware and software
Prototypes have been sent out to some devs, most of them are also working for TI, so Hopefully, they can help a bit with remaining driver issues.
Unfortunately, devs these days also don't have a lot of time, so don't expect things to happen within a few days!
The main issues we're still having is that the speakers are easily overdriven (probably because the DC Offset isn't set up yet), TILER / 3D needs to be make to work together and the battery monitor doesn't know the size of the battery yet, so the %-age it shows is off. As the charger handles everything itself, this is nothing dangerous though, the battery can't be overcharged (as it was the case with the first older Pandora OS).
Then there are some smaller quirks like that a restart hangs the system for some reason (shutting down and restart works though). Nikolaus found a workaround for that, but it's not yet a proper solution. It just points in the right direction.
And - of course - there's no proper powersaving there yet and the whole system is still a bit barren (like on the early Pandoras). All the nice little tools that made the Pandora easier to use (like the enable / disable Wifi, USB, etc. directly from the taskbar) are still missing, but the desktop itself works. And there's not nice GUI for doing phonecalls, etc.
But stuff like that will surely come from various devs once the device is shipping.
My main concerns are the speakers, but I'll plan to check them more extensively next week to make sure it's really just software thing and not hardware. But basically they're directly connected to the audio chip, so there's not really anything that could be broken in hardware here.
We (Nikolaus and me) also had another meeting with Global Components to start preparing the mass production.
Nikolaus submitted the final hardware details and Global Components are now looking to source the remaining parts and send me a new offer. Hopefully, the price won't be much higher than before. I expect that it'll cost me about 30 - 40 EUR more, which makes up a whopping 40k EUR more expenses than expected for the first batch!
I won't force anyone to pay that, but I'll let everyone know and decide for himself if he wants to donate that when the Pyra is ready to ship or not.
And no, there won't be "Premium Upgrades" to pull in money...
Getting parts these days usually can take up to 10 weeks after placing the order, and that's also the time it takes until we receive the 1000 keymats (which we already ordered).
So the Prototype Preorders will still get their units a few months before the final units.
But once everyhing is ordered... well, there's no going back for us
Oh speaking of keymats:
As you know, the final keymats have removable caps, they're not glued anymore.
And some of you asked whether it will be possible to get the keymat only partly printed (without the letters).
And: Yes, that it possible! We will receive 100 of those blank keymats, so you can do your own experiments with them.
We'll also sell spare keycaps in case you lose one during disassembly
Soo... I guess that sums things up a bit.
Of course, if you're visiting GamesCom this year, we'll be there (in the retro hall) as usual. But this time, we'll have FINAL Pyra units with us.
You're more than welcome to have a cup of coffee with me
Anyways, that's all for now... pictures should follow tomorrow!
UPDATE:
Okay, let's start with some pictures.
I'll also make a small video, so that's not everything.
And I'll also summarize the status of everything sometime during this weekend
Let's first get a small overview over the factory.
Here are some of the machines (there are A LOT more, this is just a small area of the full factory).
We've used one of these to produce all sample parts at one day
This is a small part of the many, many moulds lying there... that's a few tons of steel!
Speaking of moulds, here is one of ours (the most complicated one):
These color pellets are being used to add color to the plastic parts:
The box of trash. These are all non-goods parts, either not complete or with other issues like discolorizations.
That's normal when you first setup the correct machine parameters for a mould: You change the parameter, check the part and change some other parameter until it's as good as possible. There are a LOT of parameters to change - you really need to know what you're doing
And... either something went wrong here or this is the "Modern Art Edition" of the Pyra
I love it
To change the mould in the machine, a crane is needed, as the mould is so heavy:
This can be properly seen in the video, so stay tuned!
Here is one of the finished Pyra.
Please note: We were JUST checking whether the moulds are now PHYSICALLY correct.
The color is not one we would use. It even was a wrong color for the moulds, that's why the case has some white discolorizations. So don't worry, it's not the final look!
We were in the factory from 8am until 8pm... we stayed until everything had been done and finished!
So on Thursday, we did a little sightseeing for two hours... before I had to go back to the airport.
Here are some nice views from Thessaloniki:
And in case someone has a 3D monitor (or VR glasses) at home:
Attached to the post are some of the pictures in 3D MPO file format packed up in a ZIP-File.
Okay, I'll try to edit the video ASAP and also update you about the results.
UPDATE 2:
Here is the video
Once again.
That gives me a bit of time to write a quick newspost to let you know what has happened and what the status is.
Forgive me that I didn't have much time to participate at the boards myself a lot. Besides preparing the Pyra massproduction (yes, you read that correctly), I upgraded my shop to the latest version of PrestaShop, migrating all orders, vouchers, etc.
I've started doing that last year in August and made the switch end of June, following a couple of weeks of bug squashing (for example, AmazonPay wasn't working).
Well, now the shop is back in a fully working state and has some new features. You can now easily throw out links to the shop or a specific product and get reward discount codes if somebody buys a product coming from that link.
So go and spread your affiliate links now - it's good for everyone
I still need to add some more products and sort some categories, but at least it's now fully functional.
