Pandora Status Update

[aliking]

+1 for Chip getting front page post rights on OpenPandora.org.

 

[TaG]

+1 for Chip getting front page post rights on OpenPandora.org.

I'd be quite happy for Chip to do this, but remember that what goes on openpandora.org needs to be accurate as it is "official". This means that the information needs to come from the official devs or needs to be vetted / approved by them. (eg manufactured in Asia / US discrepancy - and I certainly mean no offence to Chip or anyone else as his info is normally good and well communicated.)

 

[sterling976]

Boo! LCD manufacturing delay. HOORAAAAAAAY BEER!!

On a more serious note, I'm pretty disappointed that I probably won't receive my Pandora until '09. I was on the fence about ordering, and the preorder extension taunted me into putting my money down, so I think I'm in the last 800 or so. Oh, well. Should've ordered sooner. I'd order a beagle board as a way to pass the time, but it looks like digikey has no stock at present.

I may have to actually go out and *shudder* live my life for a few months.

Thanks for the update, Chip. It's good to have some firmer answers, even if they're not the ones I wanted to hear.

 

[MiniSinisterMinister]

I have order no 30XX or so. Does that correspond to my place int he queue?

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

I have order no 30XX or so. Does that correspond to my place int he queue?

Don't order numbers start with GVV or something?

 

[hedwards]

I have order no 30XX or so. Does that correspond to my place int he queue?

Don't order numbers start with GVV or something?

Mine starts GXX, but I think it depends when you ordered and from which store. I ordered mine through the gp2x.co.uk site.

 

[christo930]

I've had a nice chat with Craig today about the Pandora project status. He's gone off to bed (it's 2AM there, I think), but I'm going to try to give you a condensed state of affairs.

Credit Card Orders
As you know, some (not all) credit card orders will have to be refunded and the orders re-placed with the new bank. This process will begin tomorrow (or today, if it is already Nov. 4 when you red this). The orders are being refunded geographically - UK, then continental Europe, then North America. The whole process should take about a week. If your card is being refunded, you will receive an email with instructions for re-ordering. No, I don't know what those instructions are. The emails will go out when the refunds are processed, but because different banks process things differently, you may not see the money in your account immediately. Personally, if I'm affected, I won't be re-ordering until the money shows up in my account. I suggest you do the same, but it's your call.

I don't know if there is any sort of time limit on re-ordering. I don't know about "places in line". I'll find out.

If you don't get an email in the next week, then your credit card order was processed successfully before the bank went wonky. Your order is secure and you don't need to do anything.


Manufacturing Update
Apparently the last piece of the puzzle, the last item that needs to be finalized before we'll have a complete Pandora, is the wifi antenna. Good antenna design is the main distinguishing factor between good wifi reception and crappy reception. Having an antenna professionally designed would have cost something like $100K, so the design team had to go a different route. The testing has taken longer than expected, but the result will be excellent wifi range.

The good news is that the antenna probably won't have much of an effect on production times. The bad news is that the LCD panels probably will.


Delays
There are definite supply problems with the LCD panels. It is a simple matter of the manufacturer committing to a certain number in a certain time, and not being able to deliver on that time schedule. It is unfortunate, but it is not uncommon either. There is nothing that can be done about it.

They are shipping panels as they become available, and they will fill out the entire order. However, they will probably not fill the entire order by the end of this month. They may not have it filled by the end of next month. Yes, that means some people might not get their Pandoras until next year. It sucks, but like I said, there is nothing that can be done.


Refunds
As has been the policy from the beginning, you may have your pre-order refunded at any time. This is a community project, and I get the impression that some of you who are new to the community didn't understand what that meant when you placed your order. If you don't want to deal with problems like this, there are others who don't mind as much.



OK, not the best news, but we are moving forward. I'm going to do my best to keep everybody up to date with this stuff. I PMed ED to see about getting front page posting access on Openpandora.org so I can put big updates there. Until then, I'll just sticky anything really important for a couple days and then let if fall. And of course, I will add any significant dev update to my list.



