Passed the certification!

[Pyramancer]

I think the operative term in this case might be 'they'. They are an external testing company who will either need new instructions or new hardware possibly. ED needs to build a setup that can run for 5 hours, then book an appointment with them, and wait for them to write up the multipage report.

Hmm... I must have missed the discussion about this, as I feel this is the first I've heard of it. It seems like an odd thing to contract out.

Mainly I'd like to be reassured that if I take it out in sub-zero temperatures it's not going to croak on me, although I plan to carry it in a protective case inside a leather bag, so it may not get direct exposure unless I actually take it out and use it. I guess that's unlikely, but I may use it on the bus which can be anywhere from low single digits to about 35 degrees inside at different times of the year.

I'm likely to use mine while waiting for the bus, and here it it tends to vary from about minus 35 Celsius to plus 35 degrees Celsius outside. Although, when it's below about minus 15 I wouldn't be using it, as then I wait in a semi-comatose state.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Yeah are you sure ED isn't doing this burn-in thing himself?

 

[levi]

It's not that uncommon for small firms to contract out CE testing. Bigger firms will run stuff in house, but there's a fairly big expense in buying the regulated testing equipment in the first place, and then getting it re-regulated every year (although to be fair, I've no idea how much of that stuff they require). I wouldn't be surprised if he was happy doing the burn in tests locally, but he did say 'they'. If you look at the attached pdf, it's clear who did the testing, and it wasn't ED or his shop.

 

[Pyramancer]

It's not that uncommon for small firms to contract out CE testing. Bigger firms will run stuff in house, but there's a fairly big expense in buying the regulated testing equipment in the first place, and then getting it re-regulated every year (although to be fair, I've no idea how much of that stuff they require). I wouldn't be surprised if he was happy doing the burn in tests locally, but he did say 'they'. If you look at the attached pdf, it's clear who did the testing, and it wasn't ED or his shop.

I don't know, but I think we might not be communicating on the same page, here. My understanding of the OP in this thread was that while the RF emission tests were done by a third party as expected, the h/w burn in tests would be done by EvilDragon. I read that "they" as referring to the burn in test suite rather than the tester/s.

 

[Splintercat]

Glad to hear on passing the testing!

My third Pandora case is beginning to miss some pieces on it, and my left nub's casing has shattered. (My pandora is well used and loved).
I'm positive my pandora will hold on till the pyra is here, but it's yet another reason for me to be excited that we seem to be nearing the real 2 months™ point.

Though... even once mass production starts... I think I'm high enough in the order numbers that I'll be in the second run.... add in international shipping.... So it might not be till February or March when I will have a Pyra in my hands.
I hope things move faster than that, but I've waited this long, I can wait a while longer.

----
I am really surprised that SD cards haven't gotten much cheaper! Maybe @Askarus is right that there's just not that much interest in such large capacity cards. That or maybe there are some real yield issues at the higher densities.

I remember reading something similar about some of the older SSD technology that at a certain density and capacity that your failure and yield rates begin to increase substantially.

 

[levi]

You can get around the problem of smaller scales lowering your yield in flash by using higher levels of MLC and 3D flash cells whereby you build multiple layers of cells alll wired properly together. I also don't understand why this isn't leading to cheaper SD cards, and why you can't buy larger but slower cards at all (more MLC generally slows down reading and especially writing).

 

[EvilDragon]

I am doing the testing myself, but I guess GamesCom was still a bit too exhausting, as I literally fell asleep over the boards... I have to get back to work at night times again, and today is the first night I'm up again, so it's getting better

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I really hope you can get more sleep after the Pyra is done!

 

[Grench]

I am doing the testing myself, but I guess GamesCom was still a bit too exhausting, as I literally fell asleep over the boards... I have to get back to work at night times again, and today is the first night I'm up again, so it's getting better

A pillow is far more comfortable. Get some rest, you deserve it.

But, that leads to important scientific questions...
Is dragon drool corrosive to circuit boards? Does sleeping on nubs yield strange dreams? Does sleeping on populated circuit boards leave an imprint?

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Yeah, I'm curious if it left a board-print on your face.

