Some more of my ideas

[God Ginrai]

The Pandora was created by the joint efforts of the OPT and this epic thread http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/38155-our-new-machine-pandora/page-1.

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Aaahhh, I remember that

Yea, it got out of hand when Squidge said he would give a free Pandora to whoever made the last post.  Speaking of which, what ever happened to Squidge?  He disappeared not long after the release and I haven't heard anything about him since.

-God Ginrai

 

[Null]

That thread is essentially this entire forum

 

Aaahhh, I remember that

It will live on in all our hearts, and on my hard drive if I ever get 'round to archiving it.

 

[zonova]

The same way people use the internal 3ds camera

No one uses that thing. People try the picture-into-Mii thing for the novelty, see it makes something that doesn't look a thing like them, and then don't use the internal camera ever again. The only game I know of that even used it was Starfox 64 for the multiplayer mode. (Now, the outer cameras on the 3DS? Still not used much, but used more than the internal one: MGS, Chibi Robo, Pokemon Dream Radar, etc.)

-God Ginrai

So, what exactly is the problem with having a self-facing camera, besides the fact that you don't think there's much use for it? Because clearly, a lot of people Do think there is use for it. Will it cost a ton more, or will it infringe on privacy, or will it mess with the design of the entire device? What exactly are the negatives of having it there?

 

[moxie]

It costs money, it takes up space, and people do apparently believe that it might infringe on their privacy. 

Now, everything costs money and takes up space, so it is always tradeoffs, and so it depends on what is traded off. Personally, I don't believe in the secret picture-taking pandora hackers, so i'm not to privacy-concerned. I do care about maximizing screen area and minimizing device size, though, so I'd be wary of something that is not the screen taking up space in the lid. A camera off to the side, above the speaker? Would be ok with me. However, I'd value stereo sound above a camera, so if the camera can't be fitted without tossing the speaker, I'd not support it. 

Then again, it is a feature that I'd very rarely, if ever, use. I'm with ComradeKingu above - I have a good camera in my camera. I have crappy unusable cameras most everywhere, and I don't use those.

 

[God Ginrai]

The same way people use the internal 3ds camera

No one uses that thing. People try the picture-into-Mii thing for the novelty, see it makes something that doesn't look a thing like them, and then don't use the internal camera ever again. The only game I know of that even used it was Starfox 64 for the multiplayer mode. (Now, the outer cameras on the 3DS? Still not used much, but used more than the internal one: MGS, Chibi Robo, Pokemon Dream Radar, etc.)

-God Ginrai

 So, what exactly is the problem with having a self-facing camera, besides the fact that you don't think there's much use for it? Because clearly, a lot of people Do think there is use for it. Will it cost a ton more, or will it infringe on privacy, or will it mess with the design of the entire device? What exactly are the negatives of having it there?

 My problem is not with having a self-facing camera. It is a problem of the tradeoff. I agree with most of what Moxie said, you can take a look at my original posts about a camera before your self-facing camera posts to see that I said I supported it as long as we weren't trading it for a more useful feature. In your case, you were suggesting that the only camera on the device be a self-facing camera, which is why I have been speaking out against it. As you can tell from one of my earlier posts, I specifically think it's bad to have a self-facing camera instead of an outwards-facing camera:

Not instead of a camera that faces outwards. That's just idiotic.

-God Ginrai

-God Ginrai

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Selfies??????

 

[Null]

Selfies??????

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfies

 

[133794m3r]

First off you were already previously trying to do android on the pandora. So the SOC shouldn't be hard to figure out.

I'd personally do the new pandaboard based system. aka the new omap 4460(if I remember right) SOC. It's essentially an upgraded omap3 that youhave in the 1ghz units atm. The instruction set is obviously a bit newer etc, but the power management are already in your kernel, and they have dev boards for them so new developers could quickly/easily get those to do the testing of their programs.

So basically you get angstrom linux(like you have already), plus a newer version of android supported on the SOC. Plus you've already got people used to how the powervr GPUs work. The clock speed increase isn't obviously anything insane. Only ~500mhz more per core, but there's a larger I/D l1 cache, more registers, and a much larger l2 cache. Plus it's got the DSP(again which I know isn't currently being used). And it has an onboard processor to decode video.

Next up about the full-size sd cards. Yes absolutely, but internally I'd move towards a micro-sd card instead of nand-flash on the new pandora. Because that'll let you salvage more units and thus be able to replace the thing more easily if the nand flash dies in the sd card vs if it was on the POP. As far as the ram goes, I'd go no lower than 1GB since that's obviously the only sane thing with it since it's a mini computer and more ram is _always_ better. As far as the screen? I think the current one looks to be perfectly fine if you do go bigger then no more than 1280x720 and even then is a useless cost. Capacitive is fine, but you may want to try to get multi-touch capacitive if it's going to do real android on it.

I haven't held one but I've seen them compared to the DSes and a tiny bit bigger is fine.

Anyway yeah, omap4460 is where I'd go for the SOC replace internal NAND with a class 10 uSD card. Any size will do, and that's because a) there's dev boards already out there for them. ( they already have angstrom/android 4.2 on it.) your kernel already has the power management stuff in it for how TI does its stuff.

Edit: One last thing, the default clock is 1.2ghz but that was only for earlier units as they weren't capable of hitting 1.5ghz the later ones should be able to do so. So it's anywhere from 1.2-1.5ghz in terms of raw clock speed. It should be like the pandora reaching 850mhz up from 600mhz. These cpus are able to hit 1.5ghz each.