There are some things I don't understand. I am not accusing anyone of anything, but maybe someone can cure my ignorance? Is it legal to bill someone's credit card for something that hasn't even been made, let alone shipped? I know in the US there have been some problems with website owners billing for things that did not ship and they were threatened with legal action. Am I not understanding something here. The people involved in this project, especially Craig, have a long history of honest business practices so I don't think they are doing anything wrong, at least not intentionally. Why does it cost $100k (though a dollar sign is used, it's unclear if he means pounds of dollars) to design an antenna? It seems to be an awful high figure, especially given the wifi antenna on most wifi cards for computers and antenna's on routers. It's just a piece of metal wire with rubber coating. I would imagine that an internal one would cost more to design because of routing around components and interference from the components, but 100k seems really high. It seems to me that if something like an antenna costs 100k to design. the whole thing must of cost 10 million. Maybe someone can explain to me why it cost so much? I had no idea that designing an antenna cost so much money and I am not being sarcastic. What was the different route and was the cost savings substantial? Why is the team having so much trouble getting 3000 lcd screens? It seems like a small number for a factory that makes lcd screens. Is the order so small that they are getting pushed back for bigger customers (Hey, I'd rather give poor service to a 3k order than a 20k order) Is it using a new technology and they are running into unforeseen manufacturing difficulties? Is there a specific component in the screen that there is a shortage of or something?

Since it's probably a realistic guess to say that the second batch won't be shipping until maybe March or even April, do you think the Wiz will be able to overtake the market in the meanwhile? They should be shipping this month They are just about backwardly compatible with the GP2X (needing just a recompile), they are half the price and available now. It isn't as powerful as the Pandora, but it is powerful enough for most uses and is definitely a game system.
Will the availability of the Wiz game system affect your decision on which system you will buy? After all, a bird in the hand...

Chris

 

[God Ginrai]

I've had a nice chat with Craig today about the Pandora project status. He's gone off to bed (it's 2AM there, I think), but I'm going to try to give you a condensed state of affairs.

Credit Card Orders
As you know, some (not all) credit card orders will have to be refunded and the orders re-placed with the new bank. This process will begin tomorrow (or today, if it is already Nov. 4 when you red this). The orders are being refunded geographically - UK, then continental Europe, then North America. The whole process should take about a week. If your card is being refunded, you will receive an email with instructions for re-ordering. No, I don't know what those instructions are. The emails will go out when the refunds are processed, but because different banks process things differently, you may not see the money in your account immediately. Personally, if I'm affected, I won't be re-ordering until the money shows up in my account. I suggest you do the same, but it's your call.

I don't know if there is any sort of time limit on re-ordering. I don't know about "places in line". I'll find out.

If you don't get an email in the next week, then your credit card order was processed successfully before the bank went wonky. Your order is secure and you don't need to do anything.


Manufacturing Update
Apparently the last piece of the puzzle, the last item that needs to be finalized before we'll have a complete Pandora, is the wifi antenna. Good antenna design is the main distinguishing factor between good wifi reception and crappy reception. Having an antenna professionally designed would have cost something like $100K, so the design team had to go a different route. The testing has taken longer than expected, but the result will be excellent wifi range.

The good news is that the antenna probably won't have much of an effect on production times. The bad news is that the LCD panels probably will.


Delays
There are definite supply problems with the LCD panels. It is a simple matter of the manufacturer committing to a certain number in a certain time, and not being able to deliver on that time schedule. It is unfortunate, but it is not uncommon either. There is nothing that can be done about it.

They are shipping panels as they become available, and they will fill out the entire order. However, they will probably not fill the entire order by the end of this month. They may not have it filled by the end of next month. Yes, that means some people might not get their Pandoras until next year. It sucks, but like I said, there is nothing that can be done.


Refunds
As has been the policy from the beginning, you may have your pre-order refunded at any time. This is a community project, and I get the impression that some of you who are new to the community didn't understand what that meant when you placed your order. If you don't want to deal with problems like this, there are others who don't mind as much.



OK, not the best news, but we are moving forward. I'm going to do my best to keep everybody up to date with this stuff. I PMed ED to see about getting front page posting access on Openpandora.org so I can put big updates there. Until then, I'll just sticky anything really important for a couple days and then let if fall. And of course, I will add any significant dev update to my list.



