new Vs old


Fzero

Fzero

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Mar 9, 2010
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Just wondering whats the difs between the earlier units from batch 1, which have been out in the wild for some time now...


Compared to the newer ones, such as the ones coming out from the work ED, Link and Linux-SWAT have been building?


Rev D boards.... increased RAM.... etc


I dont know what these board revisions are exactly but i imagine the newer ones are the better ones.


Im still in the line for my Pandora, another 2 months or whatever it is, I got in toward the end of first batch.


But seeing as my Pandora doesnt actually exist yet, will it be of better quality than say, someone like Sony or Prometheus who have theirs already from the earlier ones built up and shipped out?


I get that the firmware can be updated to tweek performance and such, but in terms of the hardware i guess im meaning.


As i say i dont know about these board revisions, im guessing they are revised each time they are coming in from a dif source, company?


Are they improved at all as time goes on?


For the one word answerers ... is my Pandora going to be better because im waiting longer?


cheers :)
 
Slightly better positioned shoulder button switches to aid assembly (no need to carve out the buttons...) and a newer revision SoC. It doesn't change more than fixing few hardware bugs. And then the increased RAM, but that's about it afaik.
 
Things will get better with time. Case revisions haven't been implemented, LED colors are now more orange for Wi-Fi/BlueTooth. There's a small modification being made to the LCD cable, a change that allows both speaker wires to be the same size, making production smoother for the lid assembly portion.


It's the latest board revision, Rev 6D, now with 512MB RAM, although only usable under the experimental kernel which needs 2 Months™ of fine tuning. The microphone has been better integrated onto the board is one of the changes notable when comparing the two. Circuit Co's microphones are accidents waiting to happen. I for one no longer have an attached microphone (but you can still input through the audio jack IIRC).


I'm sure ED can add the remainder of the changes I missed :)
 
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ok thanks guys thats made things clearer to me.


I'm still going to wait for my original ordered one, and when it comes it will no doubt be the [improved] one with the better LCD and more RAM etc.


I was asking as im half tempted to try my luck at a bid on ebay for one, which will be the earlier ones with less memory but thats fine, as my original order will arrive one day.


Im just getting keen [again] to get get my grubby mits on one and start playing, python practicing, all other joys of Pandora...


If i get rid of a few old consoles im not using so much these days, theres some of the funds towards getting one of ebay ..... which i would then most likely sell on once i get my actual one.
 
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It's just the LCD cable cable that's changing, not the LCD itself. Typo on my part, LCD vs LED which I now changed.


By waiting, you should have a case less prone to cracking too.
 
good stuff, cheers for infoes


there was an ollllld post, not sure if was here or on the old gp32x boards, that someone had or was going to mod the LED lights so you could set sequences of your own. Did that ever happen? Until i have my Pandora i cant bare to visit the repo, it will just make the wait harder. But that is one little tweek i liked the sound of.


Sucker for an LED i am
 
FZERO said:
mod the LED lights so you could set sequences of your own
Click to expand...
You can already do that, no modding required. Every LED has a special directory (/sys/class/leds/...) and in that directory are two special files. "trigger" is a software library that lets the system control the LED; if you're up to it, you can write your own complex trigger based on some of the existing triggers. If that's too much effort, the second file will come in handy: "brightness" will let you manually control whether the led is on or off (and how bright they are for those that support it); you have to disable the trigger, otherwise the system might overwrite your value, but that's pretty simple.



Code: 
echo none > /sys/class/leds/pandora\:\:power/trigger

echo 32 > /sys/class/leds/pandora\:\:power/brightness

And thus the power LED goes to half brightness and you are now in manual control of it. Write whatever script you want for the LEDS. Only power and charger have actual brightness. The other 4 are either 0 for off, or not 0 for on.


Make sure to restore the trigger when you're done. The trigger will also be restored when you reboot.


There's a lot of different triggers you can use that also comes with their own special file. Set the trigger to "timer" and "delay_on" and "delay_off" files will appear: echo a time (in milliseconds) into those files and it will control how long the led is on and off. "heartbeat" makes it flash at regular intervals. If you're feeling adventurous you can write your own trigger.
 
I'm wondering that too now... videos anyone? :)


Thanks for that info WizardStan, I'm definitely going to give it a go and see what I can do. Thanks for pointing out the relevant files


kitt-front.jpg
 
yeah, we thought about doing the old cylon/kjnight-rider LED dance while charging or something, but seems like needless waste :) Still, not hard to script up, and could be pretty cute.


I think I did a lame hack once to simulate it. Gads, that was years aog, I doubt I coudl find it.


Still, a lilttle sh-script with a for-loop and a echo >brightness thing woudl be easy.


jeff
 
That script I'm going to try one day:)


as for "El Coche Fantaaastico", the best thing I seen today.


Soon as Michael stepped in the door with the high kick I approved of the Spanish version.
 
Ohh, I have an idea! Not sure if this would work or how it would be scripted, tho.


If the lid's closed, and the unit is charging, solid "on" for the percent the battery is charged, and in the empty areas a kind of 'rainfall' or 'falling blocks' effect. As the battery charges, more of the LEDs go solid till it's at 100%.


... is this even possible? :p
 
Dunno if that was directed just at me, but just thinking of my idea as a plugged-in thing while charging, so I'd gather if anything it'd minimally affect charging speed.
 
You can drive an LED on a 1.5 volt battery for months. Concern about extra LEDs taking power from the charging is like complaining about a drop of water in the ocean. :p
 
-Tj- said:
Ohh, I have an idea! Not sure if this would work or how it would be scripted, tho.


If the lid's closed, and the unit is charging, solid "on" for the percent the battery is charged, and in the empty areas a kind of 'rainfall' or 'falling blocks' effect. As the battery charges, more of the LEDs go solid till it's at 100%.


... is this even possible? :p
Click to expand...
Change that to "if it's in low-power mode" and I'll say YEA to this. That way, you wouldn't have to "turn on" the Pandora to see the charging status.
 
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