It's all white!

[AnimatedFreak]

I'm happy to see that there is plans for cooling for future SoC that might need it

 

[Pyramancer]

I probably have forgotten half of what I did - but simply ask questions in case something is unclear or you want to know something else.

1. I suppose that if there had been any breakthroughs, they would have been memorable enough for you to have remembered them... but just in case they've happened and you forgot to mention them, I was wondering if Nikolaus or zmatt had had time to make any progress with the 4 GB situation?

2. The other question that came to mind, is whether it's looking like FormAction (sp?) will be able to do that first production run of cases before their August shutdown, and if so, what colour was chosen for the plastic and whether there'll be a coating (and if so, what colour(s) that will be)? Or are you saving the colour information so that you can surprise us with it later in the year?

Oh, and while asking about the production runs of the cases, I was wondering if there was something special (pricewise?) about the number 500? Would it be possible to do more than 500 in the second case production run when that is done in the autumn, so those of us with pre-order numbers slightly over 1000 don't get left out in the cold?

(Oh, and does the number 500 include the margin for defective cases, so that "500" is really 525 or 550?)
[doublepost=1499963824,1499963701][/doublepost]Oh, good grief! I'm too slow! I see that Mr_Loon asked my first question and had it answered already!

 

[Grench]

Great to know, assumed this would be priority number one for the prototypes and was starting to worry there was a fundamental problem, good to hear that it's still probably just timings rather than anything more 'sinister'.

I thought that there was supposed to be a new iteration of the SoC daughter board that would potentially help address the speed & memory issues together? Have those been built or are they still pending more findings?

 

[Bokkertoff]

Personnaly I would take one with a 2G limitation any day instead of having to wait 6 more months.
The java-people might feel different ...

 

[levi]

I'd like to second TheAnimatedFreak and say thanks for thinking about future upgrades in terms of cooling. And it's awesome to get updated news on the cooling solutions you're looking at for now.

Good news on the keymat. I was concerned it was being changed after it had already been sent out to the community for testing, but I had noticed the inconsistent distribution of light in the official news pictures of booted units. Since this just reorders the paint layers it shouldn't change the feel massively.

I had already picked up a USB power brick that claims to output 3.1A since you last announced there wouldn't be one, but I'm not sure whether any of the cables I have would actually carry that amount safely should the unit ask for it, so either a cable or a full AC adaptor would do me fine.

I think I've spotted a typo in the shoulder button analysis. In scenario 1 you say 'This means the button needs to be able to rotate 3° towards the case. With the 3D data I received, it clearly does that.' - some inversion in meaning?

 

[ible]

We will also add a few venting holes below the USB port. No worries, the mold doesn't need to be changed for that - an inlay for the mold will be created for that.
I even found a small fan that fits there. While I'm not really planning right now adding one there [...].

camera location/spy hole confirmed!

 

[Zwerg01]

Not a huge fan.

But therefore loud as hell.

 

[AVahne]

I don't think a fan that small will actually help much (pretty sure the Win's can is bigger and that thing barely moves enough air to make a difference). That said, I love small things and I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE A CUTE, TINY FAN IN MY PYRA. Pretty sure it would cost way too much to just buy one of these, so it would be nice if you offered these as an option.

Also, instead of an AC adapter, I would much rather you include a nice pouch instead.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

But therefore loud as hell.

That kind of fan is surprisingly quiet, the 1.6 dB kind of absolutely inaudible quiet. I stumbled over a similar SEPA fan that moves 1.1 l/min at 3.3V 165mW (50mA) with up to 7 Pa.

 

[elvissteinjr]

I'll take a fan over throttling as long as we don't have to sacrifice a speaker for it.

 

[Black Sliver]

I can personally recommend anything by the brand name ANKER.

I've seen posts about failed ANKER cables (micro USB, arcing, smouldering), but I personally had no problems so far and still buy/recommend their stuff.

 

[ringwyrm]

Thank you for the update and all your hard work.

BEGGING you to please not make a fan a requirement. Fans are a deal breaker for me on so small a device. First thing to fail, always. Nice to see there's a heat sink solution.

