Unboxing The Pandora Dev Kit

[nikkopt]

We have been chatting about this on IRC, and we suspect they are used as I/O expanders for the analog sticks, game controls, and keyboard

Nope, all that stuff is handled by OMAP and TWL.


are you sure about the analog sticks? because if you follow its wires, they end up right underneath the surrounding area of the atmel controllers, and the vias seem to connect to the controller as well

correct me if i'm wrong, of course
MWeston, where are you?

 

[MWeston]

The Atmel chips come with the nubs. They have closed source drivers on them to control the nubs and we just buy them from the manufacturer preprogrammed as part of the set. They have an I2C interface connected to the OMAP processor. They have nothing to do with the gaming buttons or keypad so you right and Notaz is right in what he was trying to say about all the buttons.

 

[joseluisjazz]

The Atmel chips come with the nubs. They have closed source drivers on them to control the nubs and we just buy them from the manufacturer preprogrammed as part of the set.

Are you saying that the $30K (if I remember correctly) invested on developing the custom nubs didn't include the drivers sourcecode? I thought the nubs rights and/or design belonged to you.

 

[benjiro]

Are you saying that the $30K (if I remember correctly) invested on developing the custom nubs didn't include the drivers sourcecode? I thought the nubs rights and/or design belonged to you.

Not always. I'm developing a piece of software for a client. The client also does not own the source. If they want the source, thats a extra amount of pay. That happens a lot, because else there is the danger that a customer will resell the software that you developed at cutthroat prices ( not exactly fun if the development takes a year & half ). If a customer wants the source, the price goes up. If they want the source, and the right to resell the product, well, think 4 or 5 times the development price.

30K for the development of a piece of hardware, chip, and software drivers is not exactly expensive. They may have a simulate deal. The nub, chip, software is developed for the Pandora, but, to reduce costs for the client ( the Pandora team ), the manufacture keeps the ownership, right and ability to resell the developed product ( and that means they also own the rights on the source ).

So, it all depends on what deal they had with the manufacture. 30k may seem extreme expensive to develop something as "simple" as the nubs, you it takes a lot of time ( aka manpower that needs to be payed ), resources, etc to create a product from scratch. From what i remember, there are no other manufactures of said nubs. Lets see, design the nub, the chip, the driver, create a manufacturing process for the nubs, chip... 30k is probably the bare development cost that the Pandora team had to pay ( probably with little or no profit for the manufacture. They probably get there profit from manufacturing & selling the nubs to other customers ). Its speculation, i know...

 

[hells_dark]

snif..
We are the 30th of november, and we still have board photos.
i'm still excited about getting my pandora, but i really thought we could have complete pandora photos at this date.

 

[TaG]

Even more likely is that the 30k was the cost to develop the physical nub, the chips they already use and in that respect are 'standard' and the driver is only a modified version of their standard closed source driver. And unfortunately people in many of these sorts of companies don't have any understanding of open source or why it might benefit them.

 

[PoisonedV]

Even more likely is that the 30k was the cost to develop the physical nub, the chips they already use and in that respect are 'standard' and the driver is only a modified version of their standard closed source driver. And unfortunately people in many of these sorts of companies don't have any understanding of open source or why it might benefit them.

because it won't, we're a corporation not a goddamn bunch of tree hugging fetus killing gay-loving god hating aclu supporting tree hippie bleeding heart liberals, god damnit!

 

[parag0n]

assuming the m8 is just acting as an analog - i2c convertor, no reason we can't reprogram it ourselves and open up the source.

Could even program them to play games for us!

 

[JayFoxRox]

They would be stupid if they didn't set the lockbits, right?

 

[Squidge]

They would be stupid if they didn't set the lockbits, right?

To be honest, I'd prefer to reverse engineer it rather than hacking the code out of the chip.

 

[fusion_power]

Are you saying that the $30K (if I remember correctly) invested on developing the custom nubs didn't include the drivers sourcecode? I thought the nubs rights and/or design belonged to you.

DEVELOPMENT costs of the Analog Nubs? :huh: I thought they just buyed standard-ones? And this was the reason why the Analog nubs only have 2mm travel and NO click function because there are no other good nubs available. If the Pandora Team had developed non-standard A-Pads, these would have a click and more than 2mm travel I think.

 

[JayFoxRox]

nope, they designed custom ones, click doesn't make much sense on such small sticks. Don't know why they decided to use 2mm travel tho.

 

[Squidge]

DEVELOPMENT costs of the Analog Nubs? :huh: I thought they just buyed standard-ones? And this was the

They did buy some standard ones, but when it came to buy a few thousand of them they got the response "Thats a discontinued item, we can send you some sweepings up if you like?".

So $30K was paid out to have dedicated nubs created just for Pandora. There are photos and videos of the nubs here and on the official blog.

 

[wesbrown18]

Well, I now have my rev2 devboard sitting next to me in a box at my office, taunting me. But I've got my day job to do, so it'll have to wait until I get home.

 

[wesbrown18]

Thought you guys would like a peek at my current workbench.

There's the Pandora board itself, the breakout board, and the screen. In the upper right corner is my encased Beagle Board. To the right is my Acer Aspire running MacOS X acting as a serial console to the Beagle Board and soon to the Pandora as well.

I'll be assembling the Pandora shortly, and building a SD card to boot it off.

 

[mali]

Thanks for the pic

 

[CyruzDraxs]

It's cleaner than my workbench.

I wish I could have a dev board, but I don't have the free time to be worth a dev board for a few months yet...by then the real thing will probably be out. I guess you can look forward to XBMC and the start of one of my game project a few months after release...unless I can trick the IRC channel users into doing my bug testing.

On a slightly off topic note; did you manage to get the wifi on your Aspire working under OSX? I've heard it wasn't properly supported and you'd have to get a seperate module, but I can't seem to find anywhere that says which ones work.

 

[TaG]

Thought you guys would like a peek at my current workbench.

There's the Pandora board itself, the breakout board, and the screen. In the upper right corner is my encased Beagle Board. To the right is my Acer Aspire running MacOS X acting as a serial console to the Beagle Board and soon to the Pandora as well.

I'll be assembling the Pandora shortly, and building a SD card to boot it off.
P0rn.

Why is such a simple pic so damn sexy?

 

[nikkopt]

P0rn.

Why is such a simple pic so damn sexy?

True!

We demand more pictures of the developers work spaces, pandora board included
Quick, while i'm horny (lol :huh: )

 

[sinoth]

We demand more pictures of the developers work spaces, pandora board included
Quick, while i'm horny (lol :huh: )

I lol'd. And also agree completely