There are some things I don't understand. I am not accusing anyone of anything, but maybe someone can cure my ignorance? Is it legal to bill someone's credit card for something that hasn't even been made, let alone shipped? I know in the US there have been some problems with website owners billing for things that did not ship and they were threatened with legal action. Am I not understanding something here. The people involved in this project, especially Craig, have a long history of honest business practices so I don't think they are doing anything wrong, at least not intentionally. Why does it cost $100k (though a dollar sign is used, it's unclear if he means pounds of dollars) to design an antenna? It seems to be an awful high figure, especially given the wifi antenna on most wifi cards for computers and antenna's on routers. It's just a piece of metal wire with rubber coating. I would imagine that an internal one would cost more to design because of routing around components and interference from the components, but 100k seems really high. It seems to me that if something like an antenna costs 100k to design. the whole thing must of cost 10 million. Maybe someone can explain to me why it cost so much? I had no idea that designing an antenna cost so much money and I am not being sarcastic. What was the different route and was the cost savings substantial? Why is the team having so much trouble getting 3000 lcd screens? It seems like a small number for a factory that makes lcd screens. Is the order so small that they are getting pushed back for bigger customers (Hey, I'd rather give poor service to a 3k order than a 20k order) Is it using a new technology and they are running into unforeseen manufacturing difficulties? Is there a specific component in the screen that there is a shortage of or something?

Since it's probably a realistic guess to say that the second batch won't be shipping until maybe March or even April, do you think the Wiz will be able to overtake the market in the meanwhile? They should be shipping this month They are just about backwardly compatible with the GP2X (needing just a recompile), they are half the price and available now. It isn't as powerful as the Pandora, but it is powerful enough for most uses and is definitely a game system.
Will the availability of the Wiz game system affect your decision on which system you will buy? After all, a bird in the hand...

Chris


I don't believe that the charge ahead of time thing is a problem, because they let us know before we ordered that this would be the case.

As for the wifi antenna, I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding. It says that they took a different route, because getting a professionally designed one would cost 100k. They didn't spend 100k for it's design. Or at least, that's how I read it.

-God Ginrai

 

[hedwards]

There are some things I don't understand. I am not accusing anyone of anything, but maybe someone can cure my ignorance? Is it legal to bill someone's credit card for something that hasn't even been made, let alone shipped? I know in the US there have been some problems with website owners billing for things that did not ship and they were threatened with legal action.

Apples and oranges probably, there's nothing wrong with doing that. Unless there's fraud going on there's nothing illegal about it. Some card issuers are more aggressive in their attempts to protect there customers than others are.

QUOTE
Am I not understanding something here. The people involved in this project, especially Craig, have a long history of honest business practices so I don't think they are doing anything wrong, at least not intentionally. Why does it cost $100k (though a dollar sign is used, it's unclear if he means pounds of dollars) to design an antenna? It seems to be an awful high figure, especially given the wifi antenna on most wifi cards for computers and antenna's on routers.

Quality engineering is expensive and there's quite a bit of cost involved with testing. I wouldn't be surprised if the cost was up there. I'm somewhat unclear as to why we can't get an extra jack for an antenna should we need more than the internal one ever. I'm sure it's been brought up in design and shot down for a good reason.

 

[socket]

christo,

Not sure about the legality of charging for something in advance. I don't really understand why you brought it up. If you were worried then maybe you should not have ordered.

I think you underestimate how much professional hardware design costs. I do not think that 100k is a very large number for such a service. Imagine that this was a large company designing a normal consumer device. I can see them spending possibly much more than 100k to a professional company to get the antenna design as good as possible. The way I took the message is that they are simply designing something "in-house" or at least with simple generic parts and it will be basically only optimized by their testing.

Also I would imagine LCD manufacturers looking at small orders as "less important" than a company ordering 10k lcds or whatever. They surely prioritize orders for their larger contracts and partners.

edit: clarity

 

[jdh2550]

There are some things I don't understand. I am not accusing anyone of anything, but maybe someone can cure my ignorance? Is it legal to bill someone's credit card for something that hasn't even been made, let alone shipped?