 

[Binky]

What's wrong with the OMAP5 series?

 

[Dr-412]

For Pandora 1, the choise was made by ED only ? Or with the help of a vote, a survey ? That's my question.

There were a lot of polls originally, and then Craig (and EvilDragon and MWeston) took those polls and made some decisions. This time we've been supplying polls and discussion for several years in this forum without EvilDragon's intervention, so I suspect he already has a really good idea of what the community wants.

The Pandora was created by the joint efforts of the OPT and this epic thread http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/38155-our-new-machine-pandora/page-1.

That thread is essentially this entire forum

@WizardStan, Fr Dougal McGuire,


Thank you.


Interesting to see more precisely how Pandora came to life since, unfortunately, I discover it just a few month ago.


Happy to follow P2 adventure from the begining.

 

[God Ginrai]

First off you were already previously trying to do android on the pandora. So the SOC shouldn't be hard to figure out.

I'd personally do the new pandaboard based system. aka the new omap 4460(if I remember right) SOC. It's essentially an upgraded omap3 that youhave in the 1ghz units atm. The instruction set is obviously a bit newer etc, but the power management are already in your kernel, and they have dev boards for them so new developers could quickly/easily get those to do the testing of their programs.

So basically you get angstrom linux(like you have already), plus a newer version of android supported on the SOC. Plus you've already got people used to how the powervr GPUs work. The clock speed increase isn't obviously anything insane. Only ~500mhz more per core, but there's a larger I/D l1 cache, more registers, and a much larger l2 cache. Plus it's got the DSP(again which I know isn't currently being used). And it has an onboard processor to decode video.

Next up about the full-size sd cards. Yes absolutely, but internally I'd move towards a micro-sd card instead of nand-flash on the new pandora. Because that'll let you salvage more units and thus be able to replace the thing more easily if the nand flash dies in the sd card vs if it was on the POP. As far as the ram goes, I'd go no lower than 1GB since that's obviously the only sane thing with it since it's a mini computer and more ram is _always_ better. As far as the screen? I think the current one looks to be perfectly fine if you do go bigger then no more than 1280x720 and even then is a useless cost. Capacitive is fine, but you may want to try to get multi-touch capacitive if it's going to do real android on it.

I haven't held one but I've seen them compared to the DSes and a tiny bit bigger is fine.

Anyway yeah, omap4460 is where I'd go for the SOC replace internal NAND with a class 10 uSD card. Any size will do, and that's because a) there's dev boards already out there for them. ( they already have angstrom/android 4.2 on it.) your kernel already has the power management stuff in it for how TI does its stuff.

Edit: One last thing, the default clock is 1.2ghz but that was only for earlier units as they weren't capable of hitting 1.5ghz the later ones should be able to do so. So it's anywhere from 1.2-1.5ghz in terms of raw clock speed. It should be like the pandora reaching 850mhz up from 600mhz. These cpus are able to hit 1.5ghz each.

Uhh, what's the point of talking about SoC anymore? EvilDragon said he's already got that locked in. He just won't tell us what it is.

Also, I don't want to see a capacitive touchscreen on the device unless the device also has a digitizer pen like the Galaxy Note phone. Capacitive is too inaccurate otherwise.

-God Ginrai

 

[133794m3r]

What's wrong with the OMAP5 series?

No dev board with it atm that isn't an insanely high cost. That's it really. If you want to get an omap5 dev board it's literally like 300+$. Whereas omap4 is way cheaper. If he's able to get it, I'd go full on omap5 since you'll get better clocks, bettery power, better everything. but I didn't know that bit of it. And I was thainking about dev platforms. Like how the pandora people could get a beagleboard to start working on stuff for it.

 

[Binky]

Surely most of the tricky hardware will be custom stuff like the nubs, keyboard, screen, SD slots - things that you won't find on a devboard anyway?

 

[slaeshjag]

no, but if you're just developing software, before the successor has been released, it's always nice to have a system with simlar software and hardware performance to develop with.

 

[WizardStan]

If you want to get an omap5 dev board it's literally like 300+$.

In a project costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, a few hundred (or even a few thousand) extra to find the right product is nothing. Also, from experience, if it looks like your company is going to be buying a lot of these things they will just give you a dev board, sometimes set you up with a personal consultant to walk you through any issues. It's unlikely DragonBox would get a free consultant for the quantities ED is looking for, but a loaned dev board is very likely. From what I understand he's already contracted out to a company for the board design and they likely have dev boards for many possible systems.

 

[thatgui]

From what I understand he's already contracted out to a company for the board design and they likely have dev boards for many possible systems.

The last information I have is, that it is more of a one man show (much like MWeston and the P1).

 

[Natsu]

I think a "phone version" is a good idea. I also think outside camera, usb camera for video chat and ir is good too.

What sort of battery is being used? Have you considered the zerolemon batteries?

Oh, it's custom made.

 

[WizardStan]

If the Pyra battery were identical to the Pandora battery (physically, not necessarily chemically but still compatibly) that would probably make a lot of people happy.

 

[EvilDragon]

Yes, I plan to reuse the same battery.

 

[Pritchy]

Yes, I plan to reuse the same battery.

Are we to expect a reduction in battery life, or similar to the current Pandora?

On second thoughts, that sounds like a question impossible to answer at this stage  :lol: