Here I am, sitting in my plane for Greece, listening to some Arcade soundtracks and writing up a newspost.
It's way overdue, I wanted to write one last week, but well... let's just say I'm all up for a 30-hour day
I still will try to keep it short
Anyways, let's skip a long introduction and start right away.
1. The Case
As you can imagine, the reason I'm heading for Greece is to discuss the final tweaks of the case.
I've prepared a nice printed documentation (over 10 pages!) with all issues that still remain.
Don't worry, most of them are just tiny issues, like decreasing or increasing the size of some holes.
Or adding some peg to fix the MicroUSB port so it can't break off the PCB (how many smartphones have died because of this...?)
We should have finished cases for the GamesCom in August!
Monday, we'll work together on the physical aspects, on Tuesday we're discussing about colors (also for the aluminium metal frame).
2. The status of the PCBs
Nikolaus is currently finishing the design files and BOM for the (hopefully!) final board revision.
The one for the CPU board is already finished, the Display Board is almost finished and the Mainboard will come next.
We have also put the new 4GB RAM chips on one of our existing CPU PCBs. Once the new timings have been implemented into the bootloader, we can test these as well.
There have been many many small changes since the last revision. Nikolaus has almost finished all 30 topics he had on his to-do list in January.
Those were trivial things (like testing the sensors, etc.), optimization things (like improving the position of the LEDs for the keyboard backlight) and bug fixes (like only one of the two Space contact pads working).
Two a bit annoying things remain: The speakers are overdriven (could be a simple fix like adding a capacitor) and some boards frezee when running at 1,5GHz with 200% CPU Power for more than 10 minutes.
We've pinpointed that down pretty much already: It's most probably a bad soldering of the OMAP5, probably small micro-breaks that happen when they get too hot.
Such micro-breaks cannnot be found when X-Raying and they usually happen when the whole production process is not fully optimized yet.
So very unlikely to be a hardware design issue, but more tests will be done later.
We'll also make a second batch of prototypes, these will then also be the one that will be delivered to the prototype orders and most developers.
These should be bugfree in Hardware.
That one is planned to happen in August.
3. Part ordering!
As we're approaching the end, we started ordering parts with long leadtimes (like the OMAP5 or Palmas).
This is to speed up the production. Once we have all the parts in stock, we can start the production anytime after the prototypes have been confirmed to be fully working.
So yep, we're still hoping to deliver all preordered units within this year.
4. The new keymats
The improved keymats will arrive within July, so you can test them yourself at the GamesCom this year!
5. The new touchscreens
We'll receive three more different touchscreens (matte and clear) in order to improve the touchscreen quality.
Samples are expected before the GamesCom as well.
The clear ones will also have anti-glare filters applied, so they shouldn't act as a mirror.
We still hope to be able to use a matted one though.
6. Some software news
With the final hardware coming closer, it seems more and more developers show interest in the Pyra!
Some interesting developments have happened:
One devs working for ImgTech (the manufacturer of the 3D driver) has started to help us to get the 3D driver to work.
This is no official support from ImgTech, and of course he can't use or leak any internal sourcecode and details, but as he knows the driver, he should be a huge help!
So maybe we have working 3D at the GamesCom as well - fingers crossed.
Then another dev popped up who has worked with the TILER (the internal 2D rotator of the OMAP) and was wondering why we need the rotator chip and don't use TILER.
He hasn't used TILER on the OMAP5 yet, but on various other TI processors.
He ran a direct benchmark (without using Linux), and he thinks it should be possible to use TILER to rotate the image globally and transparent to Linux.
He did a quick check and has the impression that the Linux driver for TILER has some issues and bugs - and instead of fixing them, workarounds have been coded, that cause the huge slowdowns we were encountering.
This does mean: We MIGHT be able to rotate the screen using the internal OMAP5 hardware.
No one knows if that's true or possible, but it would make things a lot more easy: We wouldn't have to code some VSync into the SSD driver as the LCD timings would be enough, etc.
He will receive an OMAP5 EVM (devboard) on Monday and tries to work on it whenever he finds the time.
This would be awesome, and of course I'll let you know as soon as we have more details about it!
So, we're moving ahead, slow but steady.
7. The GamesCom 2016
As usual, we'll have a booth at the GamesCom 2016 in Cologne.
Everyone here is very welcome to visit us, have a chat (or coffee) with me and of course try out the Pyra.
