Standby Mode On Pandora ?

[mannowhere]

...and hell we can even annoy our finds and family buy playing some hideous Britney spears song on repeat till the battery dies and be the only ones with ear plugs to block it out.

You are TRULY EVIL! Please, have at least some mercy and use something like this.

None the less I would like to be able to use some PIM/PDA app with alarms and screen off seems like the ideal mode for that. As to my knowledge there is no built in alarm circuit for wake on alarm and it doesn't make sense on something who's primary vision was for games.

While that is obviously the primary purpose behind the device, it is far from the only intended purpose - the very first questions listed on the FAQ clearly state this. From what I am seeing here, it is highly probable that some sort of ultra-low power state can be achieved that will essentially allow the device to continue running just enough to respond to a Real-Time Clock alarm interrupt signal. I am attempting to establish that as a certainty before I commit to purchasing the Pandora myself (and will in fact be highly disappointed if it doesn't have that ability). Squidge (one of the system devs, according to the official blog) has suggested I send a PM to a particular person who's apparently the main (sole?) hardware dev in order to ask that question. I will post the pertinent parts of any reply I receive here.

If we are talking the average speed of photon radiation in the vacume of empty space the the problem becomes that apps would run to fast to be usable...

Any properly written program would be usable at any speed (above a certain minimum, of course - I shudder to think of any modern app on my first computer, which was a Commodore VIC-20 with 5KB RAM (3.5KB available to actually use) and a 1MHz 6502 CPU).

 

[God Ginrai]

If we are talking the average speed of photon radiation in the vacume of empty space the the problem becomes that apps would run to fast to be usable,

That's what Frame Limiters are for.

-God Ginrai

 

[Chip]

If we are talking the average speed of photon radiation in the vacume of empty space the the problem becomes that apps would run to fast to be usable, but you could get some killer billions of frames per second doing real time fractal plotting of prime numbers with numbering digits higher than 100,000. You could also crack the IRS DBase in seconds and be just like Trinity. But then you would have to kiss Keanu Reeves and no one wants that.

Is this an African photon in a vacuum or a European photon in a vacuum? I suppose if there were two photons and you tied a quantum string between them...

But seriously, Browncoat's question: The answer is a solid "Probably". Even if the OMAP chip does not want to wake while in STR mode, there are ways around it. The Pandora batery is massive and the hardware is very efficient. A well designed PIM app could put the system into a "doze" mode where the LCD is off and the system is awake, but not doing anything besides occasionally checking the time to see if it should wake up and sound an alarm. I suspect a full battery would last for several days in this state.

And that's just the worst case scenario. More likely the OMAP can wake itself from STR mode, and doze mode is not necessary.

Either way you're covered on the hardware side of things. I'd be more concerned with software. Until somebody gets around to porting a PIM suite, all the low power modes in the world don't do you much good.

 

[mannowhere]

Either way you're covered on the hardware side of things. I'd be more concerned with software. Until somebody gets around to porting a PIM suite, all the low power modes in the world don't do you much good.

Yes, that's true, but without the hardware support it definitely wouldn't happen. While I'm not one who enjoys programming to the point where I do it for fun (although I'm one of those weirdos who actually enjoys debugging), I'm sure it wouldn't hurt my C.V. to learn to code for GNU/Linux and port something from the plethora of code written for the Zaurus (assuming that it'd be advantageous to use something already coded for the ARM platform) if I got really desperate. I hope it doesn't come to that merely because I haven't really got the time (married with kids and all) and so it might take me quite a long while to complete.

Besides I've read of other uses on this board that would probably require a similar capability, such as DVR-style usage (I guess it would be convenient to record directly on the device you're going to use to watch the show), so hopefully someone will still come up with a similar power-managing feature and central scheduling database (i.e. crontab) that a PIM could easily take advantage of.

Yeah, yeah, I know - I'm prone to large flights of fantasy. Heck, the fact that I'm a Browncoat kinda proves that in and of itself...

 

[mannowhere]

Okay, basically MJW says what I suggest should be possible, but -- understandably -- this is a very low priority and the actual run-time possible will be unknown until the software is written to make it work (he feels it will be measured in days, or maybe weeks at best; I'm hoping for at least a work week). The good news is that he believes it will only require software updates to implement.

