The news I'll post today are old news.
Well, not for you guys - but I planned to post them over a week ago,
just didn't find the time. And the upgrade of the forum software with
some more fixes also took quite a while.
New Webboards!
--------------
In case you visited the boards sometimes within the last week, you have
most probably seen that we upgraded the forum software to the latest
version. This brought some improvements and some regressions (as it's
often the case when upgrading something).
The board software has been rewritten from scratch to be more
compatible with modern internet stuff. It has a responsive theme (which
is urgently needed unless you want to lose search results within
google). You can still switch to a static theme if you like. In case
you got login problems: The old boards had a display name and a
username. The news boards have those merged - so if you had different
names back then, try to use the other name in case you can't login. The
editor still has some issues - but they will be mostly fixed in
October, when a new update happens. Otherwise, check the
OffTopic-Section in case you find bugs or have suggestions, as we're
trying to fix everything that needs a fix.
Oh, and the Login now uses SSL encryption, which should make things
more secure.
Okay, now onto the news you've been waiting for... the parallel
productions!
The keymat
----------
The moulds of the keymats are already in production and we should
receive some samples early to mid October. Yep, those will be REAL
samples from the moulds, no 3D print or similar. The real thing! With
transparent keymat, plastic caps... yes, the exact same keymat you will
receive once you get your Pyra! (Well, unless we still do some more
small tweaks to it).
The Case
--------
The moulds for the case are ALSO currently being manufactured.
I don't have a date for them yet, but they should also probably be
finished sometime in October, maybe November. That means we don't need
to use any more 3D printed cases but real plastic ones. It also means
we need to think about the color soon...
The CPU Boards and mainboards
-----------------------------
Even though we had crossed traces on the CPU Board, we could test most
components (and triple-check the layout of the stuff we couldn't test).
The new, fixed boards are already in production as well and should also
be finished early October.
Everything seems to work: Modem, the LCD using the rotator (and our own
custom LCD Cable), USB Ports, the LEDs, etc. The Mainboard will get a
few small tweaks from Nikolaus and the new revisions will also be
finished early to mid October.
This means we'll have a pre-production run in October.
Pre-Production means that this will be a test for the mass-production -
so everything will be done under the same conditions.
Batteries
---------
3000 batteries have arrived in Germany at Global Components already.
So yes, those are finished as well, waiting to juice your Pyras!
So what does that all mean?
---------------------------
Well, it means that we'll have some pre-production models ready in
October / November. And if they work without any issues.
Some of them will be sold, some will go to developers.
We need to do some more tests with them, but in case these units are
working fine, all that needs to be done on the hardware side is give
the green light for the mass production! Then, a few months later,
Pyras should head out to see the whole wide world!
And yes, this also means: Preorder time!
Finally!
Let the fun begin!
Talking about fun, notaz was visiting me for a week, and while he
contributed some helpful details to some of the technical things (and
fixed some software bugs), he also made a quick test with simultaneous
outputs on the Pyra.
Here is the result:
https://youtu.be/F1ccK1aX4OY
You can see a MegaDrive emulator running on the LCD (using the rotator)
while X is running via HDMI out. Is that useful? Probably not - but it
was fun :) Well, it's the same way DraStic works on the Pandora, so you
can be sure DraStic also works with two monitors on the Pyra.
By the way, the emulator was using 4% CPU power (of one core).
So that means, in theory the Pyra can run about 50 fullspeed MegaDrive
emulators on the same time. You'd just need 50 displays...
Joking aside, what this really means is: When doing something like
MegaDrive emulation, the battery should last long... really, really
long.
That's it for today.
Hope you enjoyed todays news - I certainly did :)
Want to leave feedback, comment or see the pictures? Visit:
http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/5600007-parallel-production-and-new-boa…
Good news, everyone!
After some successful tests, it's time to move to the next step!
If you followed the twitter posts, you know that Nikolaus was
constantly working on the CPU board, and we have been able to do quite
a few tests.
But let's start at the beginning...
The CPU-Board with a slight failure
-----------------------------------
We received the bare PCBs two weeks ago and after some fights with
populating the RAM properly, we finally got the kernek to boot.
However, it didn't reach the login screen, it hang while initializing
the hardware components, so something was wrong.
After investigating a bit, Nikolaus found out that there was a layout
mistake in the CPU board: Two traces had been swapped - the
communication line (I2C bus) between the CPU and the Powermanagement
controller.
