Project Ninja

[onionfrog]

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I'm still on the fence about the aspect ratio that would be best for the device. Just so the vertical resolution is at least 240, I would have to go with the 16:9. A 16:9 touch screen though... pricey?

Oh, and how about calling it the GBAX FreeStyle?

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I don't know why you are insisting on 16:9. What would be the advantage? I can only see a disadvantage for emulation. Do you want everything stretched to a weird aspect? Or have black bars on everything which would defeat the purpose of having it in the first place? That would look like absolute shit. Makes absolutely no sense.

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16:9 for playback of movies?

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Movie arent the main purpose of the ninja... If you want nice widescreen movie playback buy a poortable dvd player or something...
IMO movies would look just fine on a 4:3 screen....
We'd be able to get a nice framerate with the power the ninja will be packing, too...

 

[DemonStar55]

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I'm still on the fence about the aspect ratio that would be best for the device. Just so the vertical resolution is at least 240, I would have to go with the 16:9.  A 16:9 touch screen though... pricey?

Oh, and how about calling it the GBAX FreeStyle?

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I don't know why you are insisting on 16:9. What would be the advantage? I can only see a disadvantage for emulation. Do you want everything stretched to a weird aspect? Or have black bars on everything which would defeat the purpose of having it in the first place? That would look like absolute shit. Makes absolutely no sense.

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16:9 for playback of movies?

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Movie arent the main purpose of the ninja... If you want nice widescreen movie playback buy a poortable dvd player or something...
IMO movies would look just fine on a 4:3 screen....
We'd be able to get a nice framerate with the power the ninja will be packing, too...

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yeah keep it 4:3 because the gp32 can play emulators good at that so keep it that

 

[Nova]

All i ask for is WIFI and touch screen, perfect for msx and other keyboard based consoles

 

[Vimacs]

touchscreen may be possible, but forget wifi, its just to expensive.

 

[Titcher]

A possibilty for an addon of bluetooth/wifi would be great, more so wifi, higher range.

 

[Squidge]

If an Ext port is added, much like the current Gp32, then there is no reason why bluetooth or wifi couldn't be added via that.

 

[greven]

wifi would be cost at least 40$ it would of course be cool, but its jsut to expensive, irda is cheap and we have allready support for it, and yes writing a driver for it to comunicate with cellphone modems shouldnt be very hard.

good question lek, well, just try, it can even easyly added to the gp32 to test.

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40$ in indeed far too expensive, we will have to forget about it (or a plugin like sais vimacs)

touchscreen may be possible, but forget wifi, its just to expensive.

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how much costs a touch screen (and how much costs the same creen without the "touch" fonction?)
If we have just to paid 5-10$ more.....

 

[Blah]

I think the "touch controller" comes as a separate peice from the screen.

 

[Vimacs]

we allready have the (touch) controller build in the chip, we only need the foil, wich shouldnt be much, i gues samsung sells the same screens also with touch for just a bit more, mr.mirko, you should definality ask for it when you ask for prices.
also i keep searching for a faster fpu thats cheap.

 

[Blah]

Yeah I meant foil, silly me.

 

[mr.mirko]

hm addon fpu's arent very expensive

Overview
The uM-FPU V2 floating point coprocessor is easily interfaced with virtually any microcontroller to provide support for 32-bit IEEE 754 compatible floating point and 32-bit long integer calculations. It can be connected using either an I2C or SPI compatible interface. The uM-FPU uses an internal oscillator and requires no external components. It is available in an 8-pin DIP or SSOP-20 SMT package.

Suggested Retail Price: $14.95 USD

http://www.micromegacorp.com/umfpu-v2.html

what dio you think, would it be a good idear to add a chip like that?

Simple things/gimmiks that should definality be in couse they cost next to nothing and provide additional possibilitys:
Cap or battery to backup the rtc = 0,5$ max
Cheap microphone = ~0,5$
Tempreture sensor = ~1$
Infrared/IRDA, support allready in chip = ~3$

Also dont forgett to connect the battery to one of the ain ports so we can mesure the battery. = 0$

Things that would be nice to have:
FPU = ~15$

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Transfering data to the chip(4Mhz Bus), would take more time, than calculating on the s3c2440 directly.

Of couse a headphone jack is a must have, and a irda.
Microphone is easy to add, but who needs one ?
Temperature sensor... Funny, but who needs it ?
rtc nned no back up battery, the ninja will supporting battery charging in case, so you only need to re set the rtc, on battery change.

Adding battery power to one adc port is a really nice idear, i will keep this in mind...

 

[mr.mirko]

we allready have the (touch) controller build in the chip, we only need the foil, wich shouldnt be much, i gues samsung sells the same screens also with touch for just a bit more, mr.mirko, you should definality ask for it when you ask for prices.
also i keep searching for a faster fpu thats cheap.

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The s3c2440 chip offers 400Mhz at 1.2V, and can be overclocked up to 533Mhz at 1.3V, this mutch power really need no dsp. I will add a smd switch to switch between 1.2V and 1.3V core Voltage.

A touchscreen would only be usefull if you want to run some kind of PDA stuff on it. ( Like windows CE, Pocket PC) But for this, we need a mutch larger Flash memory (about 64MB) Iam now using a 512Kbyte flash chip.
So 64MB flash chip + touch pad = $30 more money....
I want to keep the design under 100Euro, the machine will only get mentioned if it is cheap.
And it is designed for Homebrew, and emulating, not for PDA style work....

