One week with the Pyra


Don't forget that there are various touchscreens out there. It could be meant for a dot matrix for some industrial device. Grain doesn't matter here

That was my initial thought as well when I saw the video - I have worked with industrial touchscreens and they look exactly like that. In these kind of environments they need to be able to withstand dirt, water, changing temperatures etc. clear image is less important.
 
Just checked the video.
Yep, very noisy, gaming and art are going to suffer with it (movies not much), but again, I thought it was going to look way worse.
The situation is probably worse in real life with our own eyes instead of recorded hd.

I´m confident such problem can be solved.
In fact, within the problems such a production could have, I find this to be just a little slip.
Keep it up!
 
Thought of some things to test with the nubs...

Does drag-and-drop work right? That is, can you press the nub and move it while it is pressed?

Will press-and-hold work for right clicks? What is the plan for middle-clicking?
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The problem is not the LCD, but the touchscreen - which is good, having to search another LCD would be a really big problem and a massive setback at this stage of the developement(the whole sync-/rotating-/potential tearing-stuff again).
Wait, the touchscreen is affecting visibility? :/

Regarding, how it looks, you can compare it here:
http://www.downlink.de/pyra/Touchscreen-Problem.mp4
I can't even see a problem (or perhaps it's so minor I'm mentally writing it off as video compression?). (edit: definitely more noticable later in the video) It's not unusably bad... Would it make a backup unit cheaper to use these for them?
 
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Wait, the touchscreen is affecting visibility? :/

Sure, as it is an additional layer the light have to pass through. But it can also affect it in a good way. As said, some graininess will achieve a matte look, reducing annoying reflections.

I can't even see a problem (or perhaps it's so minor I'm mentally writing it off as video compression?). (edit: definitely more noticable later in the video) It's not unusably bad...
It is a comparison video. As it seems first Pandora, then Pyra, then both.

I agree, especially scaled down to pyra size it does look acceptable for me. Might be different in daily use though, and I understand that many people would consider it as very bad, in these times in particular, as most people are used to use glare-type screens with ultra high resolutions.

Would it make a backup unit cheaper to use these for them?
No more than 10$ cheaper, otherwise ED would loose more money than a rework would cost (1000 Units with estimated 5000-10000 reworking costs)

But:

That was my initial thought as well when I saw the video - I have worked with industrial touchscreens and they look exactly like that. In these kind of environments they need to be able to withstand dirt, water, changing temperatures etc. clear image is less important.

Maybe ED could sell pyras with the current touchscreen for the same price or even a bit higher - as ruggedized-screen-editions :D
 
Thought of some things to test with the nubs...

Does drag-and-drop work right? That is, can you press the nub and move it while it is pressed?

Will press-and-hold work for right clicks? What is the plan for middle-clicking?

As far as I've read, the mechanism as to how the nubs will implement mouse movements and clicking has been discussed before, but not decided upon.

One option is just to do what the Pandora did - don't use the clickiness of the nubs but use the motion of the right nub to implement clicks; left and right for those buttons, and down for middle (and up for double-click).

Another option which I tend to favour is to make both nubs move the mouse. Click left nub and move the right nub to left drag and vice versa to right drag. But it's unclear in that setup how you'd middle click. And what happens if you move both nubs simultaneously is undefined, so it might also provide some difficulties in implementation.

And there are yet other options which I've forgotten. Judging by the video it's just set up so the left nub moves the mouse relatively, with no clicking or dragging implemented yet as far as I can tell.
 
Yes, pretty grainy in comparison to the pandoras screen- Is there any possibility of selling the grainy touch screens to someone who might have use for them? Perhaps they can be used elesewhere- though I guess they are made to size for the pyras screen?
 
As far as I've read, the mechanism as to how the nubs will implement mouse movements and clicking has been discussed before, but not decided upon.

One option is just to do what the Pandora did - don't use the clickiness of the nubs but use the motion of the right nub to implement clicks; left and right for those buttons, and down for middle (and up for double-click).

Another option which I tend to favour is to make both nubs move the mouse. Click left nub and move the right nub to left drag and vice versa to right drag. But it's unclear in that setup how you'd middle click. And what happens if you move both nubs simultaneously is undefined, so it might also provide some difficulties in implementation.

And there are yet other options which I've forgotten. Judging by the video it's just set up so the left nub moves the mouse relatively, with no clicking or dragging implemented yet as far as I can tell.

I always wondered why the shoulder buttons weren't used for clicking. Pretty easy to double click them, hold them, whatever. With the dual shoulder buttons, left could be left click, top right right click, and one of the bottom (bottom right) for middle.

Actually, now that i really think about it, the same setup but left and right click on the two right shoulder buttons, since those are used the most, and middle click on a left one.
 
Probably because you don't want random left and right clicks happening while you're carrying your Pandora in your bag. I guess it could use the lid switch to deactivate those buttons though.

Mind you, now I type it, i think there was also some complication because the shoulder buttons are bound as keyboard modifiers - shift and ctrl. Presumably that stops approaches like those use by MouseAB to set keyboard keys as mouse buttons from working.
 
with a little time, one can develop a FunKeyMonkey module which would make a click&release of the shoulder buttons into a mouse press, but keep the shoulders as modifiers in case another key is pressed before the shoulder button is released. (_wb_ pointed this out at some point, somewhere, and bzar is the one behind FunKeyMonkey.) i suppose this should go on the wiki at some point.

being able to turn a FKM module off for games is possible, too.
 
