Is There A Problem?

[metalhammer]

[...]I'd sure like to start a few threads where we're working together on things, a little ..

Whenever you want you'll be more than welcome !

I'm sure most of us will be more than happy too to thank you for bringing us 'big kids' any new toy

 

[sebt3]

I've decided not to check into this 'scene' so often and get all gnarled up with shitty flame-fests with other members of the 'dev with Pandora' group.

I remember that thread...
I'm new to this scene. I have my personality, but I've yet to be flamed by someone here. May be the fact that I didn't insult anyone helped in the process...
The group of 'dev with a pandora' is very friendly and helpfull. I had PM, advice, and fun with most of them. Oh and the one you had flames with isn't in this group either (still have to release something )
So if you prefer to work only for the caanoo, have fun but let your work open-source...

Anyway, on topic : +1 to what Jeff said.
I know there are tons of projets underways. I for one, have at least 5 projects, I'm working on. (That's not counting the thing I have half released: zeldas, osmo, audacious...). Pickle bless us with a new port to opengles every week or so. That's just crazy ( I beleave I just cant sleep...at all).
Come on, for the number of dev on boards, that amount of work done is already amazing...

Cheers

 

[Rockthesmurf]

I have been mainly a silent developer, getting on with things in the background, have a few discussions over on Developers Corner, not about anything project specific, but more questions with OpenAL/OpenAL/PND files/touch screen drivers, etc. I am working in a team of four people, and a large amount of work is going into our project, but for various reasons this isn't being made public, but I can say we are getting closer and closer to having the final product. So yes, work is going on, the quiet times are the coding times, so long quiet times will hopefully lead up to good projects coming out!

The next hurdles for me personally as I believe there is a bug in the touch screen driver, I find the OpenAL performance bad, and I find OpenGL extensions crash on Pandora. I haven't been able to get to the bottom of this from the threads I've discussed this in so far, so I need to make the most basic examples of each issue and post them so they can be looked at. Again it is something boring, it takes take, but it has to be done, once that is done maybe it'll take a while before any answers are reached, so even relatively simple things can take quite a while to turnaround, and all that time is again just quiet time.

Certainly having more Pandora's out in the wild is a good prospect!

Steve

 

[Bosbeetle]

I am working in a team of four people, and a large amount of work is going into our project, but for various reasons this isn't being made public, but I can say we are getting closer and closer to having the final product.

Steve

I hope there are more teams like this silently plodding along. Noice.

 

[EvilDragon]

I am working in a team of four people, and a large amount of work is going into our project, but for various reasons this isn't being made public, but I can say we are getting closer and closer to having the final product.

Steve

I hope there are more teams like this silently plodding along. Noice.

Yes. I know of a few projects currently silently being developed

 

[Caine]

I don't think that OpenPandora can afford many more delays at this point. Personally, I have some small projects in mind to work on, but I won't start before I actually receive my unit. I assume this holds for most developers.

October is near. It's do or die guys. I'm not waiting another year and plan to back-off if I don't have my unit by December.

As for this community, all that is required to prevent it from drying up is to sprinkle it with Pandora goodness. We have already seen this when the first units started shipping.

Please guys, please make it happen already.

 

[torpor]

I think thats the way to go, for sure ..

 

[Bosbeetle]

Please guys, please make it happen already.

I think the team is doing all they can to 'make it happen' it isn't rocket science but it's damn close.

 

[EvilDragon]

Please guys, please make it happen already.

I think the team is doing all they can to 'make it happen' it isn't rocket science but it's damn close.

If it would be something WE could do, then we would do it.
I would work 24/7 a week if that would help speed it up.

Unfortunately, all we can do right now is wait for the new nubs to be working and mass produced and hope (or try to force) to get all the boards produced.

These are all companies that we're paying to do the work for us... if we could do it ourselves, it would be way better, as we would certainly use all our time and manpower to produce the Pandoras.
But you can't produce those boards at home, unfortunately So we have to rely on those companies to do it.

