Power/lock switch on Pyra vs. Pandora

[Haraldur]

I have had my Pandora for two months, using it mainly to listen to music and to play Chrono Trigger (first time) on the way to university. If I want to quickly pause the music I can reach into my pocket and push the power switch; the Pandora sleeps shortly thereafter. Repeating the action resumes the music. However, in this picture: http://boards.openpandora.org/uploads/post-1-0-87286900-1398708200.png , there appears to be no such switch, so to put the Pyra to sleep one would need to open the lid and then close it, every time. Worse, the solution to this, a PAUSE media key on one of the shoulder buttons when the lid is closed (as on some keyboard layout proposals, which would still leave the Pyra 'awake'), is seemingly undone by another problem: there is no obvious place (in the picture) for a lock to stop the shoulder buttons pausing and restarting, or skipping back and forth, the music. One would have to disable those keys in a way that has the lid open, making the Pyra worse than the Pandora as a music player as every control of music (including pause and resume) would require taking the device out of the pocket.

Granted, the lock on the Pandora is not very useful, as the shoulder buttons only control CTRL and SHIFT, but on most of the Pyra keyboard proposals they do more, and need to be lockable. Is there something I miss? Is the lock in some obvious place, accessible with the lid closed? Shall it be possible to put the Pyra to sleep without opening it?

I do not mean to sound hostile, I am just slightly concerned about regressions when upgrading to the Pyra.

EDIT: Oh, also, it might mean one more button available for the keyboard proposals.

 

[levi]

Unfortunately, with all the ports and keys the Pyra has, there's simply not space on the PCB for the power switch.  It can't be on the front as that's taken up with the SD slots and the GSM antenna, for example.

FWIW, I never used my power switch to pause music, because on certain versions of the OS with certain music players it wouldn't work - it just made the music skip.  Instead I configured the 'c' key on the bottom of the keyboard to act as play/pause, so I only need to get half my thumb into the gap to pause my music.

 

[Haraldur]

Unfortunately, with all the ports and keys the Pyra has, there's simply not space on the PCB for the power switch.  It can't be on the front as that's taken up with the SD slots and the GSM antenna, for example.

FWIW, I never used my power switch to pause music, because on certain versions of the OS with certain music players it wouldn't work - it just made the music skip.  Instead I configured the 'c' key on the bottom of the keyboard to act as play/pause, so I only need to get half my thumb into the gap to pause my music.

Is there any space on the sides? The back?

If the Pandora powers down, how can the music fail to stop?

What about locking, though? Many keyboard layout proposals involve using the shoulder buttons as media keys. Without a locking switch, such a design seems worse than useless.

 

[levi]

The power switch on the Pandora does not turn it off.  It used to put it in low power mode if not plugged into the mains which meant scaling the CPU clock back to 125MHz and turning off wifi/screen/bt etc.  That may have changed in more recent OS versions as setting the clock to a low max makes less sense these days since the CPU automatically sleeps when not in use now, I'm not sure.  And I can't remember what it used to do or does now if switched while plugged in (but I know it can't be turned off when plugged in - it'll immediately reboot if powered down).

I don't think there's any space on the back between the quad shoulders and various USB and HDMI ports, plus the headphone port, I honestly can't remember what's on the board on the sides though.

FWIW, the lock functionality of the switch never actually worked as far as I know, so technically that's not a regression on the Pyra.  I am slightly disappointed by the placement of the headphone port though - I'll have to cut a hole in my case to fit that, but it can't fit on the front for the same reasons the power switch can't go there.

 

[PowerGod]

FWIW, the lock functionality of the switch never actually worked as far as I know

I used that functionality a lot, and the only thing that was not disabled was the touchscreen, but only at the beginning, then even that was corrected...

