Long time lurker, thinking about purchasing


Legodude522

Legodude522

Very Active Member
Joined
Sep 29, 2005
Messages
104
Location
Honolulu
Website
wikigrave.com
Hello, I've been following this project on and off for several years. I'd be wanting to use this for emulation, watching videos, and Linux system administration. I've previously used the Tapwave Zodiac and the GP2X.

I'm interested in purchasing the Pyra but I got a few questions.
  • If I were to pre-order today, what is the estimated lead-time?
  • I'm under the assumption that all of the software for the OpenPandora will work on the Pyra, is this correct?
  • PlayStation 1 emulator on the OpenPandora looks decent, should I expect near perfect PlayStation 1 emulator on the Pyra?
  • What kind of limitations are there in playing videos? Will it not like high quality 1080p video? I don't want to go through the trouble of converting video files.
  • I see there is a model with a modem available with GPS. Has anyone tested the GPS output? This might be fun with Kismet
 
Welcome to the boards!

To address your questions
1. It's 2 months(tm). Always has been, although the length of month is left for the reader to deduce.
2. That's the theory, although as far as I know nothings been done yet to test that out. It'll need a little work for sure, and there might also be corner cases because the Pandora is running an old unsupported kernel at time of writing.
3. Yes, I'd hope for that.
4. I think we've seen it already playing 1080p videos. It's a bit wasteful since it's only got a 720p screen, although you could always plug it into an eternal 1080p screen once the rotation issues are sorted.
5. I think the tests the hardware devs use has tested that the GPS module can be communicated with, but I haven't heard of anyone using it anger yet, so the performance level is unknown.
 
Sorry, I meant 'in anger' which is probably a britishism I wasn't aware of. Means 'seriously' basically.

And as for the lack of h265 hardware decode, I'm not sure if anyone's got hardware decode working yet. I'm honestly not sure if the Pyra can do software decode of h265 at 60fps, but I think it's worth a try.
 
Wow, thanks for the quick responses! Only thing really holding me back (besides money) at this point is wondering how the controls feel but this may be more of a personal decision.

Come to think of it, I'm sure some of the software for the Raspberry Pi will work on the Pandora. Both can run Debian ARM.
 
Legodude522 said:
Wow, thanks for the quick responses! Only thing really holding me back (besides money) at this point is wondering how the controls feel but this may be more of a personal decision.

Come to think of it, I'm sure some of the software for the Raspberry Pi will work on the Pandora. Both can run Debian ARM.
Click to expand...

Controls are great and you can access the full Debian ARM Repo out of the box.
I have a Prototype and can confirm both
 
If i remember correctly, you cant put a Pandora PND on the Pyra and click on it to run, : its needs a wrapper (like Ginge for GP2X Games) or a Recompile,
You can run Stuff from the Debian Repo Out of the Box, , as the Packages are allready compiled for Debian ARM..

When the 3D Driver is ready, i think all of the Stuff you know from the Pandora, will run also on the Pyra, but in better as the Pyra is much faster when its got compiled

And PSX Emulation shouldnd be a big Issue for the Pyra

But whe first need this 3D Driver running..

Could also be, that you get your Pyra shortly after the Pree Order got thyre Pyra, maybe in 2 Months (tm)..
 
One thing that I'm hoping the to do with the Pyra is to use DropBox. It would be nice to take pictures on my DSLR and pop the full size SD card into my Pyra to upload pictures. I see some older discussions regarding DropBox but nothing for the Pyra yet.
 
Legodude522 said:
One thing that I'm hoping the to do with the Pyra is to use DropBox. It would be nice to take pictures on my DSLR and pop the full size SD card into my Pyra to upload pictures. I see some older discussions regarding DropBox but nothing for the Pyra yet.
Click to expand...
I don't know about the desktop client, but I'm sure the web version will work. If there's a Raspberry Pi client, it may work.
 
I've got it working with Exagear, but that is now gone... Ptitseb's box86 likely could be a way of running the linux x86 client.
 
For Dropbox (and Microsoft Onedrive Enterprise) I use rclone on my raspberry pi server at home. It works kind of like rsync so you have a limitation of needing to decide when you push or pull to/from the cloud storage, it is not instant sync as the dropbox client.

But it's FOSS and works really well for my use case (daily sync cron scripts). You can also encrypt on the fly if you want so that your cloud provider doesn't see what you store.
 
You could also sync with a Nextcloud instance instead of DropBox, this is also FLOSS. You can host the server at home yourself if you want to get your hands in it, or go and find a service provider on nextcloud's list.
 
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Not a dropbox user but it seems that the client is opensource and can be compiled for pyra:

Dropbox on Linux: installing from source, commands, and repositories

The Dropbox desktop is available on supported Linux operating machines. Find out more about Dropbox Linux commands and how to configure Dropbox for Linux.
help.dropbox.com help.dropbox.com

Or this is different than the regular client? Just a command line interface or something?
 
If you use a FLOSS client to send your unencrypted data to a company making money of your data, you still have your data being sucked by ad vampires and such... it is a beginning of an improvement though :)
 
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gpsqueeek said:
If you use a FLOSS client to send your unencrypted data to a company making money of your data, you still have your data being sucked by ad vampires and such... it is a beginning of an improvement though :)
Click to expand...
At least the needle is clean.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: rSl
A FLOSS application would be a good alternative in the future but I'm currently married to the DropBox ecosystem :) I'll evaluate my options when I get there. Thanks everyone.
 
asimov-solensan said:
Not a dropbox user but it seems that the client is opensource and can be compiled for pyra:

Dropbox on Linux: installing from source, commands, and repositories

The Dropbox desktop is available on supported Linux operating machines. Find out more about Dropbox Linux commands and how to configure Dropbox for Linux.
help.dropbox.com help.dropbox.com

Or this is different than the regular client? Just a command line interface or something?
Click to expand...
Yeah it's just a means of installing an x86 based binary from dropbox.
 
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