 

[Loon]

I'm certain that OPT could have got Pandoras into peoples hands a lot quicker. BUT what we would have ended up with is far too many having dodgy nubs / failing LCD cables. Huge costs to the team to replace / repair the legions of malfunctioning units, terrible publicity and the distinct possibility of the project going under.

It can't be argued that what this project needs most is Pandoras in peoples hands, however these units must be of acceptable quality for the overall project to have any chance of success.

With the financial resources available to OPT I can't really see any sensible way of proceeding other than the current, though highly regrettable, state of affairs.

 

[Gerix]

I was going to post this weekend about a project I had been working on, but I forgot the screenshots (and an up-to-date version of the game) at home. It's not much, basically just a learning project, but I thought it would be cool to have a discussion on data patterns or something like that. Anyway, I have had to devote a significant amount of time to something else that has come up, so I only put in a few hours of development a week. I guess I'm just throwing that out there to say that I have a project in silent development as well. It's not the sexy development that everyone hopes for, but it's something.

 

[tristan.clark]

The situation will change once/if Pandoras are flying out of the factory. That is what is needed now. Until that happens there isn't a lot to talk about, no insane hardware hacks, new homebrew, or improved emulators. We all need the Pandoras in our hands to do that.

That doesn't really explain why the ones who DO have Pandoras all seem to have stopped improving the things they have done, or porting other things. After the initial quick "drive by ports" happened development and optimisations of those seemed to have fallen off a cliff. It really does feel like everyone that has one has grown tired of it already and moved on.

I think is down to the mix of people. Some will develop, some won't and some like me did a tiny bit of coding a while ago and don't feel ready just yet. Perhaps the 900 does not contain enough motivated people with time. I certainly have things to learn before I can really be of help to the community and I need to get some real life things sorted out too.

While, as above, I feel its down to numbers I also think that perhaps there is too much reliance on a small number of developers. It could seem that they are expected do ALL the work. I intend to partially use open source as a way of getting hold code as a kind of worked example to try to learn from their code. I hope that others will too and get creative.

Edit:for clarity

 

[Drack]

There's too much whining in the general talk forum and not enough development going on, so let's make a thread in the general talk forum whining about it. Brilliant.

Seriously though, there are only a few hundreds of units out there, and most of the audience is unable or unwilling to write software (which is perfectly reasonable). That leaves not many developers. On top of that, all the negativity around the community is not exactly the greatest incentive for doing what really is work. What results did you expect?

IMO, a ramp-up in production will solve both problems. More people (and therefore more developers) will have Pandoras, and the community will be happier for it.

Me, I'll be resuming work on my Anki port as soon as my broken unit comes back from being repaired.

 

[Caine]

Me, I'll be resuming work on my Anki port as soon as my broken unit comes back from being repaired.

Cool. Anki is certainly going to be a day one install for me.

 

[tristan.clark]

While it will take a while I do intend to do something with/for Pandora. Probably not nearly as awesome as what some of you guys have done or will do but something.

I do have some ideas for a game. I want to have a go at making it, and not just ask random devs to do it for me. When I've started maybe I'll ask for a little help, but not until I've done something with it.

I've not got my Pandora yet and I have some real life stuff to finish first. So probably time to take a break from these forums for a little while and get it finished. Its not like mashing f5 is doing anything but wearing my keyboard out.

 

[Dunny]

I've been wanting to write a game for the Pandora. I thought that I might get it out before my Pandora arrives, and it still looks likely that I will. To that end, I'm writing a BASIC interpreter for the Pandora, based on Sinclair BASIC and Amiga AMOS which I'll use to write my game. The interpreter is nearly done (I'm working on the linux port now), and I'll be writing the game in the next few months, ready for when mine arrives.

D.

