Whew, another few steps of the Pyra finalizing have been taken.
I feel a bit exhausted, but there's no time to rest right now. The final few percent are always the hardest to achieve.
But let's see what has happened!
1. New display board
The new and probably final display board has arrived and is working fine!
Thanks to all the cutouts, it's now 10g lighter than before.
The LEDs have now been positioned properly to light the logo and we also switched them with LEDs that glow sideways.
A first test of the effect by Nikolaus is amazing, you can do very smooth color gradients (with ANY color, as both are RGB).
This can us used to show the battery status, any other notification... or simply to annoy users with a boring glowing fruit
)
You could also use it as ambient lighting when playing games in the dark.
Of course, you can simply switch it off if you like as well.
Right now, we still have the rotator chip on there which we'll keep until we have a setup which works using the OMAP5 for rotation. zmatt is still working on that and I hope I have something to test next weekend, as I'd love to present a Pyra at the GamesCom running the normal Pyra OS using TILER as rotation already.
Well, I already have a display board without rotator, so I'm ready for the test
If we won't use the rotator chip, the PCB design can be changed within a couple of minutes, and as the PCB is very simply, it can also be produced within a short time. So we can wait until the very end with that.
Here are some pictures which show how smooth the gradient of the logo is:
These are ripped from this little video Nikolaus made:
Of course, once I get my hands on one of these, I'll make more pictures and videos of it in better quality
2. The Touchscreen
I received four different touchscreens to test: Two from a partner of BOE (one clear, one matte) and one from the company that made the Pandora touchscreen (also matte).
Can you believe it's so hard these days to get a proper resistive touchscreen?
I couldn't. But now I know it is. But I also know that we will get the one we need in the end.
Well, ALL of these touchscreens had the same colored grain effect we already know. Interestingly enough, the one that was supposed to be clear was the worst of them all...
However, the one I just received for the Pandora two months ago would work PERFECTLY!
There's absolutely NO visible color grain effect when I put that one on top of Pyras' display - so yes, I KNOW a touchscreen we need exists and is still in production.
Okay, you can see on the camera that there's a very slight degradation of the image quality - but that's not visible with your bare eye.
The area you can see on the picture is about 3cm wide in reality
From left to right:
Without a touchscreen, with Pandoras touchscreen, Matte Touchscreen, Clear Touchscreen
Well, I gave BOE a sample of it back with them and received the information today that they now found another touchscreen material which is as clear as the one from the Pandora.
My BOE contact MIGHT receive it just-in-time for the GamesCom and as he might visit there, I could test and replace it at the GamesCom.
I also asked the company that made Pandoras touchscreen whether they can use the exact same material for the Pyra touchscreen. No answer yet, but as soon as I get one, I'll let you know.
So, let's hope for the next version!
3. The keymat
It's a bit similar with the keymat. With each change, you can improve things and also make others worse.
That's not a big deal though, as you can combine them in the end to create the wanted result.
Okay, so the new keymats just arrived today. I tested them but didn't have time to take pictures yet, but I'll do that, promised!
What has been changed?
Don't worry about the buttons and DPad: That's something I wanted to try out but as it didn't work as planned, we'll reverse that change. Then it will be as good as on the Pandora.
The most important thing is that the height of the keys and buttons is okay now. Changing the stiffness can simply be achieved using a different material, no mould changes needed for that.
Right now, we're using Shore 30, which should already be pretty soft - but I my guess is that the black color actually makes the keymat more stiff than it should be.
It should be possible to not color the DPad and the areas of the buttons that are needed to push it down. This should improve the keymat even further.
I'll make pictures on Monday.
4. Speaker Quality
The speaker quality has already been vastly improved again, as I fixed a bit of the sealing.
Now that I got a transparent case, I can even see where the sealing is properly done and where not
Well, to make them perfect, I need the sealing to be properly plotted. Manually cutting it is just not possible without having some leak somewhere.
I'm already in contact with some companies, so hopefully, I can finish the sound setup within this month.
BTW: We also tested passive speakers with the headset port: It works perfectly, no further amplifier needed
Once I find the time, I'll do quality comparisons with Pandoras headset out.
5. Repaired PCBs
Nikolaus picked up some reworked PCBs from Global Components today and hopefully with these we can finally build more prototypes.
They haven't been tested yet, but that's what Nikolaus is doing within the next few days.
We'll also receive some more repaired PCBs and we'll try to build as many prototypes as possible for the GamesCom.
That's it for today.
See you soon!
I feel a bit exhausted, but there's no time to rest right now. The final few percent are always the hardest to achieve.