As far as I've read, the mechanism as to how the nubs will implement mouse movements and clicking has been discussed before, but not decided upon.
But can the nubs press-and-move in hardware?

Probably because you don't want random left and right clicks happening while you're carrying your Pandora in your bag. I guess it could use the lid switch to deactivate those buttons though.
On that note, it seems to me there might be useful cases where you want those buttons to do things when the Pyra is closed (log current GPS coordinates? start covert recording?). Too bad they don't have some way to detect fingers vs pockets. :p

By the way, where is the microphone on the Pyra? I like how the N900's is on the side so I can record while it's in its case...
 
I thought it was decided that the default mouse actions would be left click as right nub click and right click as left nub click. They are backwards since you don't get the full range of motion while clicking the nubs. I could be wrong about that being decided, but if it is you can always change it to something else. Not sure about middle click, which I don't use very often since my trackball lacks a middle button.
 
If i remember Correktly, Nub Click only works in center position..
but on Pandora, i just used " cut", and "paste" because its worked..., ctrl x ctrl v
 
Heating:

I can't say too much about the heat it produces yet, but it can be quite a handwarmer.
Right now, we have done nothing yet to spread or reduce the heat. We haven't put any heat spreader in there or connected it to the SD Card slots, so we're in the worst possible state now.
First: Nice to hear taht nearly everything works fine/like expected.

The the heating: as I've done some goldsmithing lately, I might like to experiment a bit with a headspreader made from silver...
(shouldn't be that expensive, since it wouldn't be a big amount of silver (but 50% more heatconductivity...)
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LCD / Touchscreen:
.....
Is it worth to try a pandora touchscreen on the Pyra Display, just to check?

Preordering:
.......
Oh, ans as many mentioned they would like to get two or more: I'll probably make a discount for that. Can't say how much though until I got the final prices, right? :)
Will that apply for people who did more than one pre-preorder, too?;)
 
Well, I'm trying to find out who the manufacturer of Pandoras touchscreen is (the last ones were also custom made for us), as that one really really rocks.

Actually in my unit (rebirth) the touchscreen is not very good in that it doesn't react when the pressed area is large (i.e. when using a finger). It works only with the stylus or if I bend my finger to use the nail, which is not always comfortable or possible. It would be nice if the Pyra screen didn't have this flaw (I had several devices with resistive touch screens, and none ever behaved like that).
 
Actually in my unit (rebirth) the touchscreen is not very good in that it doesn't react when the pressed area is large (i.e. when using a finger). It works only with the stylus or if I bend my finger to use the nail, which is not always comfortable or possible. It would be nice if the Pyra screen didn't have this flaw (I had several devices with resistive touch screens, and none ever behaved like that).

My 1 Ghz had this problem too, it became a little better after some and hard pressing... I felt the difference from my older rebirth I was used too
 
Actually in my unit (rebirth) the touchscreen is not very good in that it doesn't react when the pressed area is large (i.e. when using a finger). It works only with the stylus or if I bend my finger to use the nail, which is not always comfortable or possible. It would be nice if the Pyra screen didn't have this flaw (I had several devices with resistive touch screens, and none ever behaved like that).

Yes, that was one horrible batch of touchscreens... we immediately switched to different ones after them.

BTW:
Now things become more interesting.
I removed a (cracked) touchscreen from one of the LCDs I had lying around and put it in front of various screens (Pandoras LCD, computer monitors, etc.)
It was perfectly fine, as good as on the Pandora.
I haven't tested that one on the Pyra yet, as I got it at home and I'm at work right now, but I will do that tonight.

What I need to find out is whether it was the same touch or not.

We had multiple versions:

* One version which was too hard to press
* Another one which worked find for us (the one we approved).

If the model number on the touchscreen is accurate (it should be!), then it should be one of the ones we approved!
However, we received 4 samples back then which we used to approve.

After that, we received 20 displays, fully assembled.

The one I now tested is one of those 20.

So, what does that mean?

It means...

  • ... the approved sample might be fine and the later delivered ones are different
  • ... the grain of the touchscreen might hit exactly the dpi size of the LCD, leading to the grainy picture
  • ... the one I've removed right now is from an older batch but has the same model number
I'll keep you posted!
[doublepost=1458561446,1458560578][/doublepost]Okay, just did some more tests, as I remembered I got a GPD XD here which has a similar resolution.

In fact, the issue is the high resolution!

Both the Pyra and Pandora touchscreen look that bad when I put them in front of the GPD XD screen!
The grain exists because we wanted a matte screen (I don't really like glossy), but it seems that's not possible anymore with that high dpi.

So the solution is probably to use a non-matte touchscreen with some AntiGlare to prevent all those reflections.
 
At least you found that out...
How scratch resistant would a non-matte touch screen with Anti Glare be? My Pandora's touch screen (which is perfectly fine) seems to be very scratch resistant, even after all those years some wiping with a soft piece of cloth is suffiecient to make it look like new and I almost always use my Pandora with Stylus.
 
Sounds good ED - you might have a cheaper solution then. Interesting how stuff works with the screens- stuff one might not easily think could happen.
 
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