Pandora successor requirements / wishlist / ..


yay for hacker friendly, wouldn't hurt to have a few GPIOs although this is not the kind of HW I would use for experiments. A physically decoupled (e.g. optocoupled) interface to the outside world would be nice, though.
Personally, If I interfaced with potentially dirty signals I would use an optoisolator or optocoupler in my interface design, those ICs are cheaper to replace than a Pandora board. On my Raspberry Pi I don't care to do this because it's a $35 board that if I accidentally blow out it's not the end of the world. 

 
 
if we get an accelerometer in it, can it also have a compas?
 
It would be nice if ED produced some concept P2s with currently available hardware and a ballpark estimated sales price.

Also what he things is fixed and not negotiable (e.g. physical keyboard).
 
Personally, If I interfaced with potentially dirty signals I would use an optoisolator or optocoupler in my interface design, those ICs are cheaper to replace than a Pandora board. On my Raspberry Pi I don't care to do this because it's a $35 board that if I accidentally blow out it's not the end of the world.
For me it is not only that, but doing anything like this would only be truly meaningful if there was a really solid way to also attach whatever you come up with into the unit while moving it. That means both a solid external connector that would look pretty alien to any regular consumer and/or a rail or tiny bolts or whatever that also affect visual appearance negatively to the average consumer.

I think people interested in something like the Pi and people interested in something like the Pandora are, at the end of the day, mostly pretty disjoint groups of people with only a few hackers at the intersection. I could be wrong, but that is my impression now that I've spent some time on these forums. Take away the people who do not do hardware, only software and you end up with, relatively speaking, just a couple of customers. Take away those who think like you and I do: I wouldn't risk it even if it could be done when there's cheaper alternatives to mess with... and in the end you end up with how many dirty rich individual hardcore hackers?-)

In addition there is simply too little room inside the Pandora to put that much into it comfortably and "solidly"? Getting wires into the unit would require drilling holes which will affect the case (and amounts of pocket lint you need to clean up ;-) in the long term. The PCB has lots of connection oriented pads as it is already, but they are fairly useless if you end up with a half closed case and a bunch of dangling wires. You won't ever carry the unit anywhere when it's like an octopus. And thus you end up using a cheapo Pi or something like that in your projects instead... even if you were that dirty rich hacker...?

Finally, I have to say that I cannot readily see what you would want to attach to the Pandora that could not be attached on a as needed basis via USB. Since you can compile your own kernel you can get a good portion of available usb gadgets up and running with no/minimal effort (at least compared to writing your own drivers).

But having said all this:

I guess for that very small minority of people who insist on messing with the Pandora it could be useful to have an external connector without any connects to the PCB, just unconnected pads for all contacts.

That should be something very common, easily sourceable like a HDMI connector (it is easy to source: just buy your regular HDMI cable and use that trusty old Leatherman --> you got your connector and some wires already soldered into it as a bonus).

But I emphasize: It would be totally unconnected to anything. Unlike the current add-on/TV-out port.

You would then make a wire tangle crisscrossing from whatever pads you want to use to that connector and start working outside the box.

Right now, however, I'm starting to see even that as waste of PCB and money for a redundant HDMI connector for the reasons above. Also, one problem with something like a HDMI connector is that people assume it is HDMI if it looks like HDMI. And anything not looking like something familiar is not easily sourceable :).
 
^ Mr. Dragon hinted on IRC that the current EXT connector may follow into the Pandora's successor. He says he has thousands of these connectors on both ends. Even if we move to HDMI/DisplayPort(whatever), the current TV cables can be used for Analog Audio IN/OUT.. perhaps use the Yellow RCA composite connector for Digital Audio out if composite video can't be done along side the digital.. So if that's the case we would still have a connector to play as long as some IO's get brought out to it.
 
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^even if done in a couple of rows?

Being large has major benefits for the hardware hacker in terms of durability and ease of soldering.
 
^even if done in a couple of rows?

Being large has major benefits for the hardware hacker in terms of durability and ease of soldering.
Well for a size comparison, a 4 pin 0.1" female header is larger than the ext connector with 14 pins..
 
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^ question is: how many modern SOCs have analogue video out?

Are there any more standard connectors we could use?
 
^ I would be for it but how sure are we that this is as good as the analog video out of the current pandora?  I've made a post here.  I hate to lose this awesome analog tv-out in p2... :)
 
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^ I would be for it but how sure are we that this is as good as the analog video out of the current pandora?  I've made a post here.  I hate to lose this awesome analog tv-out in p2... :)
The current Pandora, and any conceivable successor, has video based on digital pixels. You get the best quality video output if the transmission is also digital (e.g. DisplayPort or HDMI). If you want to show the video on something analog (e.g. an old CRT TV), you can always get yourself an (active) adapter to transform the digital video out port to analog.

The source signal is digital anyway. Everything gets rasterized to a grid of pixels. There is no way to do actual vector graphics or something like that. So there is absolutely nothing to gain from having an analog video output on the device itself, except the convenience of not needing an adapter (but given the weight of a typical CRT TV, the adapter is not going to be the bottleneck ;) ).

When you want to use a modern digital TV/monitor/projector, you need a digital video output on the device itself or else there will be a loss in quality. It makes very little sense to convert digital to analog, and then back to digital. That's like printing out a JPEG file and then using your scanner to make a scan of the printout and email the scan to someone. It's a better idea to just email the JPEG file. If he needs it on paper, he can always do the printout himself.
 
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Thanks for the explanation :)

One question for you _wb_:  Is the quality going to be reduced when converting from digital to analog and will look crappy on the CRT TV?  Like I said, if it looks same or better, I don't mind P2 will have DisplayPort or HDMI.  My real life experience is that my old video-tape player looks way better on CRT than on expensive LCD or LED TV. 
 
There should be no difference between doing the digital-to-analog conversion on the device itself instead of inside an adapter. If anything, the quality should be better if you use an adapter, because you can work with a digital cable instead of an analog one (if the adapter is on the video input side), which means no signal degradation.
 
^ I'll hold you to it Dr.!  :)   If not I'll give you a Sawk kick :) .  For now, OK OPT, you have my approval to rid of the current EXT connector and replace it with DisplayPort or HDMI in P2 :)
 
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