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2GB cards are kind of pricey right now because they're the biggest size of official non-HC SD card, and a few old devices don't play well with larger cards. But yeah, 4GB cards are cheaper, and 8GB cheaper still in a recent search I've been doing for a card that I can use to test out a slot that used to eat cards on the old OS, and I want to see if the OS change has fixed anything. Not bought anything yet since even 8GB seems a little much to throw away ;)

From my Tapwave Zodiac days I still have a pair of non-HC 4GB SD cards. Those 4GB non-HC SD cards are now unobtanium.

The Zodiac could take 2 SD cards. 8GB of storage on a single pocketed device seemed like so much space back then.
 
I have a 4 GB non-SDHC miniSD. One day, I'll get rich selling that off.
I was already thinking of offering to buy it by the end of the first sentence. When I read the second sentence I decided I probably can't afford it. ;)
 
So the analog Volume Wheel of the Pyra is not even a analog volume Wheel? :confused:
It's an analogue wheel, but not put in the analogue circuit before the headphones/speakers, instead it's digitized into the DAC input. (Therefore EvilDragon is wrong; there must be a finite resolution. Atm it's afaik unknown how high the resolution will be; an informed guess was 10bit.)

I'm a tad disappointed too, I must say, most reasons already mentioned here. All the time when the Pandora's features in comparison to a cellphone/game console/pc were discussed, I regularly missed the aspect of the Pandora being a truly formidable audio player.
And a hardware, analogue, in-circuit volume wheel is an extremely rare luxury these days, which to my knowledge no other comparable device offers. I know all the arguments for this decision, and all pros I guess, but still, in my experience, especially when it is about very very low volumes, digital resolution often doesn't offer me a setting between "too loud for my wishes" and "mute". I hope I'll be proven wrong here. Another unknown might be the DACs reaction to the input of a scratching wheel. Also I share the doubts some people mentioned about having no 100% reliable means of shutting the Pandora off. So I'm sad to see that go.
And on the other hand, analogue stereo volume wheels always have a tendency to malform the balance when it comes to low volumes. This could be an advantage of the digitized wheel, if that's mono or if it's averaged befor going into the DAC.

These are some aspects not yet having been argued about... I hope... In summary, no reason to cancel the preorder here, though.
 
It's an analogue wheel, but not put in the analogue circuit before the headphones/speakers, instead it's digitized into the DAC input.

It looks to me like a rotary encoder, maybe without end-stops; meaning it just issues vol-up/down commands and you could probably customise how big a step you want and how low a volume you want to be possible? Just depends how sensitive it is to rotation and how much turning is comfortable.

(Because decreasing volume is reducing the gain in steps: -72, -76, -82...; consumer electronics often sets a threshold where it jumps to -infinity (totally mute), otherwise some would complain at having to turn the dial so far to get the volume all the way back up again.)
 
It's an analogue wheel.

Ah, thanks. So it has end stops and adjusts some potentiometer?

So as @bukkit says it comes down to the ADC's resolution as to how many volume steps there can be. Even 8 bits would be a luxury, and much finer-grained than a rotary encoder.
 
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FWIW, analogue volume wheels often seem to be 10K variable resistors, so at the 'off' end it's actually a 10 Kiloohm resistance. I don't know off the top of my head how to translate that resistance to decibels, but it seems a comfortable level where you don't have to turn the wheel too far to get sound, but it's still off enough at the off end.

For me, even if it's only an 8 bit encoding of the analogue wheel that drives the DAC volume, 256 levels is probably enough for me. In my experience, push button volume controls only have about ten steps - mplayer has about 25 steps.
 
Can't remember anyone saying (though I'm sure somebody would have), but can you still change the volume whilst it's turned off then?
 
Can't remember anyone saying (though I'm sure somebody would have), but can you still change the volume whilst it's turned off then?
Probably not, but it depends. This was discussed, but I don't know where. Maybe someone else has a link to those posts.
 
Can't remember anyone saying (though I'm sure somebody would have), but can you still change the volume whilst it's turned off then?
Since the position of the wheel represents an absolute value it is possible. Whether software support already exists i can't remember, but ED was talking about this somewhere.
 
Can't remember anyone saying (though I'm sure somebody would have), but can you still change the volume whilst it's turned off then?

Yeah, that should just work, without any special handling, if it's as described above. To react to changes, something must constantly poll the ADC anyway to get the current position of the potentiometer. If the Pyra was powered off/on or suspended, it would notice a change in position immediately on next boot, and adjust the output volume in software.

This does sound really cool, as it keeps the advantages of an analog pot, while being able to alter or override the behaviour in software. You could probably repurpose it as a control input, like to a synth, a modulation wheel, brightness dimmer...
 
Honestly I think it would be too clunky to use it for multiple uses software wise, I rather it just handle the master volume. But I could be wrong...
 
Hmmm, brightness button and moving the wheel should be set up to do that.

Ah that wouldn't work, as when you let go of the brightness button, whatever controls the volume will notice that the wheel has moved... it could be used for only one function at a time. Yes, volume makes the most sense for most people, but there may be other creative uses for it.
 
Ah that wouldn't work, as when you let go of the brightness button, whatever controls the volume will notice that the wheel has moved... it could be used for only one function at a time. Yes, volume makes the most sense for most people, but there may be other creative uses for it.
There is that. And the brightness thing was more for my personal use, not for general use by everyone. I would share whatever I did with that if it wasn't a super simple process (then again, if it isn't a super simple prices it probably wouldn't be worth my time, so I would stick with default brightness controls).

If someone will send me a Pyra I can figure out which of my stupid ideas are worth working on. ;)
 
So, I think I figured out exactly how the analog wheel for volume works:

https://github.com/goldelico/gta04-...5ddfeac2c389031cc794bdb31a/Letux/root/volumed
is an example of reading the wheel's position every 0.1 seconds, and adjusting some output mixer volumes (in 1% steps) whenever the wheel has moved. It probably could be rewritten much better (smarter polling interval, hysteresis, and maybe having smaller than 1% volume steps?), but it should work exactly as desired (adjusts the volume, and works properly after suspend/poweroff).

The wheel is a potentiometer, adjusting voltage within the range 0-1250mV into a General-Purpose ADC on the TWL PMIC chip. The datasheet for the actual chip on the Pyra is only available under NDA I think, but its OMAP3 predecessor, TWL4030 (functionally identical to http://www.ti.com/product/tps65950) had GPADCs that are 10-bit, suggesting it should read the volume wheel's position with as many as 1024 steps. It can also sample very fast, less than 1ms.

So it should be very good quality, and if desired could be very easily reassigned to some other purpose than volume control.
 
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