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[gaterooze]

As long as it works well, whatever permutation it is, I'm happy. Look forward to seeing a case mockup!

 

[fusion_power]

Yea, just saw it. Finally, we get to see the WiFi and Bluetooth chips. ...

-God Ginrai

Tiny little Chips. I hope, the Antenna for W-LAN and BT will be a little bit bigger. ^_^ Has someone spotted some kind of Antenna (connector) onto the PCB yet?

 

[WizardStan]

Tiny little Chips. I hope, the Antenna for W-LAN and BT will be a little bit bigger. ^_^ Has someone spotted some kind of Antenna (connector) onto the PCB yet?

I remember description and a diagram that it ran around the edge of the screen, but I can't remember where that was, or if it was official or speculation.

 

[God Ginrai]

Tiny little Chips. I hope, the Antenna for W-LAN and BT will be a little bit bigger. ^_^ Has someone spotted some kind of Antenna (connector) onto the PCB yet?

I remember description and a diagram that it ran around the edge of the screen, but I can't remember where that was, or if it was official or speculation.


I remember hearing something about that, too.

-God Ginrai

 

[MWeston]

The antenna is designed to have the signals travel on a wire to a little PCB in the lid. This puts the transmission field farther away from dense organic matter (your hands!) and is easier to plot the emission field around the antenna because a good design takes into account everything around the antenna (PCB, plastic, metal connectors and parts, etc.). I guess this could also make the antenna more hackable for those Pringle can mods.

 

[Sphinxter]

The antenna is designed to have the signals travel on a wire to a little PCB in the lid. This puts the transmission field farther away from dense organic matter (your hands!) and is easier to plot the emission field around the antenna because a good design takes into account everything around the antenna (PCB, plastic, metal connectors and parts, etc.). I guess this could also make the antenna more hackable for those Pringle can mods.

Good thinking. I would be very surprised to find more than a cat whisker, piece of fiber little over an inch long for the antenna. We use a turntable in the middle of a special room lined with very sensitive directional antennas to find best location with the least dead spots, finding a volunteer to hold your device in there might be kind of tough though.

 

[DasFool]

Any details on who makes the chip or model number?

 

[Megamixman]

Any details on who makes the chip or model number?

Thats likely under NDA for now. Until it gets release the down and dirty specs ( aka <Insert Gadget here> naked specs ) will likely not be revealed, except the biggies like... the 3530........

 

[MWeston]

Yeah, I have developed a resistance to questions about specific part numbers of devices in the Pandora. It isn't to be rude, but I would rather wait until it is in the hands of customers. I don't expect anything else to change, we are locked into everything now.....until it changes.

I like to give out specifications of the parts because different parts should still be quite similar if we have to change it. I added a couple more on my website a little while back just for the tech savvy who care. What I will say about the Wifi/BT module is that it has been considered one of the top devices available for continuous high speed throughput and some other customers have chosen it for its ability to handle high bitrate streaming video. That's what I have heard anyway.

The Wifi and BT share the same antenna so you have to turn off BT to get full throughput or it drops down to 802.11b-ish speeds as the BT and Wifi take turns using the antenna. Web browsing should still be very fast even while using BT simultaneously so I don't worry about that. This was just another cost saving area that helped the decision to add BT without charging more for Pandora.

At this point, nailing down which nub we will use is the last hurdle to jump. Thankfully, the nub was never designed to attach to the main PCB so development kits still ship without them and there is no time lost having to redesign that board to accommodate anything we choose in the end.

We have a couple serious solutions right now. Both of them *should* allow us to have the nub situation ready for production in August, but neither of them has the center click. A couple of companies have said that if we give them 5-6 months, they will come up with exactly what we need but that is just too unreasonable and there are no guarantees that this isn't just a salesman telling us what we want to hear.

I like the center click for menus and web browsers, but I have a feeling most people will not code them into games because of the risk of clicking them; maybe, maybe not! In any nub I have tested, clicking the button is definitely easier to do than on a full size PS2 controller, for example. It's understandable due to miniaturization and reduced travel for everything.

By the way, the source code for the wifi driver is NDA protected and can never be given out publicly BUT unlike the SGX drivers, we do have the source code so people under the NDA can do whatever they want and build the code for any kernel used. This is what I am led to believe at the moment and I'm just waiting on the legal team to process my agreement and get me the code in the next week or so. So much of this project involves us waiting on other companies to do their parts quickly and it just doesn't happen. Grr!

Oh, and yes, the code is GPL compliant. I asked and had it confirmed before I ever signed a single page of agreements or ordered samples.

 

[cb88]

W()()T!!! ... well it has come to my knowldege that i may have some spending money christmasish... so hopefully a red pandora has been released by them

nice post MWeston thank for the update and craigx too.

 

[gruso]

Thanks MW.

 

[dsleaf67]

Yes, thanks MW for detailed run-down. It really puts alot of concerns to rest (IMO - at least for me).

 

[Megamixman]

Oh, and yes, the code is GPL compliant. I asked and had it confirmed before I ever signed a single page of agreements or ordered samples.

Would that be the Wifi driver source code?

If so, the situation you speak of is not GPL compliant, since you would be distributing it and by GPL would be required to host the source to the public as well. This is one thing that you guys really should make sure you're carefull of, because a lot of FOSS fanatics are going around pointing fingers. Any binaries you distribute with the Pandora or through some sort of official websit, that are under the GPL, need to have a source hosted and open to the public as well. Merely linking to the source is not enough.

 

[javaJake]

Wow, that was a great read, to both Craigix and MWeston. Extremely refreshing to hear the both of you give us more insight (in both senses) into what's going on behind the scenes.

Thanks guys.

 

[MWeston]

Yes, yes, I am very aware of how GPL works now. There is a standard 'shim' that is open source in the kernel and the rest is distributed in binary. All I am saying is that it is my understanding that the NDA gives us the full source code that we cannot release so that we can actually do stuff with it and not have to wait for some uninterested third party to add a feature just because we (Pandora users) want it.

 

[cb88]

MWeston would that mean that anyone could recompile the kernel interface similarly to an nvidia driver for their own kernels?

 

[Game_over]

yeah Its good hearing from the both of you again. It be cool to write a break down of how to take adventage of the Pandora on each account (tin,zod,squidge, and whoever should chime in too), when its all said and done. But ofcoarse that wouldn't be for a while.

 

[God Ginrai]

Please let one of those 2 nub choices have a better throw than 2mm. *prays they're not PSP nubs*

-God Ginrai

 

[Vimacs]

If so, the situation you speak of is not GPL compliant, since you would be distributing it and by GPL would be required to host the source to the public as well. This is one thing that you guys really should make sure you're carefull of, because a lot of FOSS fanatics are going around pointing fingers. Any binaries you distribute with the Pandora or through some sort of official websit, that are under the GPL, need to have a source hosted and open to the public as well. Merely linking to the source is not enough.

That is total bullshitt, gpl only requires you to make the source available on request withing reasonable time.

 

[DasFool]

Thanks for taking the time for the detailed explanation