AFAIK, you're right - there are laws about this. However, lots of places allow you to pre-order and place a deposit for the as yet to be released item (be it a video game or a Tesla sports car). Our deposit just happened to be 100% of the value of the device - and it's 100% refundable. I think it's likely somewhat of a gray area - but I wouldn't worry about it.

QUOTE
Why does it cost $100k (though a dollar sign is used, it's unclear if he means pounds of dollars) to design an antenna? It seems to be an awful high figure, especially given the wifi antenna on most wifi cards for computers and antenna's on routers. It's just a piece of metal wire with rubber coating.


It's not just a piece of metal. It's a piece of metal that is (a) tuned to the appropriate length for the wavelength of the signal being received & (B) routed and shielded appropriately for the other electronics that surround it. So, to get the best design you need to have some pretty expensive equipment to be able to measure all these various things. Add in the fact that relatively speaking not many people go out and say "please design me an antenna" and you end up with a $100K price tag.

And as the previous poster stated - rather than pay that the guys decided to do this themselves. Likely the good old fashioned way - iteratively "futzing" with antenna designs until they get the best range. (That's just a guess and futzing is a place holder for highly technical terms that I don't know).

 

[Geuben]

I have some friends who will tell you that antenna design is an extremely complicated business and very difficult (I avoided that module ). The cost will be justified by the amount of work involved in making a good quality custom antenna.

 

[Chip]

I think you guys answered Christo's questions fairly accurately. It is not "illegal" to sell preorders for a product as long as you are clear that it is a pre-order, which is surely the case here.

I don't know if Craig meant 100K USD or GBP for a professionally designed antenna, but it's a huge chunk of change either way. That's why they went with an alternate plan. No specifics were provided, but I imagine it entailed a lot of trial and error. High frequency antenna tuning is an incredibly complicated art.

 

[JayFoxRox]

Hopefully everything will become good with the LCDs, but if it pushes the original date by more than 21 days, I would pay alot less if I were the customer.

 

[MiniSinisterMinister]

Ok, my order no. does not correspond to my place the queue. But how do the others know what their place is in the queue?

What regards the Wiz taking over the market before the Pandora. I do not think that there is such a big market for the Whiz. Many people do not want to spend € 150 for a handheld with almost no exclusive games. They want to use emulators/homebrew games on the popluar handhels (Nintendo, Sony, Apple) they already own. These were the responses from the people I asked. If you think that pure homebrew handhelds will be the next big thing, you are going to be dissapointed. The Whiz is just a nicer looking and faster version of the GP2X and will attract just the old clientel. In principle this is also true for the Pandora. But it offers more possiblities for additonal applications. If it works fine and stays relatively cheap, then it could attract some more geeks like myself who missed out on GP2X because it could do too little for them. In my opinion Pandora will sell better than the Whiz because it offers a greater step forward and there is no similar predecessor. If you own a GP2X already, you'll go for the Pandora.

 

[mali]

I have order no 30XX or so. Does that correspond to my place int he queue?

You are a Landsmann aren't you?
In Germany they started with 2299 and were actually online before the rest of the world. If I remember correctly , around 700 P.s were sold in Germany.

 

[TaG]

Ok, my order no. does not correspond to my place the queue. But how do the others know what their place is in the queue?

Pyscic abilities.

And a little guesswork based on time they placed the order. No one really knows except for the "2000 sold in six hours" that was mentioned

 

[MisterBrisby]

As long as you guys keep us up to date, it's okay.
The most important thing for me personally is, that at least some Pandoras will actually get delivered in the next months. That will strengthen the confidence in the project and the waiting rest of us will have something real to look at, drool at and to look forward to.

I am a 2nd batch-dude, so I have no problem with waiting longer anyway.

 

[hch]

thank you very much chip for the comprehensive update! i really don't mind waiting longer if i know how things are.

the best news for me is actually that the case seems to be done already (as implied by the statement that the antenna is the only missing part). i don't know why, but i was always fearing that the case would be the most problematic thing (being a total ignoramus in actual hardware design).

 

[mali]

Even if someone calculates an antenna in a professional way, a huge chunk of FUTZING(lol, I like that word) is needed in real live applications. FUTZING, FUTZING :lol: