So, what's the current status of everything?

[Letalis Sonus]

Alsa config and its routing is so easy that i you can write a gui tool for it in just a few minutes that lets you assign every program to a random output.

I have to admit that I do know quite a lot about how to handle ALSA, but I seriously have no idea how you got to that point. Yes, ALSA does allow to do quite a lot of things, but no, it is everything but intuitive to understand what you need to do to achieve what you want to do. You still got quite a bit of documentation to at least understand the basic idea of what ALSA's routing configuration is about, but I myself took ages to actually understand what it is all about and how to do things that are not explained in the common howtos. Seriously, the documentation needs some improvements - but at least you got some kind of documentation.

What about sndio? Is it useable for us?

So far I have not seen any advantage that would make it superior to what we already have, quite the contrary. Do you have anything to add to that?

Back to the roots: ALSA is what is actually providing the kernel drivers, it is what should be the least common denominator on Linux. I am seriously offended that quite a bit of game developers fail to realize this, like Payday 2 that does not work with ALSA at all.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I don't really have anything to add, I thought sndio was an alternative to pulseaudio is all.

 

[imposserous]

I uploaded another video. I'm afraid this one is pretty boring but I suspect that one or two people will want to see it anyway. It is at and is in two parts. In the first part, I follow setup until it seems to hang (not really hanging I just chose too many locales), then in the second part I rebooted a couple of times and chose one locale and do a couple of other things.

I really feel the need to add a bluetooth keyboard or a usb keyboard. If anyone knows what drivers I need to add to make this possible, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[EvilDragon]

You should be able to simply connect a USB keyboard and it should work

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Bluetooth keyboard should work fine too, it did on Pandora.

 

[imposserous]

The only USB keyboard I have is not recognized in either USB-A port. It is recognized by another computer I have. In Synaptic package manager I see many packages for Bluetooth devices but I'm not sure which ones are relevant.

 

[TrashyMG]

I know not the Pyra, but In the case of the OMAP5 devboard, there shouldn't be anything special for USB keyboards and it's not like the Pandora only having USB 2.0 full-speed only modes.

I'd run dmesg after you plug it in to see if there is some message.

 

[elw3]

I have to admit that I do know quite a lot about how to handle ALSA, but I seriously have no idea how you got to that point.

Yes yes, its a pretty tough topic, i wrote this kinda wrong.
What i meant is that basic stuff like assigning a programm to an output can be hacked together easy enough so that ppl with a little coding experince can slam together a gui for it to support those who are lost when it comes to enable an USB sound card they just plugged in.
Such simple tool would have helped a lot of average users who stuck at that task on any distro that is not rolling out with pulse.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

@imposserous You said, you're not planning to do another video. Maybe, when you got used to the device some review. Just what you'd've come to appreciate and what you feel to have to work around or something like that? I'd be interested.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Will we be able to view YouTube etc on the pyra? What about connecting a phone as a hotspot? Streaming music via Bluetooth?

 

[TrashyMG]

Didn't have bluetooth on the OMAP5 devboard, but youtube worked fine in firefox on it.

 

[imposserous]

I ran dmesg and put the output at http://sprunge.us/MC9eOV as suggested on another thread. There are plenty of references to USB but none that strike me as related to the keyboard. By the way, I tried plugging it in both before and after booting.

@Djoga'Ro, I will be happy to do a review of it at some point. I think it is different enough, though, that it will take some getting used to. I have been able to play a movie and some music on it but have experienced some strange issues with both. The main issue so far is the keyboard. The letter i and the + symbol sometimes repeat rapidly even when not pressed. The capital G and small i are sometimes not recognized even after repeated presses.

I have tested Youtube with success. I have not tried to connect to a phone as a hotspot but my regular wifi network is fine. I'm not sure which Bluetooth packages to install as far as streaming music goes. I don't have a Bluetooth speaker to test anyway.

 

[docbroke]

I uploaded another video. I'm afraid this one is pretty boring but I suspect that one or two people will want to see it anyway. It is at and is in two parts. In the first part, I follow setup until it seems to hang (not really hanging I just chose too many locales), then in the second part I rebooted a couple of times and chose one locale and do a couple of other things.

I really feel the need to add a bluetooth keyboard or a usb keyboard. If anyone knows what drivers I need to add to make this possible, I would greatly appreciate it.

Stylus doesn't work properly at the screen edges. Have you tried to use nubs as mouse ?

 

[TrashyMG]

Could USB be disabled by default for power savings like it is on the Pandora?, if so that is a new to me feature of Pyra OS.

 

[Grench]

As far as connecting keyboards and mice over USB - I did it successfully and I have a bit of a complex setup.

Vortex Rac3 RGB keyboard, Razer Naga mouse, Max 20 key numeric pad. All three go into a USB hub.
The hub plugs into a USB 3.0 four computer switch with selector buttons.
Four computers then connect via USB to the switch and I flip between them with the one keyboard, mouse and numeric board.

I plugged the Pyra's normal type A port into one of the four leads from the switch. All three devices came on and worked.

I haven't tried a wide variety of wired keyboards yet - and I haven't tried any bluetooth devices yet.

 

[docbroke]

Have someone tried 512 GB sdcard with Pyra. I bought transcend u3 512 GB sdxc card to use with Pyra. It is not detected by my laptop's inbuilt card reader. It works when I connect it with usb card reader. My 256 gb samsung card works with inbuilt card reader.

 

[Grench]

I have used a 256GB card in my Pyra that I had previously used in my Pandora. I had repartitioned and formatted it as ext2. Your big card should work if you reformat it.

 

[docbroke]

I have used a 256GB card in my Pyra that I had previously used in my Pandora. I had repartitioned and formatted it as ext2. Your big card should work if you reformat it.

My big card is not detected at all (by lsblk) when put in inbuilt card reader, but it works with USB card reader, so what I am worried is that some card readers do not support big cards. What if that doesn't work with Pyra? Card itself is fine as it works with USB card reader. It is formatted to ext4.

 

[levi]

As for another video, it might be nice to see someone trying out some of the software already published to the repo. As far as I know, everything apart from the SoR remake should work without extra files.

The only complication is I can't find out where to locate files on your media to make them work. If it works similarly to how the pandora did, I'd try making a 'pyra' folder in the root of your sd card and a 'menu' folder inside that and put your downloaded .dbp files in there. They should then appear in the start menu, if it's working like I suspect it does. On the Pandora we ended up with apps to manage all this for us, but for the time being on the Pyra you'll have to do it manually it seems.

Edit: Reportedly the magic folders are 'dragonbox' and then 'packages' inside there. I don't understand in that case where the links would appear and how you control that, but that's probably the first thing to try and see where they appear.

 

[Grench]

My big card is not detected at all (by lsblk) when put in inbuilt card reader, but it works with USB card reader, so what I am worried is that some card readers do not support big cards. What if that doesn't work with Pyra? Card itself is fine as it works with USB card reader. It is formatted to ext4.

Any chance the card reader that does not work is SD (limit 2GB or 4GB for a very few special cards) or more likely SDHC (limit 32GB)?

Pyra appears to be SDXC which should work with cards up to 2TB.