Which means: the Powermanagement controller is running in some default
mode (which is good enough to start and boot the kernel), but whenever
Linux wanted to change some voltages (i.e. SD Card slot), it couldn't
communicate with the controller and simply hang. That's why we couldn't
get into the login screen.
With some software workarounds Nikolaus managed to boot into Linux and
was able to do some simple tests with the processor, for example
showing the Heartbeat of the Linux system on an LED!
You can see that here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzYv1Y7EHrQ
(For those who don't know what the heartbeat is: It's basically some
small timer built into a Linux system that triggers similar like a
heartbeat and shows that the system is alive).
What looks like some simple thing (probably one of the most expensive
blinkenlights generator out there) was actually a breakthrough - as it
showed that - except for the power controller - RAM and CPU are running
stable (over hours and hours).
The fix of the CPU-Board
------------------------
But of course, we'd like to test the FULL hardware, so what should we
do? Unfortunately, swapping the traces with manual solderind won't work
as the traces that need to be swapped are fully buried within the
10-layer PCB. So we either need to produce new CPU boards (takes about
5 weeks) or create some small PCBs that go between the powermanagement
controller and CPU PCB so we can fix the boards we already have.
We had hoped that those small inbetween PCBs could be produced cheaply
within five days, but it turns out they'd cost about the same as new
CPU boards and would take 3 weeks - so we wouldn't gain much here.
Still, without full tests, we couldn't know whether there are any other
bugs in the CPU boards, and waiting 5 weeks for more CPU boards only to
find out they have some more issues would be annoying.
Some more software workarounds
------------------------------
Nikolaus tried some more patches - and that actually made it easier for
us to make a decision how to continue!
He was able to test a lot more of the Pyra hardware with these tests -
so we now know the following:
* LEDs on the Mainboard work!
* USB works (a connected USB stick could be accessed)
* LTE Modem could be started and successfully found networks
* Keyboard, Nub and Touchpanel work fine!
Not yet tested: SDIO devices (WLAN/BT/Audio), as we need to work on the
device tree for that (which is what Nikolaus plans to do next) and MIPI
Video Stream (turning on the backlight works).
So yes, we got the CPU PCB plugged onto the main PCB working fine.
And all of that was running stable for hours, without any issues!
It shows that most likely, the swapped traces on the CPU PCB are the
only issue we have with the CPU board, which is awesome news!
Quick power consumption test
----------------------------
With disabled power management and everything enabled except for the
Wifi module, the rotator chip and the display (background lighting was
on though) we had a power usage between 500mA and 900mA (so 2,5 -
4,5W), which is not too bad. It's similar to what the Pandora had
before all the power management functions were properly included. With
the battery of 30Wh, it would mean between 7 and 12 hours with all
components enabled (even with LTE!). Take that with a grain of salt
though - these are just a few quick tests, but they are very promising.
The Plan!
---------
Okay, with that, we now actually have a plan!
* Test the remaining hardware with the current CPU Board, make some
minor fixes to the main PCBs if needed.
* Fix the layout and order some more fixed CPU and mainboards (probably
10, maybe a few more), which will be produced "like mass
production" (means: they will be fully populated with the machine)
* While waiting for these boards, assemble a prototype which can
finally be used to demo the system... and take care of the preorders.
* Those newly produced units will be assembled and delivered to some
developers to work on the software (should probably happen early to
mid October)
* Once these units had been tested for a few weeks by multiple
developers... it's time to give the green light for the mass
production!
And the rest of the parts?
--------------------------
Oh yes, right. Keymat and case, haven't talked about those in a while
now, have I?
Well, the mould for the keymat is already in production and will be
finished within this month. For those interested what the printing
looks like, you can find a picture on the blog post (follow the link at
the end of this newsletter).
As you can see, the power button is transparent. That is because
there's an RGB LED below which can for example be used to show the
battery status with a color, etc. We should receive samples within this
month as well.
The work on the case moulds has also begun now.
The only area I still want to do some changes is the lid with the LCD,
so they started with the moulds for the base parts. Until they are
finished, I should have the changes for the lid finished and then they
can work on these moulds as well.
Moulds take about 2 months, so we should have samples early November as
well.
Stay tuned - we're getting there!
Want to leave feedback, comment or see the pictures? Visit:
http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/18481-see-the-heartbeat/