It was the only way to prevent RockBox to change tracks while I had it in the pocket

 

[Haraldur]

The power switch on the Pandora does not turn it off.  It used to put it in low power mode if not plugged into the mains which meant scaling the CPU clock back to 125MHz and turning off wifi/screen/bt etc.  That may have changed in more recent OS versions as setting the clock to a low max makes less sense these days since the CPU automatically sleeps when not in use now, I'm not sure.  And I can't remember what it used to do or does now if switched while plugged in (but I know it can't be turned off when plugged in - it'll immediately reboot if powered down).

I don't think there's any space on the back between the quad shoulders and various USB and HDMI ports, plus the headphone port, I honestly can't remember what's on the board on the sides though.

FWIW, the lock functionality of the switch never actually worked as far as I know, so technically that's not a regression on the Pyra.  I am slightly disappointed by the placement of the headphone port though - I'll have to cut a hole in my case to fit that, but it can't fit on the front for the same reasons the power switch can't go there.

For me (SuperZaxxon 1.72, I think, 1GHz version) the power switch seems to put the Pandora to sleep: music players and emulators both appear to stop and then resume as if nothing has happened.

The lock works for me: if I have it on, the keyboard is totally unresponsive and so are the shoulder buttons. This can be useful.

 

[TrashyMG]

FWIW, the lock functionality of the switch never actually worked as far as I know, so technically that's not a regression on the Pyra. 

It's odd the Lock feature works on all my Pandora, however I've seen it reported several times it doesn't for some. 

 

[Binky]

I hadn't thought of this, but it is a good point.

The lock slider works as expected on my pandora, and can be useful.

However, I suggest that that a software solution to the problem can be found, using the shoulder buttons - perhaps a pattern of presses unlikely to be made by accident?

 

[EvilDragon]

Lock and power functions are entirely software on the Pandora as well.

The switch just triggers.

I personally disliked the lock switch - I like the function, but not the switch.

I often accidentally triggered low-power mode when I wanted to switch off the lock.

There's no space for such a switch on the Pyra, but we've got a power button on the top middle, and lock can also be implemented somewhere else (maybe with a key combo).

It would also be possible to i.e. move the lock / power functions automatically to a shoulder button when the lid is closed (someone just would need to code that).

 

[levi]

IMHO the lock combo should be a keyboard combo - the intent is to stop the shoulders functioning when the lid is closed and the unit is in a bag or case where the shoulders are likely to be triggered.  Putting the lock combo on the triggers kind of defeats the purpose.

 

[Saber]

Viable or not, in addition to the shoulder button combos discussed above, these may be some options worth exploring:

1. Bluetooth HID:  http://www.satechi.net/index.php/smartphones-and-tablets/accessories/remotes/

2. http://impulsecontroller.com or similar.

 

[rygD]

 If I want to quickly pause the music I can reach into my pocket and push the power switch; the Pandora sleeps shortly thereafter. Repeating the action resumes the music. However, in this picture: http://boards.openpandora.org/uploads/post-1-0-87286900-1398708200.png , there appears to be no such switch

I can't tell what exactly you want the most, so I will throw a few options out there.  

First, let's deal with pausing audio playback.  The easiest solution is the shoulder buttons, which many people are already trying to include as controls in this way.  

It sounds like what you really want is "stop", not pause, and most layouts I saw had this and a play button.  If that is a problem, disable the play button. The play button on the closed Pyra can be remapped to power, like ED mentioned, if your concern is battery life conservation without taking the Pyra out of your pocket (I never trust things to work like they are supposed to, so I will always check if I want to save my battery).  

What I would do is disable all the shoulder buttons and use a headset or headphones with wired controls built in if the headphone port works with that (I guess it can, but I may be wrong).  You can then have your power setting set so that if there is no activity for a certain amount of time the Pyra goes to sleep.  I am not sure if this would interefere with audio playback, or how difficult it would be to tell it "when there is no input, if playing audio stay on with with display off, otherwise after 5 minutes go to sleep".

What Saber mentioned might work.

2. http://impulsecontroller.com or similar.

I have seen things like these, and was somewhat interested.  Thanks for sharing this link.  Now I will be looking through what they offer.  I doubt I will buy any, but they are kinda cool (and tiny).

