Kickstarter allows Germany to create projects, Ideas for Pyra


rohezal

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Since ED wrote that kickstarter allows Germans to create projects but the funding of the Pyra is done via money from investors / sold Pandoras (except mass production) I want to tell my idea what kind of projects could be funded via kickstarter.

Multicolor Keymats: Since there is some discussion for multi colored LEDs, why not just change the keymat color to give people different backlight colors?

Different colored cases: A red Pyra or a blue Pyra? Why not, it should be possible with some money.

Unity Support: Unity is a very popular engine which can export the created game to different plattforms like x86 linux, windows, mac, android and consoles. But not to arm linux. If we collect some money and get an offer from unity about the price, we maybe could pay them to make an exporter for the Pyra (and maybe for Pandora?). This would enable games like Pillars of Eternity and War for the Overworld for the Pyra which are AAA titles. It would need some work on the textures and polygon count, but it should be doable with almost no work for the developers. I don't know how likely this is. Maybe for 100K Unity would do it. Maybe they won't.

Full open gl driver: We got glshim, maybe we can a full opengl 2.0 or even higher driver, if we can collect enough money. Some of the opcodes of the power have been reverse engineered. http://lkcl.net/powervr/sgx/ and the eff says the driver is a high priority project. But it would be lots of work, and I believe the kickstarter won't get enough money and it would be hard to find enough people to do it. http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:powerVR_drivers
 
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Unity Support: Unity is a very popular engine which can export the created game to different plattforms like x86 linux, windows, mac, android and consoles. But not to arm linux. If we collect some money and get an offer from unity about the price, we maybe could pay them to make an exporter for the Pyra (and maybe for Pandora?).
I think you underestimate the cost of such a port. I would not be able to be founded just by a small community. Plus, it would need to be maintained, not just ported once.

Multicolor Keymats: Since there is some discussion for multi colored LEDs, why not just change the keymat color to give people different backlight colors?
Nice idea, but you don't start doing tons of colors variations until you have a large user base. Just because there are minimum quantities for ordering, you don't want to order 10 000 black keymats and 10 000 pink ones if the community only buys 5000 Pyras.
 
Multicolor Keymats: Since there is some discussion for multi colored LEDs, why not just change the keymat color to give people different backlight colors?
Nice idea, but you don't start doing tons of colors variations until you have a large user base. Just because there are minimum quantities for ordering, you don't want to order 10 000 black keymats and 10 000 pink ones if the community only buys 5000 Pyras.
What are the MOQs for something like a keymat though? Of course to make them at a reasonable price you better have thousands of them, but maybe some people want to pay a not so reasonable price?

Keymat color is not really important to me, but you could also have keymats with different layouts (e.g. for specific localizations, e.g. QWERTZ, AZERTY, or even non-Latin alphabets). If you also modify that part of the case, you could even have keymats where the keys have different shapes (as long as the contacts can still be made to correspond) -- e.g. you could make a Pyra without a keyboard but with big extra game buttons instead, or buttons that could be useful for music stuff (piano-like keys and drum pads and stuff like that, to make your own electronic music on the go).

Full open gl driver: We got glshim, maybe we can a full opengl 2.0 or even higher driver, if we can collect enough money. Some of the opcodes of the power have been reverse engineered. http://lkcl.net/powervr/sgx/ and the eff says the driver is a high priority project. But it would be lots of work, and I believe the kickstarter won't get enough money and it would be hard to find enough people to do it. http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:powerVR_drivers
I think you are confusing a FOSS driver for the PowerVR GPU and extending glshim project which translates GL to GL|ES (which does not really care about the license of the underlying GL|ES driver). Both are of course very useful projects.

I would like a lot to have a FOSS driver for the GPU, and more generally, to do whatever is needed to make it possible to have a RYF-certified Pyra. But I doubt that Kickstarter or similar crowd-sourcing methods is a good way to get it, for two reasons:

1: it is hard to predict how much effort it will take, and I doubt there is any developer that will say "OK, for X dollars I'll do it!" -- and even if you find someone who is crazy enough to not charge to accept the job for a fixed sum of money, what happens if they don't succeed?

2: what will your backer rewards be? if the driver is FOSS, everyone will get it anyway, backer or not. You could of course add all kinds of silly rewards, like t-shirts and mugs with "I supported the development of a FOSS driver for the PowerVR" on them, but I don't think there are lots of people into that kind of stuff.

I would on the other hand totally support the creation of a kind of "community prize pot" that gets rewarded to anyone (or any team of people) who succeeds in creating the driver. I wouldn't mind if ED would charge some small amount of money extra so that every Pyra that gets sold, contributes a bit to that pot. And of course anyone can make donations to the prize pot -- in money or in other ways. Periodically the contents of the prize pot gets announced (and I'm sure organizations like the FSF would be glad to help spread such announcements) and it may provide some extra incentive for very talented coders to work on the challenge.

That or we organize demonstrations at every office of Imagination Technologies (see http://www.imgtec.com/about/contactus.asp), demanding that they release their PowerVR drivers under a FOSS license. An angry mob of nerds blocking the entrance to their offices until the drivers are released, that would be fun!
 
What are the MOQs for something like a keymat though?
If it's custom made, I don't know. But look at Alibaba, for electronic stuff, usually the MOQ start in the thousands + making different colors usually require new molds (I am always reminding people of this here, it seems like people don't understand how plastic parts are made).
 
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But as you have identified: it is missing people (and money) to get real progress and the mailing list is almost silent.
I would on the other hand totally support the creation of a kind of "community prize pot" that gets rewarded to anyone (or any team of people) who succeeds in creating the driver.
Maybe make bounties for milestones.

Full (or almost full) documentation of the op codes. Display a triangle. Display a shaded triangle. Display a textured triangle. Vertex shaders. Pixel shaders. With different amounts of money.
 
it could be doable to print a keymat out of Ninjaflex, a flexible type of plastic. Maybe even combining clear (acting as lightpipe) and black types etc. with solid caps that sort of klick on.

Im also saving for a LulzBot TAZ 4 3D printer next year. Might give it a try  ; )
 
Ill pay you to make me a caselid with a logo I like. You can drill a hole for the led to make it low-tech.

Custom nub keycaps or L/R buttons could also be a thing i would be interested in. Easy to try, cheap enough for it to be worth the plunge.

Or, at a more advanced level, metal parts, metal everywhere.

And then external antennas for everyone who bought metal everywhere ;)

Also, new keymats have more use as different language setups rather than colours.

To achieve colours the logical goto in my head would be to exchange leds for RGB ones.

White is good though, use a magic marker on the back of the keymat to get different colours?
 
Well, if you want your own logo design with a mould, I can get that for about 20,000 EUR. Otherwise, why not grab the case files and print one yourself? :)
 
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