 

[gpsqueeek]

Are we talking about sleeping on an electronic board or this place, the forul board...? :-°

 

[Wally]

s/forul/feral

 

[Askarus]

I am doing the testing myself, but I guess GamesCom was still a bit too exhausting, as I literally fell asleep over the boards... I have to get back to work at night times again, and today is the first night I'm up again, so it's getting better

Ah, same for you?
I felt it on Monday as I was at home.
I needed some days to rest as well. Now it should be fine again.
[doublepost=1535694089,1535693811][/doublepost]@Grench @Wally

It seems like there is no big market for big SD-cards any more.
You can buy a micro SD-Card with 400 GB for 130€.
That's a much better price per GB than 230€ for 512 GB (I can get one used for 190€).
Maybe I will buy one of those. at least I can use it internally as well later.

 

[txus]

Congratulations ED! It looks like the Pyra will finally hatch in 2018!!

 

[kuru]

 

[levi]

It seems like there is no big market for big SD-cards any more.
You can buy a micro SD-Card with 400 GB for 130€.
That's a much better price per GB than 230€ for 512 GB (I can get one used for 190€).
Maybe I will buy one of those. at least I can use it internally as well later.

I guess the main market for big SD cards when the Pandora was current were cameras - CF cards used to be used mainly in cameras, but that's only true these days as an option on the very top top end of things. It's SD only all the way down these days. But the whole standalone camera market is very limited these days due to the rise of smartphones with passable cameras in them, at least if my view of foreign tourists these days is anything to go by.

Even though the third largest maker of smartphones doesn't allow μSD cards in their phones, there are still a lot of phones out there that do. Maybe the camera market hasn't shrunk that much (they still seem to be making them), but the volumes in μSD cards that can be used in phones is much larger than the subset of cameras that take full-fat SD cards. I'm not sure full sized SD cards have actually gone significantly up in price, but μSD cards have certainly improved in their GB/price ratio.

Given that back when I started buying memory it was about 1MB/GBP, it's not always a good thing plateauing like that mind you.

Edit: That said, it's probably worth looking at the speed rating these cards ship with. Big SD cards are designed where speed is important, so generally have faster controllers than a lot of bargain bin μSD cards. I was looking at PNY cards the other day (just for pricing, it's not a brand I especially trust) and noticed their smallest cards still claimed to support up to 95Mb/s transfers (presumably reads on a good day for a fraction of a millisecond), but only claimed a U1 speed rating, which translates to a sustained read of 10MB/s. Their larger cards claimed U3 but the same top end speed rating, so you can't always go by the U rating for speed, sooner or later we'll need some better benchmarks.

 

[Grench]

Edit: That said, it's probably worth looking at the speed rating these cards ship with. Big SD cards are designed where speed is important, so generally have faster controllers than a lot of bargain bin μSD cards. I was looking at PNY cards the other day (just for pricing, it's not a brand I especially trust) and noticed their smallest cards still claimed to support up to 95Mb/s transfers (presumably reads on a good day for a fraction of a millisecond), but only claimed a U1 speed rating, which translates to a sustained read of 10MB/s. Their larger cards claimed U3 but the same top end speed rating, so you can't always go by the U rating for speed, sooner or later we'll need some better benchmarks.

I would really like to see a Pyra application that can benchmark the speed of media in the eMMC, microSD, Left SDXC, Right SDXC, left USB, right USB and microUSB 3.0 ports, allow the user to input the card branding information, then give the user the option to upload the performance data set to a central web accessible database.

Inevitably we're going to have threads with dozens of pages consisting of hundreds and hundreds of posts about different SD and microSD cards - and whether some are real or fake - and if there is a substantive difference between batch numbers of real cards, etc.. Having a common methodology and repository would be very nice..

 

[Silent-Hunter]

@Grench That's a good idea!

 

[Sebastian Castro]

I need to wait until the first week of December when I get an extra paycheck that will go to my Pyra (Euro mobile 4G)

e to setup my 2 * 512GB SD cards for real

In the meantime I just got one of this PNY 512GB SD cards that I'm enjoying in my agonizing Pandora (first batch) I'm so desperate about the LCD cable situation

I sure am interested in the GPD Win 2 too

If I had the money I would buy both and carry them with me all the time, hehe.

 

[SiegfriedCroes]

If I had the money I would buy both and carry them with me all the time, hehe.

A new bundle was added on the DragonBox Shop that includes a few accessoires for less than the price of the GPD Win 2 before so I just had to order one