That, of course, took some time. And while I still had the time to work on the planned Pyra production run, I didn't have any time left to do an extensive newspost.
Hopefully, this one will be enough for you.
And: We'll fill it with pictures during the next two days!
So, where to start...?
1. The cases
It's the reason I'm sitting on this plane right now:
azouls and his team worked hard on the remaining case issues, redesigned the shoulder buttons and now it's time to check it!
That's why I have some parts for prototypes in my bag and we'll check out everything in the company, as that means we can also do some last changes / fixes directly there if need be.
And of course, I've got a camera with me so you'll be able to see proper pictures and maybe videos of the result as well.
This thread will be updated
2. The hardware and software
Prototypes have been sent out to some devs, most of them are also working for TI, so Hopefully, they can help a bit with remaining driver issues.
Unfortunately, devs these days also don't have a lot of time, so don't expect things to happen within a few days!
The main issues we're still having is that the speakers are easily overdriven (probably because the DC Offset isn't set up yet), TILER / 3D needs to be make to work together and the battery monitor doesn't know the size of the battery yet, so the %-age it shows is off. As the charger handles everything itself, this is nothing dangerous though, the battery can't be overcharged (as it was the case with the first older Pandora OS).
Then there are some smaller quirks like that a restart hangs the system for some reason (shutting down and restart works though). Nikolaus found a workaround for that, but it's not yet a proper solution. It just points in the right direction.
And - of course - there's no proper powersaving there yet and the whole system is still a bit barren (like on the early Pandoras). All the nice little tools that made the Pandora easier to use (like the enable / disable Wifi, USB, etc. directly from the taskbar) are still missing, but the desktop itself works. And there's not nice GUI for doing phonecalls, etc.
But stuff like that will surely come from various devs once the device is shipping.
My main concerns are the speakers, but I'll plan to check them more extensively next week to make sure it's really just software thing and not hardware. But basically they're directly connected to the audio chip, so there's not really anything that could be broken in hardware here.
We (Nikolaus and me) also had another meeting with Global Components to start preparing the mass production.
Nikolaus submitted the final hardware details and Global Components are now looking to source the remaining parts and send me a new offer. Hopefully, the price won't be much higher than before. I expect that it'll cost me about 30 - 40 EUR more, which makes up a whopping 40k EUR more expenses than expected for the first batch!
I won't force anyone to pay that, but I'll let everyone know and decide for himself if he wants to donate that when the Pyra is ready to ship or not.
And no, there won't be "Premium Upgrades" to pull in money...
Getting parts these days usually can take up to 10 weeks after placing the order, and that's also the time it takes until we receive the 1000 keymats (which we already ordered).
So the Prototype Preorders will still get their units a few months before the final units.
But once everyhing is ordered... well, there's no going back for us
Oh speaking of keymats:
As you know, the final keymats have removable caps, they're not glued anymore.
And some of you asked whether it will be possible to get the keymat only partly printed (without the letters).
And: Yes, that it possible! We will receive 100 of those blank keymats, so you can do your own experiments with them.
We'll also sell spare keycaps in case you lose one during disassembly
Soo... I guess that sums things up a bit.
Of course, if you're visiting GamesCom this year, we'll be there (in the retro hall) as usual. But this time, we'll have FINAL Pyra units with us.
You're more than welcome to have a cup of coffee with me
Anyways, that's all for now... pictures should follow tomorrow!
UPDATE:
Okay, let's start with some pictures.
I'll also make a small video, so that's not everything.
And I'll also summarize the status of everything sometime during this weekend
Let's first get a small overview over the factory.
Here are some of the machines (there are A LOT more, this is just a small area of the full factory).
We've used one of these to produce all sample parts at one day
This is a small part of the many, many moulds lying there... that's a few tons of steel!
Speaking of moulds, here is one of ours (the most complicated one):
These color pellets are being used to add color to the plastic parts:
The box of trash. These are all non-goods parts, either not complete or with other issues like discolorizations.
That's normal when you first setup the correct machine parameters for a mould: You change the parameter, check the part and change some other parameter until it's as good as possible. There are a LOT of parameters to change - you really need to know what you're doing
And... either something went wrong here or this is the "Modern Art Edition" of the Pyra
I love it
To change the mould in the machine, a crane is needed, as the mould is so heavy:
This can be properly seen in the video, so stay tuned!
Here is one of the finished Pyra.
Please note: We were JUST checking whether the moulds are now PHYSICALLY correct.
The color is not one we would use. It even was a wrong color for the moulds, that's why the case has some white discolorizations. So don't worry, it's not the final look!
We were in the factory from 8am until 8pm... we stayed until everything had been done and finished!
So on Thursday, we did a little sightseeing for two hours... before I had to go back to the airport.
Here are some nice views from Thessaloniki:
And in case someone has a 3D monitor (or VR glasses) at home:
Attached to the post are some of the pictures in 3D MPO file format packed up in a ZIP-File.
Okay, I'll try to edit the video ASAP and also update you about the results.
UPDATE 2:
Here is the video
Attachments
Last edited:
