Pyra dock connections.


SageX

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Hello family, there has been talk about a docking bay for the Pyra but, I have not seen the plans or connections so It's probably on the table for post production of the Pyra.

first off the connections everyone wants: auxiliary USB, 3.5 stereo, power, HDMI*(pick a flavor), and (drumroll) a serial connection (woah that's awesome!). if the dock had serial connectivity I would literally be in heaven.  I swear a dedicated serial port for the pyra would knock my socks off. I wouldn't know how to contain my emotions if there was a dedicated serial port on the docking port. All open hardware should have serial easily accessibility out of the box. just my two cents. what connectivity do you want on the DragonBox Pyra?
 
Connectivity has already been decided. It haswill have a USB3.0 micro AB (OTG) port, two full sized USB2.0 ports, an esata port, a 3.5 TRRS headset, micro HDMI, and a USB TTY port (that doubles as a dedicated charging port... or it's a charging port that doubles as a debug serial port, whatever). So you're good.
 
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Connectivity has already been decided. It haswill have a USB3.0 micro AB (OTG) port, two full sized USB2.0 ports, an esata port, a 3.5 TRRS headset, micro HDMI, and a USB TTY port (that doubles as a dedicated charging port... or it's a charging port that doubles as a debug serial port, whatever). So you're good.
Is it just me, or does it sound like you think he is talking about the Pyra itself.  He is talking about the Pyra Dock.  Sorry if I have misunderstood you. 

-Glyph Reader
 
Hello family, there has been talk about a docking bay for the Pyra but, I have not seen the plans or connections so It's probably on the table for post production of the Pyra.

first off the connections everyone wants: auxiliary USB, 3.5 stereo, power, HDMI*(pick a flavor), and (drumroll) a serial connection (woah that's awesome!). if the dock had serial connectivity I would literally be in heaven.  I swear a dedicated serial port for the pyra would knock my socks off. I wouldn't know how to contain my emotions if there was a dedicated serial port on the docking port. All open hardware should have serial easily accessibility out of the box. just my two cents. what connectivity do you want on the DragonBox Pyra?
You wont get any real serial port on the dock, as the Pyra won't sport any dedicated docking port - some ports will be just passed through (I guess HDMI and USB). So it would be a USB to RS232 (if this is what you mean with serial port) port anyway, so no need to increase costs for that.
 
Is it just me, or does it sound like you think he is talking about the Pyra itself.  He is talking about the Pyra Dock.  Sorry if I have misunderstood you.
No, I knew what he was talking about, but I made an unspoken assumption that at a minimum the ports will be passed along to the dock as well. It'd be rather silly to have ports on the console that you can't access in the dock. I expect the dock will also have more (though I'm not going to guess what they may be) but at least since the Pyra itself has all the ports SageX is looking for it stands to reason the dock will have the same.
You wont get any real serial port on the dock
I'm also working on the assumption that when ED says "debug serial port" it works exactly the same as every other debug serial port I've worked with in that it is, in fact, a TTY device that the kernel just spits logs out to and may even have have a minimal shell connected to it to login if things go wrong. Every other device I've worked with with such a debug port it has been possible to turn off the debugging and use it as just another serial port. At the moment I can't think of any way that the Pyra could have a serial debug port that didn't have at least some way of using it as a regular serial port (even if it means modifying and rebuilding the kernel) so until someone suggests a way I could be mistaken or ED comes up and explicitly says it I'm just going to keep assuming that "debug serial port" == "TTY device"
That's a lot of assumptions but in the absence of official statements saying otherwise they make logical sense to me, I've got no reason to doubt them.
 
Connectivity has already been decided. It haswill have a USB3.0 micro AB (OTG) port, two full sized USB2.0 ports, an esata port, a 3.5 TRRS headset, micro HDMI, and a USB TTY port (that doubles as a dedicated charging port... or it's a charging port that doubles as a debug serial port, whatever). So you're good.
Where do you find all this information? I read all the new Pyra posts ED makes, but I've never seen this mentioned. Are they buried amongst the usual tripe that gets posted afterwards?
Edit: Never mind, just saw you post this

I made an unspoken assumption that at a minimum the ports will be passed along to the dock as well
 
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I made an unspoken assumption that at a minimum the ports will be passed along to the dock as well
Of course this assumption is as valid as mine, as long as ED makes no official statement in that regard:I doubt that every port will be passed through, due to mechanical reasons. It will be quite cumbersome if you have to match six connector locations while guiding the pyra into the dock, even if you find male counterparts for the dock, that provide some mechanical guidelines to ease the process.
 
Well, the plan is indeed to passthrough all the ports from the back and maybe add an USB hub to it (so the docking station can have more ports)


The Pyra indeed does sport a serial port - sort of.


The MicroUSB charging port reports itself as TTY USB device when connecting to a PC and you get your serial output there.
 
The MicroUSB charging port reports itself as TTY USB device when connecting to a PC and you get your serial output there.
My assumption is that it's physically connected to the OMAP on one of the serial ports and what drives the debug output is the kernel, in which case it would be possible be reconfigure it to act as an actual serial port capable of interactive communication with a PC at least. And if someone really wanted serial because they have old school D9 devices they could get some kind of adapter for it, or more likely just a dedicated USB->serial adapter.
 
On the Dev board it's like what EvilDragon says.. you plug it into a USB port on the PC and it acts like a TTY device.. it essentially has the USB to Serial adapter built in.
 
Well, the plan is indeed to passthrough all the ports from the back and maybe add an USB hub to it (so the docking station can have more ports)

The Pyra indeed does sport a serial port - sort of.

The MicroUSB charging port reports itself as TTY USB device when connecting to a PC and you get your serial output there.
If I were to dream up a dock for the Pyra...

-Full size HDMI port on hub.

-Full size DVI port on hub (video signals from HDMI).

-Stereo line out

-Stereo line in

-Headphone amplified output

-USB 2.0/eSATA ports broken out into two ports.

-eSATA port gets it's 12VDC rail.

-USB 3.0 OTG brought out as full sized USB 3.0 Type A and B connectors with a sliding plastic shield to force selection of one or the other (device vs host) to prevent people from thinking they can do both at once OR just SKIP device mode when docked and put in a USB 3.0 hub.

-USB 2.0 hub would be good - USB 3.0 4 port hub (no device mode when docked) AND USB 2.0 4 port hub would be awesome. I'd give up device mode on the docked Pyra in an instant for a USB 3.0 hub.

-Ethernet port, preferably gigabit, but 100 would be OK. Which would take one of the dedicated USB 2.0 ports or one 3.0 port on a hub away - which is OK.

Yes, it's a dream - but I think it's a relatively cool one.
 
-Ethernet port, preferably gigabit, but 100 would be OK. Which would take one of the dedicated USB 2.0 ports or one 3.0 port on a hub away - which is OK.
Why would any Ethernet port use 100 at this point?
 
-Ethernet port, preferably gigabit, but 100 would be OK. Which would take one of the dedicated USB 2.0 ports or one 3.0 port on a hub away - which is OK.
Why would any Ethernet port use 100 at this point?
For those that wired their entire house 48+ Ethernet drops in the early 2000's and haven't entirely upgraded the switches yet. But yeah I'm fine with it supporting better, just if it uses USB 2.0 it won't reach speeds of 1 gigabit.
 
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How about having a dock with a built-in switchmode power supply (for powering the USB hub(s), charging, etc) and put a IEC 60320-1C14 connector on the back?
 
You could still come along with your 1gigabit nic which would negotiate at 100.

But yes, often the case is with arm SoCs that the wired network is a usb-bus chip. Doing this in the dock would essentially make it a USB network card.

Im not sure if the 5432 has wired nic inbuilt over pci-e, but if it does there isnt room to put it as a dedicated port.

So you have to bring it out somehow, both micro and mini -hdmi have the same 19 pins (with some differences) to the regular hdmi, and that has network support.

The dock isnt an afterthought, so this could have all been figured out already, but if not, maybe there is room to run extra traces to the hdmi.
 
Well, the plan is indeed to passthrough all the ports from the back and maybe add an USB hub to it (so the docking station can have more ports)
I'm curious to see how that works out. In my last job we had custom made devices that could be daisy chained with (depending on the devices) 2 or 3 connectors. While this was OK (but still needed some fiddling on a DIN rail, I already found it rather cumbersome to do that on a factory floor.

-Ethernet port, preferably gigabit, but 100 would be OK. Which would take one of the dedicated USB 2.0 ports or one 3.0 port on a hub away - which is OK.
Why would any Ethernet port use 100 at this point?
100MBit Ethernet is quite common in the embedded world (odroid, beaglboard, rpi, etc). I guess its just a matter of costs saving, as most SoCs won't be able to max out a 100MBit connection for various reasons, like, just enough horse power, no Source that could provide Data fast enough, etc.
 
Should the dock have a battery slot (taking the same battery as the pyra)?

It would allow it to operate as a powered USB hub even when away from mains power, and to act as an external battery charger, or provide power to charge the pyra when docked.
 
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Should the dock have a battery slot (taking the same battery as the pyra)?

It would allow it to operate as a powered USB hub even when away from mains power, and to act as an external battery charger, or provide power to charge the pyra when docked.
There are more than enough portable power bank solutions.  :eek:

1G Ethernet is a must. If it is capable only for 100 Mb negotiation, there is no point of Ethernet port at all.  :(
 
1G Ethernet is a must. If it is capable only for 100 Mb negotiation, there is no point of Ethernet port at all. 
Well I've had several high end Gigabit wireless routers in my home over the last couple years none can consistently transfer data at rates faster than 100Mbit ethernet despite what it's advertised at.. I still see value in it. 
 
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