Official Blog- Keep It Going

[Qwertyuiop]

New blog post by ED:

Keep it going.

Long time no blog post - and a lot has happened, really!

First, let's start with some OS development.
The OS is getting better and better. We will probably add another minimal menu, similar to gmenu2x with no fancy effects and graphics but PND-Support.
This is for all the purists of you.

Also, notaz and DJWillis are slowly stepping forward in getting WiFi working.
While it's not perfect, the packet loss is decreasing and things are getting better.
It might still be a long way (or it might be finished soon, you never know with such things), but it's improving.

I also successfully managed to setup a Bluetooth PAN connection to my mobile phone. I got an IP address via DHCP, I got DNS resolving and I could ping the phone.
Pinging websites outside of the phone didn't work yet, but that might be my mobile phone (custom cooked ROM, never tried Bluetooth PAN before).
As I did use the terminal to set that up (it only takes a few lines to do so), the next step is including this into the Network Manager.

Next let's go on to the Mass Production:
As most of you already know, we moved the assembly from US to UK - we'll do it ourselves!
This is because the company in US finally gave us a price for doing this - a ridiculous high price.
The boards will still be populated there, but we will assemble the units ourselves. Craig is currently setting up the village hall to turn into a proper place to do this, including buying everything needed (ESD stuff, etc.)

Our current roadmap is like this:
(note: It still depends on the case production and on the board production. This is based on the dates they did tell us - but as we already experienced a few times, we are a small client for them and therefore have low priority... let's hope they keep their dates this time!)

March 18th: Production of 1000 cases is finished and will be shipped to UK.
March 22nd: 1000 cases will arrive in UK and will be inspected. If all is well, the next 3000 will go into production.
March 22th - March 26th: 500 populated and tested boards and all parts will be shipped to UK.
Approx. April 1st: Assembly will start.

Yep, another promise broken - whereas the company in Texas told us they can test 1000 boards a week before, it's now down to 500 boards a week.
At least they kept their shipping dates for all the prototypes and testing boards so far, so March 22th - March 26th should hopefully be fine.

Some parts already started to arrive in UK, e.g. the PSUs are there.

We decided to start on April 1st to have a small bufferzone for the stuff to arrive.
It doesn't make much sense if we all sit around in the village hall without having any parts to build together

The complete assembly process will be broadcasted live via Webcam. That will be fun!

BTW:
The Pandora stirred up a lot of interest in Germany currently.
I've been at the CeBIT in Germany doing a presentation about the OpenSource gaming handhelds and of course the Pandora.
It was crowded.
Thanks to Radio Tux, you can listen to the presentation.
You can also download the PDF I used for it here.

They also did another interview here.

And if anybody wants to watch it, we've got the full thing available as video on Youtube here.

Beware, it's all in German!

After the presentation, a lot of guys (some from the community as well) could get their hands on the Pandora and play with it.
They all loved how well the controls and the keyboard work. Looks like our design is working well

That's it for today - hopefully we have good news within the next two weeks!

http://www.open-pandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=2&Itemid=2〈=en

edit: fixed links

 

[dupey]

assembly starts on april 1st ... makes me suspicious.

and the 22nd is now the earliest date, the boards will be SHIPPED.
should have expected that it won't go as smooth as they told us first.

 

[Vorporeal]

assembly starts on april 1st ... makes me suspicious.

and the 22nd is now the earliest date, the boards will be SHIPPED.
should have expected that it won't go as smooth as they told us first.

ED said they're gonna be doing a live stream for the whole thing via webcam - it would be pretty hard to fake that.

 

[shunun]

Haha, maybe it's a big april fools joke? ED will pop on webcam

"APRIL FOOLS, THE PANDORA DOESN'T EXIST, WE FAKED IT ALL, HERE'S YOUR MONEY BACK" ??

Yeah, I expected more delays.. It's not exactly their fault this time. Hope things go smooth

 

[kikeminchas]

Didn't nobody noticed the fact that the boards will be produced at the pace of 500 a week??? This means, for 4000 boards it will take 8 weeks!!! They will just start at the beginning of April, so it will be well June before the last ones get their pandoras... taking into account possible problems (and you know there will be..) July seems the month where the last ones will get their Pandoras...

Again, all of this is assuming that eveything will run fine and as expected... that's the most scary part...

 

[mali]

^ Your math is a bit faulty Subtract two weeks.

 

[Renegade]

It seems I don't have to worry that my Pandora's would arrive in my April 9 - May 7 trip anymore.
Let's hope it all works out fine and that we all can enjoy our new toys in mid May-June something

I bought a Motorola milestone to keep me busy on the plane, works great for C64/Amiga/Nes/Snes/Megadrive just the controls are not that great of course.