Edit: Are they still making these?  I confirmed that these are the ones I originally saw (at ThinkGeek).

 

[_wb_]

We have four shoulder buttons to play with, and a logo led, so that should be enough for the "keep the lid closed media player" scenario.

For example:

shoulders locked (disabled): logo led is red

shoulders unlocked (enabled): logo led is green

R1+R2 3 times quickly in a row: toggle shoulder lock

L1: previous song

R1: next song

R2: pause/play

L2: stop? (is this even needed?)

 

[levi]

If last track first skips to the start of this track, before going to the start of the previous track and so on, I'd argue stop is not necessary.  On the other hand I had an old Philips CD player that would go straight to the start of the previous track, so the easiest way to restart the current track I found was to stop it and hit play (but I could equally have gone back a track then forward one I suppose).

I don't see pressing opposite buttons at the same time briefly three times in a row to necessarily be an easy thing to achieve, although the exact timings could be more lax than I'm imagining.  I suppose that having a shoulder accessible unlock sequence is going to look a lot more slick than opening the device to press a keyboard key if you're pausing your music to speak to someone in the street, for example - but I'd prefer something you could do with one hand while the other hand is pulling off your headphones.  Perhaps a long followed by a short press of one of the shoulder buttons, which for my use case could also pause the music automatically.  Perhaps all the shoulder buttons could use this method as a way of acheiving their normal activty while locked, while you could completely unlock them using a two handed approach like pressing L+R three times together briefly.

It's also sounding like we could need an approach for mediating access to the top LEDs if they're going to be used to indicate the lock status as well as perform other activities like notifying GSM activity (texts and calls) and other functions users are envisaging.  Presumably it'll need to be always on some colour, so you can quickly spot a unit that's on versus one that's off, which stops you doing simple stuff like allocating an RGB channel to each function.

 

[comradekingu]

Stop would be analogous to "hang up" if you get a phonecall. Play to answer, pause to hold.

If there arent any dedicated powertoggles, FN+powerbutton to bring up the power-settings seems reasonable.

 

[levi]

Except I've seen nobody suggesting separate play/pause buttons on the media shoulder keys (perhaps I've just not been looking).  We may as well make prev track be hang up/reject, next track be answer and play/pause be silence, or something like that.

 

[comradekingu]

Unless im mistaken there is never a need to do anything besides play→ pause, and then back to play again. One button works just fine for that.

Skip track has no immediate functionality phone-wise.  Maybe push-to-talk? and the other "be silent, but dont answer"

 

[Haraldur]

Apologies, my internet connection has been down.

Lock and power functions are entirely software on the Pandora as well.
The switch just triggers.

I personally disliked the lock switch - I like the function, but not the switch.
I often accidentally triggered low-power mode when I wanted to switch off the lock.

There's no space for such a switch on the Pyra, but we've got a power button on the top middle, and lock can also be implemented somewhere else (maybe with a key combo).
It would also be possible to i.e. move the lock / power functions automatically to a shoulder button when the lid is closed (someone just would need to code that).

While I need to be gentle, I have had no trouble with the Pandora switch so far -- except, occasionally, forgetting that the device is locked.

Every pocketable device I have used has a lock function: either a combined-lock-power switch (audio player), a separate lock switch (Nokia N900) or a timed combination of two buttons (dumbphone). All could be done with the device still in-pocket, and blind... and with just one hand. Though I have developed a habit of changing the volume by turning the wheel through the fabric of my trousers, it would be rather awkward to have to press all four shoulder buttons (with at least two through fabric, or with the device ex-pocket) at the same time to lock.

That leaves two buttons easily accessible in-pocket, left or right shoulders depending on orientation. Some combination of presses might work, but, to test that the device is in fact locked, one would want to test the lock by pressing the buttons subsequently, as there is no direct feedback. As for power setting, well, perhaps if pressing down two shoulders for 5 seconds locked (and unlocked), then pressing for 10 would sleep (and unsleep)? Might be a little too long to wait.