 

[Sonic-NKT]

if the touchscreen just cost 10€ more or so i think everybody would pay for it here..
its not only good for pda things but also for homebrew and emus with mouse support, homebrew with touch offers really nice new things and about PDA, the gp32linux team said, the could set up a really nice opie PDA system for the gp32, it just lacks the Ram and perhaps some Mhz. i dont think that we need a bigger flashship...

 

[Vimacs]

we dont need any flash for linux or wince, we can completly load it off sd, of course we need ram than, but 32mb is much compared to the 8mb we have now, should be enugh for a basic opie. how muh more would 64mb be? or maybe you can just add space to sodler additional 32mb to, this way it would be easy to upgrade and keep cost down.
also i would gladly pay 20$ more to have a touchscreen.
and all the "useless" fetures, why not, they cost next to nothing and add possibilitys.
for the rtc i would definality at least add a small goldcap to keep it alive when changeing batetrys, wouldnt be more than a $ and saves you time setting the rtc. Guesing that the rtc takes about 2watt a nice goldcap could power it over hours.

 

[lek]

Touchscreen would be nice for homebrew RTS games, but could end up a wasted feature if it's rarely used by developers.

I mentioned in the other thread that WiFi and Bluetooth could both be supported over SDIO with this CPU. If the SDIO support that the S3C2440 has was implemented into the design then in theory some other SDIO devices could talk to the CPU as well.

The only problem I see with this now is that I'm not sure the S3C2440 supports SDIO devices that also include SD memory on the card. The S3C2440 doc says it support SDIO v1.0 which I don't think allows for both memory and device to be accessible (I think this was introduced in the SDIO 1.1 spec). This would mean that unless a 2nd SD slot was added then any software designed to support, for example, WiFi, wouldn't be executable/accessible.

I'm trying to find out if the above is actually true or not.

Edit: I've been reading over the SDIO spec v1.0 and it mentions "combo" cards a few times and the operation of the 1.0 spec with them (i.e. they work fine). So I guess what I thought above is wrong.

 

[Jarska333]

Plenty of the things mentioned here could be added later, as upgrades, I should think. Bluetooth and the likes, even memory.

 

[Melville]

Just my two cents...

I think a 16:9 screen is pretty pointless. It would be cool for watching widescreen movies but the vast majority of games played on this system will be on emulators, so the edges of the screen would be unused most of the time. I think a 4:3 screen is a sacrifice we should make to keep costs and unit size down (I think GP32 is pretty much at the upper limit of how big a portable handheld can conveniently be).

A RTC could be helpful. From what I've read (techies, feel free to correct me) the battery drain would be close to negligable, and having a clock function would be extremely handy for PDA/organiser applications. I know this is intended to be a gaming device, but PDA functionality could seriously add to the draw. Resetting the clock when I change batteries doesn't bother me at all.

One feature I'd love to see is the possibility to add TV-OUT. I would happily pay extra for an external device to plug my handheld into to turn it into a TV-capable games console / movie / music player. I definately don't think this should be built into the unit itself, but the possibility to add one later would be fantastic. Of course, this add-on wouldn't even need to be designed before the successful release of the new console, and could be made as bulky and hideous as necessary, as it wouldn't need to be portable.

Some ability to interact with other devices would also be fun (IRDA, Bluetooth, whatever...), but not critical to me. Like the GP32, I'm unlikely to know anyone else with one so multiplayer is largely irrelevant, and my wish to connect a USB memory stick is pretty much gone given how much storage the Compact Flash cards will allow us.

 

[GPJosh]

After reading all this I feel like I must bring up a point. On the GP32 we have the possibility of bluetooth, gps, ram upgrade, and wireless multiplayer. Yet how many people have actually bought these items?

In my opinion, it would be useful to actually have a program that uses these features to some extent. That way, people will take the leap for the extra that otherwise they might not have gotten. An example would be a prelimanary web browser for the wifi attachment. A sort of kickstart to get things going, you know?

That said, I can't wait for the ninja start production and know it's on my "to buy" list.

 

[White Demon]

No problem, just saying I don't see any point to it.

edit: and as for price, I meant cost of the whole unit vs cost of a watch, not a RTC+cap

edit2: I would only see the point in RTC if it was going to have  any sort of wireless internet capabilities. And for a homebrew, I don't think many people would take advantage of that even if it did. Not in any serious way anyway.

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A capacitor wouldn't power the clock for more than a few minutes. They are good to keep power in the unit long enough to change batteries not much more.

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Which is exactly why I, personally, see it as pointless!

I always remove batteries at the end of a gaming session, meaning that any battery backed clock would discharge the cap in a few minutes and reset itself anyway.

Don't go quoting me on this, I'm not the one who wants to see this gimmick implemented. It seems that most others do, however, so whatever.... let the developers of the unit decide whether it should be added or not.

As for a few other things....

Touch screen, as I've said before, is pointless, especially with how much it would cost to implement. I'm pretty sure that all the devs would/should be able to add chatboard capability to their emus, so you could just get one of those.

WiFi could be added later, as an add-on for people who want it, much like RF support is optional for the GP32.

TV support has already been discussed, in the end it would cost far too much to implement. Again, if there's enough demand, it could be produced as an add-on later on.

But a headphone jack MUST be included. The only handheld not to have a headphone jack as standard in the past was the GBA-SP, and look at the fuss that produced.

 

[Vimacs]

trust me there are 100f caps now, they could power the rtc possibily for a week or longer. but 1f is enugh for us to keep it alive while changeing batterys, hell even a 500µf would be enugh for that.