 

[intense_mc]

New blog post by ED:

March 22nd: 1000 cases will arrive in UK and will be inspected. If all is well, the next 3000 will go into production.

WHAT?! I thought all 4000 were going to be shipped, not just the first thousand. I'm usually patient, and forgive me if I missed it but I seriously thought the whole '22nd March' hype did not include the "first 1000" meme.

So for the last in the first batch, are we looking at June? And these are not crazy projections, if you're saying 500 a week, that's 6 weeks.

EDIT: I'm guessing the first 1000 boards have been made...unless I'm also wrong on that also.

 

[kikeminchas]

^ Your math is a bit faulty Subtract two weeks.

Indeed, 8 weeks is a little bit less than 2 months... still it's quite a long time... I'm sorry but I never thought I would receive my Pandora in June when I preordered in Novemeber 09... I also think that the informations given at that time about the possible delivery date of the Pandora were misleading (intentionally or not). In any case, this deadlines from ED help me to put my cancellation date : End of June

 

[mali]

^ Actually 1000 boards have been assembled already. 500 of them will be tested until 22nd, another 500 in the following week, thus 1000 are already done before April. 3000 are left, thus 6 weeks, not 8 weeks

 

[borgqueenx]

mmmm looks like my pandora will arrive when im in the boat of pre-ordering for about 1 year and a month.

the post of mali is making me sad again. 6 weeks -_-

 

[Paradox]

New blog post by ED:

March 22nd: 1000 cases will arrive in UK and will be inspected. If all is well, the next 3000 will go into production.

WHAT?! I thought all 4000 were going to be shipped, not just the first thousand. I'm usually patient, and forgive me if I missed it but I seriously thought the whole '22nd March' hype did not include the "first 1000" meme.

So for the last in the first batch, are we looking at June? And these are not crazy projections, if you're saying 500 a week, that's 6 weeks.

EDIT: I'm guessing the first 1000 boards have been made...unless I'm also wrong on that also.

yeah it's really taking the piss. i'm near the end of the queue too and I thought mine would be shipped like 2 weeks into april, but June? I think i'll just cancel. you can have my godamn order number.

 

[borgqueenx]

yes im also disappointed once again....6 weeks.... im at place 3000, so i will have to wait 4 weeks longer....grumble...

 

[Jumpman]

WOW, it looks like in the best case situation it will be 2 months from start to finish(april 1-may 31). The boards isn't a real big suprise, but I thought ALL 4000 cases would be in the UK this month, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Oh well, I guess it is good for the process to get started, but it really sucks that so many will have to wait an extra long period while others get to play.


Chris

 

[Jumpman]

^ Actually 1000 boards have been assembled already. 500 of them will be tested until 22nd, another 500 in the following week, thus 1000 are already done before April. 3000 are left, thus 6 weeks, not 8 weeks

Yeah Mali, but this is if everything goes exactly as planned? And we all know that just based on this new blog posting, that nothing here goes as planned. I would say at least 2 months if things go partially well, and if we have a few hiccups, expect 2-3 months or more! I really don't wan't to be negative, as we may still see units within a month, and Craigs note about shipping a 1000 by this time next month, may actually happen, but I don't see many more happening really soon there after.

Do the team really expect those other 3000 cases shortly after the start of april? I set my deadline as july 29, 2010, and I thought there was plenty of time to get everyones shipped, but now I really just don't know. Hell, for all we know those first thousand cases can arrive and be non production quality. Then april 1 is a far and away dream. Well, here is to a good month ahead, but I really don't see to many things going as planned!


Chris

EDIT:By the way Ed, thanks for the post! Not the news I wanted, but at least we know what not to expect now.

 

[LineOf7s]

In an uncharacteristically glass-half-full moment, I'm thinking to myself that the more people have their Pandora before me, the more goodies I get to play with from Day One when mine arrives.

Yay?

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, what should I tell you?
We're probably more pissed about the delays than anyone here can be.
Because it's US who will go down with a big bang if anything happens.

We're trying to do the best we can, we eve build them with our own hands and you can be sure we try to push the companies as good as we can.
Being a small player in this big business surely is not easy, and being lied by the companies defintely doesn't make this easy - but I surely don't want to lie to you so I made this blog post which has the most recent information we have got.

 

[Prometheus]

Thanks for the informative blog post, ED. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

 

[mali]

Thanks for the informative blog post, ED. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

+1

 

[BWoodson]

Thanks for the informative blog post, ED. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

+1

+1

This is seriously the home stretch and people are still threatening to cancel their order??