We need more drama. So here's another video.

[Grench]

Pyra is better for playing Rogue and we all know what's more important.

Someone find and compile the Vultures Eye Nethack we had for Pandora for the Pyra please?

 

[Eight Bit]

Pineohobe and Librem 5 with a keyboard with good and some ergonomic design, like Pyra, would be great.

Maybe their software can be H4xZ0rd for the Pyra

Yar!

 

[matzesu]

Chrismass Release only for the Prototyphe Preeorders?? I dotnt think so, i dosnt see any more big issues, im still have faith in 2 Months + - 1 - 2 Weeks (tm)..

 

[everfresh]

Maybe their software can be H4xZ0rd for the Pyra

Such is the beauty of open source software! I'm planning to modify and use their phone dialer and messaging apps for the Pyra when I get mine.

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

"keyboard with good and some ergonomic design": this imply a tick case like Pyra, because holding a landscape keyboard in a thin device, like modern smartphones are, is a nightmare and sure pain or lession in long term.

Personally I liked the N900 keyboard a lot. Though I have no idea how the Pyra will compare.

 

[Christoph.Krn]

Been lurking in suspended-animation mode since July but can now finally fully use my account features, such as contributing to threads!

Uh, wait.. what?

 

[Phlyra]

Uh, wait.. what?

I don’t know why but it took forever for my account to be confirmed - and I don’t even know how it got confirmed as I never received an account confirmation e-mail with a link to confirm my account! - so I couldn’t actually comment in the forum until very recently. But I was lurking, keeping up to date by reading the new posts

 

[rSl]

I don’t know why but it took forever for my account to be confirmed - and I don’t even know how it got confirmed as I never received an account confirmation e-mail with a link to confirm my account! - so I couldn’t actually comment in the forum until very recently. But I was lurking, keeping up to date by reading the new posts

glad you made it. so, welcome!

 

[Phlyra]

glad you made it. so, welcome!

Thank you! Glad to be here

 

[Phlyra]

Having read various comments and arguments for different positions, just to contribute my own input regards the most recent videos:

I like the shorter video style.

I sympathise with others’ frustration behind any delay (I’d say ‘empathise with’, except that I’m newer to the Pyra than most here so haven’t exactly known a delay over it) and would like to be able to avoid painting the cases for environmental reasons but think it would probably be more worthwhile for everyone here, in the short term as well as long, if at least the initial runs of cases were painted/coated.

I think it would be rather a pity if the logo isn’t the metal one originally envisaged - and I like the logo - but then if there’s a quicker, over all cheaper *and* more professional option available then that probably makes most sense for seeing this to market.

Obviously colour preference is subjective and usually my favourite colour is blue but in this case (pun intended, sorry) I’m not such a fan of the blue. Definitely prefer black but would also be game for the off-white that others don’t feel is getting the level of attention it should.

Several commentators have pointed out that it wouldn’t be difficult to siphon off cases from the production line into a separate ‘bin’ so they don’t get sent off for painting/coating, and therefore sell them separately in the Dragonbox store.
Equally, it’s been pointed out that the case plans will be open source so people should be able to 3D print (or get 3D printed through online services) their own custom case.
Having said what I have above about the logo, I also think an external e-ink display would be pretty cool.

Maybe there will be an aftermarket in case production for this community, like there is for RaspberryPi?

 

[oskda]

Personally I liked the N900 keyboard a lot. Though I have no idea how the Pyra will compare.

Recently I have got two Nokia N900 (I looked for it in two shops when it was released, but none were selling it). I think it is impressive for its time (it is 10 years old now).

I think Pyra keyboard will be better as it has more rows, more keys, each key is a island (instead of having them near together like in N900), Pyra is thicker (bettter for typping with thumbs while holding machine with hands) and Pyra has 4 shoulder buttons (N900 has none).

Of course, until we test it and we compare them, we can only suppose it.

Nokia N9, later rebranded like N950 and only sent to developers, had better keyboard aspect than N900, with 4 rows and more space for keys:

What a shame Microsoft/Stephen Elop commanded Nokia and turned it to failling Windows Phone.

 

[docbroke]

Recently I have got two Nokia N900 (I looked for it in two shops when it was released, but none were selling it). I think it is impressive for its time (it is 10 years old now).
...
What a shame Microsoft/Stephen Elop commanded Nokia and turned it to failling Windows Phone.

Bad turn of history, otherwise we might be seeing market full of maemo/linux sailfish type of phones inplace of androids.
You have some luck, to find N900 in 2019, I searched it everywhere but none found.