Hopefully, we'll find the time to make a daily video from there.
Hope to meet you!
It's way overdue, I wanted to write one last week, but well... let's just say I'm all up for a 30-hour day
I still will try to keep it short
Anyways, let's skip a long introduction and start right away.
1. The Case
As you can imagine, the reason I'm heading for Greece is to discuss the final tweaks of the case.
I've prepared a nice printed documentation (over 10 pages!) with all issues that still remain.
Don't worry, most of them are just tiny issues, like decreasing or increasing the size of some holes.
Or adding some peg to fix the MicroUSB port so it can't break off the PCB (how many smartphones have died because of this...?)
We should have finished cases for the GamesCom in August!
Monday, we'll work together on the physical aspects, on Tuesday we're discussing about colors (also for the aluminium metal frame).
2. The status of the PCBs
Nikolaus is currently finishing the design files and BOM for the (hopefully!) final board revision.
The one for the CPU board is already finished, the Display Board is almost finished and the Mainboard will come next.
We have also put the new 4GB RAM chips on one of our existing CPU PCBs. Once the new timings have been implemented into the bootloader, we can test these as well.
There have been many many small changes since the last revision. Nikolaus has almost finished all 30 topics he had on his to-do list in January.
Those were trivial things (like testing the sensors, etc.), optimization things (like improving the position of the LEDs for the keyboard backlight) and bug fixes (like only one of the two Space contact pads working).
Two a bit annoying things remain: The speakers are overdriven (could be a simple fix like adding a capacitor) and some boards frezee when running at 1,5GHz with 200% CPU Power for more than 10 minutes.
We've pinpointed that down pretty much already: It's most probably a bad soldering of the OMAP5, probably small micro-breaks that happen when they get too hot.
Such micro-breaks cannnot be found when X-Raying and they usually happen when the whole production process is not fully optimized yet.
So very unlikely to be a hardware design issue, but more tests will be done later.
We'll also make a second batch of prototypes, these will then also be the one that will be delivered to the prototype orders and most developers.
These should be bugfree in Hardware.
That one is planned to happen in August.
3. Part ordering!
As we're approaching the end, we started ordering parts with long leadtimes (like the OMAP5 or Palmas).
This is to speed up the production. Once we have all the parts in stock, we can start the production anytime after the prototypes have been confirmed to be fully working.
So yep, we're still hoping to deliver all preordered units within this year.
4. The new keymats
The improved keymats will arrive within July, so you can test them yourself at the GamesCom this year!
5. The new touchscreens
We'll receive three more different touchscreens (matte and clear) in order to improve the touchscreen quality.
Samples are expected before the GamesCom as well.
The clear ones will also have anti-glare filters applied, so they shouldn't act as a mirror.
We still hope to be able to use a matted one though.
6. Some software news
With the final hardware coming closer, it seems more and more developers show interest in the Pyra!
Some interesting developments have happened:
One devs working for ImgTech (the manufacturer of the 3D driver) has started to help us to get the 3D driver to work.
This is no official support from ImgTech, and of course he can't use or leak any internal sourcecode and details, but as he knows the driver, he should be a huge help!
So maybe we have working 3D at the GamesCom as well - fingers crossed.
Then another dev popped up who has worked with the TILER (the internal 2D rotator of the OMAP) and was wondering why we need the rotator chip and don't use TILER.
He hasn't used TILER on the OMAP5 yet, but on various other TI processors.
He ran a direct benchmark (without using Linux), and he thinks it should be possible to use TILER to rotate the image globally and transparent to Linux.
He did a quick check and has the impression that the Linux driver for TILER has some issues and bugs - and instead of fixing them, workarounds have been coded, that cause the huge slowdowns we were encountering.
This does mean: We MIGHT be able to rotate the screen using the internal OMAP5 hardware.
No one knows if that's true or possible, but it would make things a lot more easy: We wouldn't have to code some VSync into the SSD driver as the LCD timings would be enough, etc.
He will receive an OMAP5 EVM (devboard) on Monday and tries to work on it whenever he finds the time.
This would be awesome, and of course I'll let you know as soon as we have more details about it!
So, we're moving ahead, slow but steady.
7. The GamesCom 2016
As usual, we'll have a booth at the GamesCom 2016 in Cologne.
Everyone here is very welcome to visit us, have a chat (or coffee) with me and of course try out the Pyra.
Hopefully, we'll find the time to make a daily video from there.
Hope to meet you!