 

[CPUnltd]

here's an idea on the development side of things... who among the developers could get together and make a pandora-specific dev environment for QEMU that had ALL things in place (minus the actual hardware, obviously, but whatever coding was required to make the environment 'THINK' the hardware was there) similar to pre-built environments I've seen/heard about for VMWare and VirtualBox? Why? well, QEMU is the only one out there that can emulate ARM... enough said. Also, it would get the Pandora environment into more dev hands while waiting on the actual system to arrive. On top of that, it's a nice project where a lot of devs lying in wait can come together and create a nice group project with a pretty big backing (I'm sure that the numbers of devs lying in wait are in the middle double digits). Initial thoughts is that it shouldn't be all that hard... before the first boards were hooked up to dev PCs, people were developing crude portions of the Pandora software in QEMU (at least I'm pretty sure of that)... if the feasability isn't as high as I think it is... those who know so feel free to explain and I'll happily accept and let it go.

afterthought... if OP communicated with the QEMU devs about the drivers necessary for such an undertaking, that could/would solidify feasability and (if it is doable) make the process a bit easier to complete... if not OP directly, some community devs that know enough to approach the QEMU devs and supply enough info to come to a real conclusion about things...

 

[atomicthumbs]

 

That doesn't really explain why the ones who DO have Pandoras all seem to have stopped improving the things they have done, or porting other things.  After the initial quick "drive by ports" happened development and optimisations of those seemed to have fallen off a cliff.  It really does feel like everyone that has one has grown tired of it already and moved on.

I haven't been here or used my Pandora for some time, but that's because my Pandora is broken and I keep forgetting to get a box and send it out. I'm working on packaging up nginx+mediawiki+SQLite to replace my old Wikipedia reader project.

 

[Bosbeetle]

I've been wanting to write a game for the Pandora. I thought that I might get it out before my Pandora arrives, and it still looks likely that I will. To that end, I'm writing a BASIC interpreter for the Pandora, based on Sinclair BASIC and Amiga AMOS which I'll use to write my game. The interpreter is nearly done (I'm working on the linux port now), and I'll be writing the game in the next few months, ready for when mine arrives.

D.

I would love a basic interpreter on the pandora B)

 

[EdCa22]

here's an idea on the development side of things... who among the developers could get together and make a pandora-specific dev environment for QEMU that had ALL things in place (minus the actual hardware, obviously, but whatever coding was required to make the environment 'THINK' the hardware was there) similar to pre-built environments I've seen/heard about for VMWare and VirtualBox? Why? well, QEMU is the only one out there that can emulate ARM... enough said. Also, it would get the Pandora environment into more dev hands while waiting on the actual system to arrive. On top of that, it's a nice project where a lot of devs lying in wait can come together and create a nice group project with a pretty big backing (I'm sure that the numbers of devs lying in wait are in the middle double digits). Initial thoughts is that it shouldn't be all that hard... before the first boards were hooked up to dev PCs, people were developing crude portions of the Pandora software in QEMU (at least I'm pretty sure of that)... if the feasability isn't as high as I think it is... those who know so feel free to explain and I'll happily accept and let it go.

afterthought... if OP communicated with the QEMU devs about the drivers necessary for such an undertaking, that could/would solidify feasability and (if it is doable) make the process a bit easier to complete... if not OP directly, some community devs that know enough to approach the QEMU devs and supply enough info to come to a real conclusion about things...

Qemu doesn't have full support for the omap3, though I guess a more generic cortex-a8 environment would be almost as good, and I think that is supported. There are some maemo/meego guys working on an SDK though, this [1] is probably the best place to start ..perhaps it even does most of what you need already, but who knows how complete it is? The risos guys say [2] that the qemu port is not complete and that they had to patch qemu and riscos to get it to work, but that was way back in April and it looks like there have been a load of commits since then.

[1] http://meego.gitorious.org/qemu-maemo
[2] http://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/pages/Using+the+Cortex-A8+port