 

[modport]

Hello,

Any updates on the software side of things? It seems that devs have had prototypes for several months now. It'd be nice to see if the SW and driver issues from older posts have been resolved (maybe it's embedded in the pages of the thread somewhere?). Some current performance numbers would be nice. Maybe videos seeing how the Pyra handles some workloads like simultaneously loading several tabs of "heavy" websites, boot/resume speeds, thumb typing, navigating with the thumbstick mouse and other things.

I'm interested in this as a UMPC and hope it performs well in that regard.

Thanks.

 

[levi]

Videos will appear I'm pretty sure demonstrating the power of the unit pretty exhaustively.

This far the best video so far demonstrating the speed of the unit and keyboarding on it I think. Additionally the majority of the initial boot process are shown, although I expect myself to use my unit more like my phone and not reboot it nearly as often as any of my PCs.

 

[docbroke]

Thanks @levi for posting this. I had almost forgotten about these videos. Still this shows that omap5 is not slow at all, pyra boots quickly enough and libreoffice starts within few seconds. I think I will revisit all 3 askarus videos now. I am waiting for @Grench to get his prototype and get some more nice videos.
[doublepost=1570955998,1570953823][/doublepost]I think current Pyra shall be quicker, as it now boots from eMMC.

 

[modport]

Videos will appear I'm pretty sure demonstrating the power of the unit pretty exhaustively.

This far the best video so far demonstrating the speed of the unit and keyboarding on it I think. Additionally the majority of the initial boot process are shown, although I expect myself to use my unit more like my phone and not reboot it nearly as often as any of my PCs.

Thanks for the video link! Looks good with local apps ignoring the SD card load times. Do you know of any other videos that shows web page loading/browsing? Too bad the Wi-Fi wasn't working fully when this video was made but I guess a USB Ethernet adapter could at least show how well the SoC handles various web pages. Especially ones with heavy Javascript and other things being loaded simultaneously.

Also, does anyone know if the Pyra supports hardware acceleration for full disk encryption? As a mobile device, there's a higher chance of me losing this so I'd for sure enable disk encryption on it.

How about video decode? I assume there's h.264 acceleration I hope is/will be working fine. I wonder if the SoC can handle the newer codecs being used now for online videos.

I'm assuming the various other issues still exist: inacurate battery monitor, speakers being overdriven, hangs on restart, power saving not working (what's the battery life so far?), etc.

Thanks.

 

[TrashyMG]

How about video decode? I assume there's h.264 acceleration I hope is/will be working fine. I wonder if the SoC can handle the newer codecs being used now for online videos.

It claims to have .h264, I didn't have it working a few years ago on my Devboard, but like everything in this project it's just a matter of someone getting time to get it worked on.

I'm assuming the various other issues still exist: inacurate battery monitor, speakers being overdriven, hangs on restart, power saving not working (what's the battery life so far?), etc.

I see a lot of motion on the mailing list of work being done, Not on IRC that much anymore, but last I took a look there has been a lot of noise in the dev channel too, so hard to say if that is still the case on these issues.

 

[EvilDragon]

I'm assuming the various other issues still exist: inacurate battery monitor, speakers being overdriven, hangs on restart, power saving not working (what's the battery life so far?), etc.

I see a lot of motion on the mailing list of work being done, Not on IRC that much anymore, but last I took a look there has been a lot of noise in the dev channel too, so hard to say if that is still the case on these issues.

Well, battery monitor / charging is mostly done by ToastBucket (but not yet implemented in our test image), speakers being overdriven seems to be a non-issue, as they overdrive if you raise the ALSA volume to 75% or higher - and according to the docs I found, 75% is 0dB, so anything above CAN overdrive (even some of my older laptops do that).
And this happens regardless what speakers I connect - so it has nothing to do with the sealing.

The hang on restart has not yet been looked into more, as no dev had the time yet. Nikolaus knows approximately what it is, as it reboots if we disable some hardware, so we have a good clue.

Power Saving is partly working, normal battery life right now seems to be 10 hours, but that depends a lot on brightness settings.

 

[matzesu]

10 Hours on this early stage sound quite good, its still potenzial to improve, but at least whe dosnt need to search a Wallplug every few hours when whe get our Pyra..

 

[Phlyra]

It claims to have .h264, I didn't have it working a few years ago on my Devboard, but like everything in this project it's just a matter of someone getting time to get it worked on.



I see a lot of motion on the mailing list of work being done, Not on IRC that much anymore, but last I took a look there has been a lot of noise in the dev channel too, so hard to say if that is still the case on these issues.

Anyone else not received these sorts of e-mails from this site? Pretty sure I signed up for the update mailing list but, as with account and order confirmation e-mails (and support ticket updates), I’m not receiving them - not even in spam/junk.
The only DragonBox e-mails I’m receiving are the occasional alerts to new replies in threads I’m watching, like this one...