Since it is important to me I will try to look into the code necessary myself, but I'm not at all familiar with Linux or ARM programming and so as stated before it may take me quite a while. Any others also interested in having the Pandora operate in such an ultra-low power PDA-like mode are highly encouraged to beat me to it.

(I'm not even sure I can get access to the information I'd need -- I've know I've read something somewhere that the devs have some things they can't tell us about the hardware, but a search for "NDA" isn't turning anything up.)

 

[trooper]

@ Browncoat

The forums search function is a little bit quirky, And is unable to search for anything with three characters or less as input.

Your best bet is to use google to search gp32x.de (or any other site for that matter) for you, Using:

site:gp32x.de nda

Trooper

 

[MWeston]

Since it is important to me I will try to look into the code necessary myself, but I'm not at all familiar with Linux or ARM programming and so as stated before it may take me quite a while. Any others also interested in having the Pandora operate in such an ultra-low power PDA-like mode are highly encouraged to beat me to it.

(I'm not even sure I can get access to the information I'd need -- I've know I've read something somewhere that the devs have some things they can't tell us about the hardware, but a search for "NDA" isn't turning anything up.)

Yeah, the power management chip is still under NDA until the fall when the catalog replacement will become the used part in Pandora (similar to how the 3430 became the 3530). Also, if you don't have much programming experience it might be a difficult thing to do. There are dedicated people at TI and customers of TI that are still continuing to upload new patches for power management even today. This is a feature I'd like to see happen if it makes 'instant on' faster, so it's in the pipeline for the future.

 

[parag0n]

I've heard a rumour that the Pandora is using one of TI's Triton power management chip, can anyone confirm this, or its it still under NDA?

 

[fusion_power]

Wow, pretty much NDA for a Open Source Device, eh? :lol:
I hope, the Components of the Device are as good as they are NDA. ^_^

 

[Squidge]

I've heard a rumour that the Pandora is using one of TI's Triton power management chip, can anyone confirm this, or its it still under NDA?

All will be disclosed in time.

 

[Karel Jansens]

Wow, pretty much NDA for a Open Source Device, eh? :lol:
I hope, the Components of the Device are as good as they are NDA. ^_^

Hm. You may be confusing Pandora with OpenMoko. The Pandora developers have made clear their preference for Open Sourcing, but they never claimed that all of the hardware was going to be OS. In fact, from the moment the OMAP connection was announced, it has been pretty clear that not everything could be "open".

 

[mannowhere]

Yeah, the power management chip is still under NDA until the fall when the catalog replacement will become the used part in Pandora (similar to how the 3430 became the 3530). Also, if you don't have much programming experience it might be a difficult thing to do. There are dedicated people at TI and customers of TI that are still continuing to upload new patches for power management even today.

Well I cut my teeth on a Commodore VIC-20 (5KB RAM, including screen memory - Woot!) and later a C64, and although the bulk of my recent programming experience has been in a language only used in Market Research circles, I know I can figure out most anything if I really want to. I was once told that since I know how to program assembly language -- regardless of CPU architecture -- I can probably handle most any other language, so hopefully I'm not being too optimistic regarding my capabilities. I admit it can take me some time to wrap my head around certain things, but I've always managed to do so when I've needed to. I'm just not one of those guys who programs for the fun of it - I need a particular purpose to drive me.

This is a feature I'd like to see happen if it makes 'instant on' faster, so it's in the pipeline for the future.

THAT is exactly what I wanted to hear! Thank you!

 

[fusion_power]

Wow, pretty much NDA for a Open Source Device, eh? :lol:
I hope, the Components of the Device are as good as they are NDA. ^_^

Hm. You may be confusing Pandora with OpenMoko. The Pandora developers have made clear their preference for Open Sourcing, but they never claimed that all of the hardware was going to be OS. In fact, from the moment the OMAP connection was announced, it has been pretty clear that not everything could be "open".


Sure, as a normal User, I will never touch the Hardware directly...but I hope the Coders could do this at least because I have no real clue how they could use all the OMAP Power, if they have no access to the Chips. h34r:
Is this Problem solved at the end only with closed (and ressource eating) Drivers between Hardware and Software like onto the PC?