Finally found some time to play with the Pyra myself :)

[EvilDragon]

Believe it or not: II did not find the time until last night to play some games and emulators with the Pyra.
I was so busy setting up stuff, testing, etc, that I didn't find the time before.

Well, what can I tell you? Here's my point from a users view so far

* OS needs a bit more work. I didn't even know where to put the DBPs on the SD Card so it could find it. However, as double clicking a DBP works as well, I could run them. Love that feature
* I love how the DBPs tell you when some dependencies are missing. Quick apt install and you're good to go.
* The screen.. oh my god. I am still happy we took the screen that's 4 times the price than the cheaper one we have been offered. I love that screen. Sharp, responsive, nice colors, no ghosting. I was able to appreciate it before because I didn't really play games
* The speakers also are gorgeous. I didn't have the noise issue while playing, but the stereo seperation and sound was pretty good. I expected them to be a lot worse, as we didn't have the space for proper acoustic areas. Nice
* The volume wheel... hm, I guess it's software, but when I move it, the volume jumps up and down in way too high values. It doesn't feel smooth. Something to look into!
* The controls. Hm. They feel better than I thought. The DPad is nice, the buttons are working pretty good as well (especially as we had to raise them so you don't accidentally hit the keyboard keys that are near). However, the edges of the buttons are a bit too sharp. That's something I want to fix. Good thing the caps are not glued on - so releasing sets of smoothed button caps here for everyone is possible
* Playing SNES or other emulators didn't warm the Pyra even a bit. I feared it would be worse
* I've only used the analog nubs as mouse replacement yet. I also feared they're not as good for gaming - but they work pretty well and are very accurate.

So all in all, I had a pretty good experience playing with it. It's not perfect yet and there's still a lot of things to improve, but blinded by all the issues I had to solve and fix when assembling the Pyras, I always had a bad feeling that the Pyra won't be a good device.
Playing some actual games has breathed more motivation into me, as I see that the Pyra is already working well and can have a bright future. New, faster SoCs, fixing the remaining issues - and we're good to go.
Oh, and I really love the screen, in case I didn't mention that

 

[ClockworkCoder]

Positive news about the Pyra direct from the dragon, this is awesome news! I feel a little encouraged that 2022 might be the year (even if I've said that about previous years).

It's also good to hear that production is underway again, and clearly ED has a little spare time for the forums again. Stoked for progress over the next 2 months.

Thanks so much for the update! A fresh breath of optimism is exactly what some of us (I) needed

 

[TrashyMG]

I've only used the analog nubs as mouse replacement yet. I also feared they're not as good for gaming - but they work pretty well and are very accurate.

Yeah I've played a bit of Soul Calibur on Reicast and was pleasantly surprised how well they work, a tad noisy though.

 

[EvilDragon]

Only one annoying issue with all the EmuEX emulators: They register every press on the DPad twice while in the menu. Probably because it's mapped to joystick and cursor keys to the same time. Makes menu navigation with the DPad awkward.
In-Game, it's fine. But that should be an easy fix

 

[TrashyMG]

Only one annoying issue with all the EmuEX emulators: They register every press on the DPad twice while in the menu. Probably because it's mapped to joystick and cursor keys to the same time. Makes menu navigation with the DPad awkward.
In-Game, it's fine. But that should be an easy fix

I think it's an oddity with FunkyMonkey registering the keystrokes twice.

 

[Eight Bit]

OS needs a bit more work. I didn't even know where to put the DBPs on the SD Card so it could find it. However, as double clicking a DBP works as well, I could run them. Love that feature

What I'm really missing is some way to read out/check the added sensors and control the LED's.
Maybe some small program that assigns the logo leds to different functions, and read-outs for the sensors. Also I haven't really looked into the modem

* The screen.. oh my god. I am still happy we took the screen that's 4 times the price than the cheaper one we have been offered. I love that screen. Sharp, responsive, nice colors, no ghosting. I was able to appreciate it before because I didn't really play games

It's a nice screen but there is screen tearing though, quite a lot of it...
Very visible when scrolling a webpage.

* The speakers also are gorgeous. I didn't have the noise issue while playing, but the stereo seperation and sound was pretty good. I expected them to be a lot worse, as we didn't have the space for proper acoustic areas. Nice

I guess the gain structure is all wrong, at least on my unit. I have to set the volume at 45% max in the Alsamixer, otherwise the speakers will distort very badly when the encoder is set to max.


I hope some improvements will be made to the audio and video driver side of things, as well as the pyra specific integration of sensors, modem and leds in debian. That would really improve things!

 

[EvilDragon]

It's a nice screen but there is screen tearing though, quite a lot of it...
Very visible when scrolling a webpage.

The tearing is software based, as it's not properly synchronized. Play some games / emulators that run using GL and there is absolutely no tearing left.
So... if we would use Wayland, tearing on the desktop would be gone as well.

That's still quite a bit of work though

I guess the gain structure is all wrong, at least on my unit. I have to set the volume at 45% max in the Alsamixer, otherwise the speakers will distort very badly when the encoder is set to max.
I hope some improvements will be made to the audio and video driver side of things, as well as the pyra specific integration of sensors, modem and leds in debian. That would really improve things!

Well, the sensors are integrated as there are drivers. You can also read them out over the userspace. You just need an UI that shows the sensor data, but that's all that's needed.
LEDs can simply be controlled via userspace as well, similar to the Pandora.
I only made some quick Zenity scripts on the Pandora so you could easily control the LEDs, but that's all that's missing.

 

[mclien]

OK, the speakers are nice for that size. Unfortunately using a headset is the opposite. I played around A LOT this the sound setting (both pluse and alsa) and never had one go without noise (german-. Rauschen). A few time fiddeling around with the setting gave me that noise in full volume.
It is directly linked to action on the GUI (moving the mouse over the Pyra-menu makes it flickring to the movements).

As I read the hdmi port isn't usable so far?

 

[aTc]

I think it's an oddity with FunkyMonkey registering the keystrokes twice.

It's not that odd, it's because it's outputting incoming cursor key presses to the output keyboard AND joypad devices.
So anything looking for keyboard and joystick events will see movement on both of them.
It can be solved by telling FunKey to disable one of the output devices.
In the end, it should probably switch between different output profiles with a keycombination

 

[aTc]

What I'm really missing is some way to read out/check the added sensors and control the LED's.
Maybe some small program that assigns the logo leds to different functions, and read-outs for the sensors. Also I haven't really looked into the modem


It's a nice screen but there is screen tearing though, quite a lot of it...
Very visible when scrolling a webpage.


I guess the gain structure is all wrong, at least on my unit. I have to set the volume at 45% max in the Alsamixer, otherwise the speakers will distort very badly when the encoder is set to max.


I hope some improvements will be made to the audio and video driver side of things, as well as the pyra specific integration of sensors, modem and leds in debian. That would really improve things!

There's some basic led controls built in with " /usr/sbin/led-config" , which gets its config from /etc/default/leds , it's a very basic helper program around the /sys/class/leds interface. Not very userfriendly, and doesn't support any of the more advanced configuration option the leds class supports.

Speaker volume steps are huge, because there's only something like 20 volume levels on the master volume of the audio chip. (probably because it's designed for volume up/down buttons).
Volume levels are all based on what worked on my prototype unit, which does have some issues with the speakers not making proper connection with the pads sometimes. It was set to the max level where the audio chip didn't go into a panic blasting white noise anymore, not for max undistorted volume. I need more feedback from production units to find out which are the optimal volume levels.

The modem works in a pretty standard way, so any modem/phone software should work without too much configuring. Modemmanager is included, which I've used to send/receive sms, and set up an internet connection with just the defaults.
Main issue seems to be that the signal isn't very strong for some people. (Do keep in mind that it shows the real signal strength, and most normal phones just show 100% even when it's nowhere near that to stop people from complaining)

 

[Eight Bit]

Thanks @aTc and @EvilDragon for your answers...
I wish I was more gifted in regards to driver coding and scripting so I could help out... :-/

Can any of you point me in the direction of the alsa audio driver/config so I can dig around in it? Or is all that kernel managed?

 

[aTc]

The main problems are caused by the kernel driver, which only does the bare minimum to get a sound stream going, without using any of the advanced features the chip supports. Getting a proper driver for everything is a lot of work.
All the driver gives us is a 4 channel 32 bit/sample at 96khz device. This needs to push 8 times more data than the 2 channel 16 bit 48khz audio that's the default for most applications.

The config files on pyra basically try to work around the limitations of the driver, and get something more reasonable out of it.
Main files for that are just the alsa mixer settings, and the pulseaudio config, which are at /etc/pulse/pyra.pa and /etc/pulse/daemon.conf.d/pyra.conf
These split the single 4 channel device into two virtual 2 channel devices, so headphone and speakers are their own seperated devices (they're channel 1+2 and 3+4 on the actual device), and fixes the channel mapping (which defaults to having a center speaker for some reason, which messes up stereo sound, instead of the front/rear left/right you'd expect from a 4 channel device).

 

[mclien]

Thanks for the clarification aTc.
Is this due to newer kernel or do I remember wrongly that those things were working a lot better on the devboard/earlier Pyra prototypes?

Plus: the function of the ext. hdmi port is messed up by the tilder chip?

 

[EvilDragon]

Thanks for the clarification aTc.
Is this due to newer kernel or do I remember wrongly that those things were working a lot better on the devboard/earlier Pyra prototypes?

Yes. To enable the hardware functions of the driver, you need to load a binary firmware (which is available) and have a driver that can access it.
The last time that system worked was on an old 3.x kernel (AFAIR), TI stopped updating the driver since then.

We already have a driver that does load the firmare without errors, but for some unknown reason, the created devices don't work yet.
There's even a bounty for the audio driver, you can find it here:

Audio Driver (with bounty!)

The Pyra has some not-so-easy things that need fixing - and I'd like to offer bounties for those! The audio driver is part of that. What's the issue with audio on the Pyra? At the moment, we're using a very basic audio driver, which causes quite a few problems. * I provides ONE audio device...

pyra-handheld.com

Plus: the function of the ext. hdmi port is messed up by the tilder chip?

AFAIK, yes.

 

[matzesu]

If I remember correctly you need :

dragonbox/packages/example.dbp

On your SD Card
It’s nice to hear you also enjoy this thing

 

[netcat]

I always had a bad feeling that the Pyra won't be a good device.

no...... ?

 

[PowerGod]

no...... ?

That's what perfectionism is about

 

[erico]

That's what perfectionism is about

I´d think that is more about progress over perfection.

 

[levi]

Or progress towards perfection. The two don't have to be in opposition.

 

[Git1]

So all in all, I had a pretty good experience playing with it. It's not perfect yet and there's still a lot of things to improve, but blinded by all the issues I had to solve and fix when assembling the Pyras, I always had a bad feeling that the Pyra won't be a good device.

It was always going to be a great device mate, because it's creator has a passion for it, and a great sense of morality. Well done ED. Great to hear you've finally found time to appreciate your baby. Thankyou!