But let's see what has happened!
1. New display board
The new and probably final display board has arrived and is working fine!
Thanks to all the cutouts, it's now 10g lighter than before.
The LEDs have now been positioned properly to light the logo and we also switched them with LEDs that glow sideways.
A first test of the effect by Nikolaus is amazing, you can do very smooth color gradients (with ANY color, as both are RGB).
This can us used to show the battery status, any other notification... or simply to annoy users with a boring glowing fruit
)You could also use it as ambient lighting when playing games in the dark.
Of course, you can simply switch it off if you like as well.
Right now, we still have the rotator chip on there which we'll keep until we have a setup which works using the OMAP5 for rotation. zmatt is still working on that and I hope I have something to test next weekend, as I'd love to present a Pyra at the GamesCom running the normal Pyra OS using TILER as rotation already.
Well, I already have a display board without rotator, so I'm ready for the test
If we won't use the rotator chip, the PCB design can be changed within a couple of minutes, and as the PCB is very simply, it can also be produced within a short time. So we can wait until the very end with that.
Here are some pictures which show how smooth the gradient of the logo is:
These are ripped from this little video Nikolaus made:
Of course, once I get my hands on one of these, I'll make more pictures and videos of it in better quality
2. The Touchscreen
I received four different touchscreens to test: Two from a partner of BOE (one clear, one matte) and one from the company that made the Pandora touchscreen (also matte).
Can you believe it's so hard these days to get a proper resistive touchscreen?
I couldn't. But now I know it is. But I also know that we will get the one we need in the end.
Well, ALL of these touchscreens had the same colored grain effect we already know. Interestingly enough, the one that was supposed to be clear was the worst of them all...
However, the one I just received for the Pandora two months ago would work PERFECTLY!
There's absolutely NO visible color grain effect when I put that one on top of Pyras' display - so yes, I KNOW a touchscreen we need exists and is still in production.
Okay, you can see on the camera that there's a very slight degradation of the image quality - but that's not visible with your bare eye.
The area you can see on the picture is about 3cm wide in reality
From left to right:
Without a touchscreen, with Pandoras touchscreen, Matte Touchscreen, Clear Touchscreen
Well, I gave BOE a sample of it back with them and received the information today that they now found another touchscreen material which is as clear as the one from the Pandora.
My BOE contact MIGHT receive it just-in-time for the GamesCom and as he might visit there, I could test and replace it at the GamesCom.
I also asked the company that made Pandoras touchscreen whether they can use the exact same material for the Pyra touchscreen. No answer yet, but as soon as I get one, I'll let you know.
So, let's hope for the next version!
3. The keymat
It's a bit similar with the keymat. With each change, you can improve things and also make others worse.
That's not a big deal though, as you can combine them in the end to create the wanted result.
Okay, so the new keymats just arrived today. I tested them but didn't have time to take pictures yet, but I'll do that, promised!
What has been changed?
- Slightly curved keys feel A LOT nicer.
- Height of the keys is pretty good now
- Keymat isn't as stiff as before, so another improvement here
- DPad and ABXY-Buttons are worse than before (we tried moving the carbon pad 0,2mm closer to the PCB, but that didn't work as expected).
Don't worry about the buttons and DPad: That's something I wanted to try out but as it didn't work as planned, we'll reverse that change. Then it will be as good as on the Pandora.
The most important thing is that the height of the keys and buttons is okay now. Changing the stiffness can simply be achieved using a different material, no mould changes needed for that.
Right now, we're using Shore 30, which should already be pretty soft - but I my guess is that the black color actually makes the keymat more stiff than it should be.
It should be possible to not color the DPad and the areas of the buttons that are needed to push it down. This should improve the keymat even further.
I'll make pictures on Monday.
4. Speaker Quality
The speaker quality has already been vastly improved again, as I fixed a bit of the sealing.
Now that I got a transparent case, I can even see where the sealing is properly done and where not
Well, to make them perfect, I need the sealing to be properly plotted. Manually cutting it is just not possible without having some leak somewhere.
I'm already in contact with some companies, so hopefully, I can finish the sound setup within this month.
BTW: We also tested passive speakers with the headset port: It works perfectly, no further amplifier needed
Once I find the time, I'll do quality comparisons with Pandoras headset out.
5. Repaired PCBs
Nikolaus picked up some reworked PCBs from Global Components today and hopefully with these we can finally build more prototypes.
They haven't been tested yet, but that's what Nikolaus is doing within the next few days.
We'll also receive some more repaired PCBs and we'll try to build as many prototypes as possible for the GamesCom.
That's it for today.
See you soon!