ORRRR....

If a fan is required, make it inexpensive and serviceable. Like a 5 dollar component that can easily be swapped without soldering.

 

[PowerGod]

If the fan could be added without sacrificing anything (even the standard cooling method), I'll take that version.

I had to put a fan under my Pandora many times during long serverish/encoding use...

 

[Black Sliver]

That kind of fan is surprisingly quiet, the 1.6 dB kind of absolutely inaudible quiet. I stumbled over a similar SEPA fan that moves 1.1 l/min at 3.3V 165mW (50mA) with up to 7 Pa.

Sounds nice. Do you have a name/part number/price/source?

 

[Mr_Loon]

I'll take a fan over throttling

The sensible approach would be to have both, i.e. Fan off - Throttle, Fan on - No throttle unless necessary. Agreed about the speaker though

 

[Lightkey]

I feel like it should be mentioned with what Zogzog and elvissteinjr said that any current SoC will throttle whether there is a fan or not. It will just throttle a few seconds later or (with intermittent load) cool down faster in-between but if you envision a program (let's face it: games) that requires the CPU to run at full speed the whole time, then a fan will not help. It will only help drain the battery faster. ;-)

 

[0x14f]

Optional fan is good in my book (like all things optional). Excited to see that. The best would be to be able to pop that sucker in like a gameboy cartridge, maybe in Pyra 2 .

 

[Caine]

The sensible approach would be to have both, i.e. Fan off - Throttle, Fan on - No throttle unless necessary. Agreed about the speaker though

Indeed, though it makes more sense to flip that around. Throttle unless necessary.
If the additional power is unneeded then throttle down. If it is then throttle up and fan on.

This is a mobile device. Saving power should be the default.

 

[oskda]

My HTC Desire Z gets hot when using it for car navigation in sunlight that I can barely touch it.

I have no problem using my phone as car navigation in sunlight: it is on vent hole and it even as cold air (A/C) so it is cooler than normal.

I think I will continue using phone for car navigation when I got a Pyra, but a lot of other things I do today on smartphone I will do tomorrow on Pyra
[doublepost=1500018242,1500017420][/doublepost]

Heat kills batteries.
The CPU fan died in my EEEpc 901, within a a year, the battery life was down from 4 hours to 5 minutes.

That is other reason I think CPU board would be better placed on upper screen case part far from battery and our hands (instead of being in lower part case where it can heat battery and hour hands). Even in upper case part it could use all external display aluminium case as a very big aluminium heatsink. But design was in other way and now we can't change it obviously.

On other side: not only heat kills batteries: they got older quickly when being 100% charged for long periods (for example people using AC current near all time with 109% charged battery): if you add heat and 100% always cgarged battery you are on worst scenario.

Some good notebooks have a function to stop charging battery at x% you want (and charge it only below y% you set). It would be nice if we got this function on Pyra. Altough Pyra is a high mobility device like a smartphone, and we would use it on batteries most of time (when a notebook is not so a high mobility device and a lot of users are on AC current most of time).

 

[Black Sliver]

I feel like it should be mentioned with what Zogzog and elvissteinjr said that any current SoC will throttle whether there is a fan or not. It will just throttle a few seconds later or (with intermittent load) cool down faster in-between but if you envision a program (let's face it: games) that requires the CPU to run at full speed the whole time, then a fan will not help. It will only help drain the battery faster. ;-)

SIMD (neon) and GPU is far worse than CPU. The RPi and (most) atom boards, for example, can run at 100% CPU with the stock cooling as long as you don't use neon/sse/avx/... or the GPU.

That is other reason I think CPU board would be better placed on upper screen case part

You'd have to move all signals (USB, etc.) over the flex between top and lower case, which is just crazy (and maybe not even possible because USB, SATA, etc. need matched impedance for the source/traces/sink).

On other side: not only heat kills batteries: they got older quickly when being 100% charged for long periods (for example people using AC current near all time with 109% charged battery)

Modern (expensive) battery management controllers should avoid this automatically by having a better-tuned tickle charge phase, at least in notebooks. Engineers learned from their mistakes