IMHO the lock combo should be a keyboard combo - the intent is to stop the shoulders functioning when the lid is closed and the unit is in a bag or case where the shoulders are likely to be triggered.  Putting the lock combo on the triggers kind of defeats the purpose.

That would require removing the device from one's pocket -- slightly awkward.

 If I want to quickly pause the music I can reach into my pocket and push the power switch; the Pandora sleeps shortly thereafter. Repeating the action resumes the music. However, in this picture: http://boards.openpandora.org/uploads/post-1-0-87286900-1398708200.png , there appears to be no such switch

I can't tell what exactly you want the most, so I will throw a few options out there.  

First, let's deal with pausing audio playback.  The easiest solution is the shoulder buttons, which many people are already trying to include as controls in this way.  

It sounds like what you really want is "stop", not pause, and most layouts I saw had this and a play button.  If that is a problem, disable the play button. The play button on the closed Pyra can be remapped to power, like ED mentioned, if your concern is battery life conservation without taking the Pyra out of your pocket (I never trust things to work like they are supposed to, so I will always check if I want to save my battery).  

What I would do is disable all the shoulder buttons and use a headset or headphones with wired controls built in if the headphone port works with that (I guess it can, but I may be wrong).  You can then have your power setting set so that if there is no activity for a certain amount of time the Pyra goes to sleep.  I am not sure if this would interefere with audio playback, or how difficult it would be to tell it "when there is no input, if playing audio stay on with with display off, otherwise after 5 minutes go to sleep".

What Saber mentioned might work.

My concern is making sure that the shoulder buttons do not switch tracks, pause and play etc. 'randomly' through accidental activation in-pocket.

I fall into the play/pause+back+forward camp. In fact, with a sleep function, only back+forward are really necessary.

We have four shoulder buttons to play with, and a logo led, so that should be enough for the "keep the lid closed media player" scenario.

For example:

shoulders locked (disabled): logo led is red

shoulders unlocked (enabled): logo led is green

R1+R2 3 times quickly in a row: toggle shoulder lock

L1: previous song

R1: next song

R2: pause/play

L2: stop? (is this even needed?)

I think the LEDs are not important in-pocket. Also, I think lock/sleep/whatever should be accessible from either side, so R1+R2 and L1+L2.

Also, if lock and sleep were (shorter and longer duration, single presses -- I think sequences of presses would be too fiddly) pressing of both R1 and R2, then we could have next and previous on the same side, as pause/play is less important if sleep/unsleep is available (it takes slightly longer, but in the worst case you lose a few seconds of a song). Also, one would never normally, otherwise, want to press both next and previous simultaneously, nor with play/pause and stop (whatever that is for).

 

[Neelix]

How about a timed unlock? Something like; when closed the shoulder buttons are locked, but a quick double tap of both buttons on the same side of the unit unlocks them for a 10 sec duration.

- Neelix

EDIT: And possibly have the duration reset each time a button is pressed while unlocked.

 

[Grench]

Original poster was concerned that he needed to be able to pause/play audio on the Pyra and is currently using the power switch to put his Pandora into and out of standby to get this effect.

To my understanding the Pyra will have a lid switch. It should probably have several selectable actions.

Standby mode. Reduced power profile, phone radios active.

Reduced power standby mode. Reduced power profile, all radios off.

Shutdown. Powers down the system. Why anyone would use it this way, don't know.

Media mode. Screen off, radios on, shoulder buttons change profile to media control buttons, login screen when opened.

How to prevent accidental presses during media mode:

Have all media actions result from chording the shoulders. Example:

Play/stop: both left shoulders chorded

Next track: both right shoulders chorded

Previous track: L1 and R1 chorded

Stop and go into true standby mode: L2 and R2 chorded.

It can be done, but it can also get convoluted. In theory, with 4 shoulders up to 15 actions can be chorded (16th variation is no presses = no action).