I'm currently sitting on the plane on my way to Greece.
Once again. :)
That gives me a bit of time to write a quick newspost to let you know
what has happened and what the status is.
Forgive me that I didn't have much time to participate at the boards
myself a lot. Besides preparing the Pyra massproduction (yes, you read
that correctly), I upgraded my shop to the latest version of
PrestaShop, migrating all orders, vouchers, etc.
I've started doing that last year in August and made the switch end of
June, following a couple of weeks of bug squashing (for example,
AmazonPay wasn't working).
Well, now the shop is back in a fully working state and has some new
features. You can now easily throw out links to the shop or a specific
product and get reward discount codes if somebody buys a product coming
from that link.
So go and spread your affiliate links now - it's good for everyone :D
I still need to add some more products and sort some categories, but at
least it's now fully functional.
That, of course, took some time. And while I still had the time to work
on the planned Pyra production run, I didn't have any time left to do
an extensive newspost.
Hopefully, this one will be enough for you.
And: We'll fill the thread at the boards with pictures during the next
two days!
So, where to start...?
1. The cases
------------
It's the reason I'm sitting on this plane right now:
azouls and his team worked hard on the remaining case issues,
redesigned the shoulder buttons and now it's time to check it!
That's why I have some parts for prototypes in my bag and we'll check
out everything in the company, as that means we can also do some last
changes / fixes directly there if need be.
And of course, I've got a camera with me so you'll be able to see
proper pictures and maybe videos of the result as well.
This thread will be updated :)
2. The hardware and software
----------------------------
Prototypes have been sent out to some devs, most of them are also
working for TI, so Hopefully, they can help a bit with remaining driver
issues.
Unfortunately, devs these days also don't have a lot of time, so don't
expect things to happen within a few days!
The main issues we're still having is that the speakers are easily
overdriven (probably because the DC Offset isn't set up yet), TILER /
3D needs to be make to work together and the battery monitor doesn't
know the size of the battery yet, so the %-age it shows is off. As the
charger handles everything itself, this is nothing dangerous though,
the battery can't be overcharged (as it was the case with the first
older Pandora OS).
Then there are some smaller quirks like that a restart hangs the system
for some reason (shutting down and restart works though). Nikolaus
found a workaround for that, but it's not yet a proper solution. It
just points in the right direction.
And - of course - there's no proper powersaving there yet and the whole
system is still a bit barren (like on the early Pandoras). All the nice
little tools that made the Pandora easier to use (like the enable /
disable Wifi, USB, etc. directly from the taskbar) are still missing,
but the desktop itself works. And there's not nice GUI for doing
phonecalls, etc.
But stuff like that will surely come from various devs once the device
is shipping.
My main concerns are the speakers, but I'll plan to check them more
extensively next week to make sure it's really just software thing and
not hardware. But basically they're directly connected to the audio
chip, so there's not really anything that could be broken in hardware
here.
We (Nikolaus and me) also had another meeting with Global Components to
start preparing the mass production.
Nikolaus submitted the final hardware details and Global Components are
now looking to source the remaining parts and send me a new offer.
Hopefully, the price won't be much higher than before. I expect that
it'll cost me about 30 - 40 EUR more, which makes up a whopping 40k EUR
more expenses than expected for the first batch!
I won't force anyone to pay that, but I'll let everyone know and decide
for himself if he wants to donate that when the Pyra is ready to ship
or not.
And no, there won't be "Premium Upgrades" to pull in money...
Getting parts these days usually can take up to 10 weeks after placing
the order, and that's also the time it takes until we receive the 1000
keymats (which we already ordered).
So the Prototype Preorders will still get their units a few months
before the final units.
But once everyhing is ordered... well, there's no going back for us :)
Oh speaking of keymats:
As you know, the final keymats have removable caps, they're not glued
anymore.
And some of you asked whether it will be possible to get the keymat
only partly printed (without the letters).
And: Yes, that it possible! We will receive 100 of those blank keymats,
so you can do your own experiments with them.
We'll also sell spare keycaps in case you lose one during disassembly
:)
Soo... I guess that sums things up a bit.
Of course, if you're visiting GamesCom this year, we'll be there (in
the retro hall) as usual. But this time, we'll have FINAL Pyra units
with us.
You're more than welcome to have a cup of coffee with me :)
Anyways, that's all for now... pictures should follow tomorrow!
Want to leave feedback, comment or see the pictures? Visit:
https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/nothing-to-see-here-yet.83733/
--
Greetings,
Michael Mrozek
-----------------------
OpenPandora GmbH
CEO: Michael Mrozek
Schäffbräustr. 11
85049 Ingolstadt
Germany
Tel.: +49 841 990 5548
http://www.openpandora.de/
HRB 4879, Amtsgericht Ingolstadt
-----------------------
eMail: mrozek(a)openpandora.org
