PiBoy DMG - Finally a well-built, affordable RPi4 handheld

[Chip]

$90 for the basic kit, $120 for the full kit including battery and fan, or $180 fully assembled with a 2GB RPi4. Available for preorder now, with shipping scheduled for next month.

Experimental Pi site

 

[elw3]

That thing has a weird keyboard layout, also missing some letters i think.

 

[pengo]

That thing has a weird keyboard layout, also missing some letters i think.

Looks like they didn't start a keyboard thread for it.

 

[Swordfish II]

That is super cool but yeah i wish they had literally the same setup with a thumb keyboard instead of controls.

They could use the analog for mouse and the triggers for click

 

[Chip]

I just saw elsewhere that you can get 10% off with the code " FB10". Since I already have a couple RPi4s lying around, that pushed me over the edge. Just placed an order.

 

[gunrock]

I think the form factor is rubbish for a general purpose emulator machine (especially for a capable processor like that found in the RPi 4).

 

[squaresosig]

I've been looking into pi based consoles and I am surprised that none of them have a sleep mode like the pandora or a phone. You have to fully boot and shut down every time you want to use it...

 

[elw3]

I've been looking into pi based consoles and I am surprised that none of them have a sleep mode like the pandora or a phone. You have to fully boot and shut down every time you want to use it...

Arm devices cannot sleep. On a pc the cpu is turned off and keyboard events for wakeup are handled by the bios, on the pandora the cpu stays running and scanning keyboard for typing because there is no bios that could issue a wakeup. Basically its just setting the screen brightness to zero, halting tasks and cutting usb power, should be easy to do that on a pi.

 

[Swordfish II]

On a whim I sent them a message asking if they had considered developing one of these with a keyboard instead of controls.

Here is their response

At some point yes we do have plans for something like that but it will be on a different device.

I will keep a lookout. Would be neat to have a modular umpc like that, simply replace the pi for an upgrade, and the whole thing is low cost. Might even come out before the Pyra

 

[ible]

Y select A XYBRZ BC Z XAZ A XYBRZ AZ start RBCXY

Spoiler

why select a keyboard because they has a keyboard at ze start already?

i.e., you don't need anything else.

 

[levi]

Arm devices cannot sleep. On a pc the cpu is turned off and keyboard events for wakeup are handled by the bios, on the pandora the cpu stays running and scanning keyboard for typing because there is no bios that could issue a wakeup. Basically its just setting the screen brightness to zero, halting tasks and cutting usb power, should be easy to do that on a pi.

The Pandora does not kill tasks when it sleeps. It might be problematic to bring them back with state if they've not been designed that way, and unlike on phones, desktop apps don't tend to be impelmented that way. I know because I used to listen to mp3s with my unit officially asleep. It does turn the screen backlight and ramp the CPU speed down to about 125MHz (from memory), and after Notaz fiddled with it, it also turned off the 5V supply to the USB port if USB host wasn't turned on. So yes, synchronous ARM chips don't have a true suspend state, and while they have power will run and run.

 

[elw3]

Halting is not killing. Halting should be done, but on the pandora where everything is in our control it is rather unnecessary.
Phone programs dont differ there, the programs arent aware of sleep at all anyway.
Your information is from the early years, pandoras current cpu governor is fully on demand so no setting is required, as long the cpu is idle it will cut its speed to the very minimum.

 

[squaresosig]

my point was more that AFAIK no one has made a pi based console that can be put in a low power 'instant on' state in the same way a phone, or a laptop, or a pandora can.

The fact that I can slide the screen up on my xperia play and I am right where I left off in some PS1 game is extremely useful.

 

[elw3]

Its a pi, surely you can put it to sleep somehow.

 

[levi]

Phone programs dont differ there, the programs arent aware of sleep at all anyway.

They did under UIQ. I remember apps had to respond to an alert that they'd been paged off the screen, and they had to dump their state to the file system so in case they got killed when the user brought up their web browser or something, they could pretend to have just been sleeping while they were away. Now that's all ancient history now, pre iPhone stuff, but I've not heard ARM changing enough so that it's unnecessary. Maybe the amount of RAM in phones means it's less necessary these days, but I'd have thought phones would need to do stuff like stop refreshing all of that dram to save battery power while it's not in use.

Your information is from the early years, pandoras current cpu governor is fully on demand so no setting is required, as long the cpu is idle it will cut its speed to the very minimum.

Even when I stopped using my Pandora, I could tell it had reduced it's maxiumum speed because keypresses slowed down slightly. I used keypresses to control the playback of my mp3 files in deadbeef. That's a couple of years ago now, but I was still there for the last OS update.

 

[ElPoco]

They did under UIQ. I remember apps had to respond to an alert that they'd been paged off the screen, and they had to dump their state to the file system so in case they got killed when the user brought up their web browser or something, they could pretend to have just been sleeping while they were away. Now that's all ancient history now, pre iPhone stuff, but I've not heard ARM changing enough so that it's unnecessary.

It's still there. Phones now keep apps open and only kill them when they need to reclaim resources. So your app can be killed at any time and you need to handle any state saving/restore (if you want to).

 

[daveshah]

More modern ARM stuff does have quite advanced power management, the OMAP5 appears to be able to stop the CPU and reduce the core voltage to a minimum level to keep caches retained (and I think power gate much of the CPU altogether) until an external event like a button press.

I don't know how much this is actually being taken advantage right now; there may even be a proper sleep mode where the CPU is totally power gated (after flushing state) until a wake up interrupt too. It looks like the Pyra is wired so the power button or any of the game buttons, at a minimum, could wake it up.

 

[Chip]

According to this discussion, the RPi is just designed that way. They needed to build it to a price, and the "it's either on or off" setup they have was the cheapest way to get it to do what it was intended to do. I would certainly prefer a near-instant sleep/wake as well, but I guess it is what it is.

 

[ThinkPad]

How long it will take for all of those people to realize how inferior the original game boy design actually is, and how lame is to have only a single analog stick preventing you to play any first person shooter with mouse look.
But NO!, they keep pumping them. And you still continue to buy them.

Cant wait for Odroid Go Advance with dual analog.

 

[PowerGod]

How long it will take for all of those people to realize how inferior the original game boy design actually is, and how lame is to have only a single analog stick preventing you to play any first person shooter with mouse look.

I feel the same, but at least this is one of the few with 6 face buttons SEGA style...

For me the perfect form factor would be a GameGear case with round D-Pad (like the original one), 6 face buttons (2 of them should have the same functions of R2/L2, that will be present too as triggers), and all the other buttons/sticks present in an XBOX/PS2 controller.
All the ports should point to the upper side of the device, so you can plug every type of thing without having cables inside your hands or punching your belly, and you still can rest the device on a table while playing.

Oh, and 2 speakers for stereo.