The last week has been another really busy week - not much to show though, mostly organisational but really important work.
Keymats -------
We made a huge leap forward finding a keymat manufacturer.
Thanks to you guys and your great findings of keymat manufacturers, we found a few suitable ones and I'm currently in contact with them to narrow things down.
I've actually sent out a request to all of them but only three replied back yet, and one of them can't offer what we need.
However, one the ones who replied (from UK) is especially interesting. Besides only doing the production, they also offer their knowledge and tweak the design so the keys will feel as good and tactile as possible. Of course, DPad and buttons will especially be taken care of. They will be extensively tested.
Their keymat would be of a silicon material with hard-plastic caps for the buttons. Yep, not simply an epoxy coating like we have right now, but real flat plastic. This should improve the look and feel as well as the usability a lot :)
The keymat will be a bit more expensive than the Pandora keymat, but still less than 10 USD. This is a nice example how the community can help us out creating the Pyra :)
Fatih is also working on finding a keymat manufacturer, and there are also a few suitable ones. However, they will only produce them according to our design (which is normal for most asian companies). They don't offer us their knowledge to improve the design. Well, we'll still keep an eye on them, it's better to have multiple companies at hand in case it doesn't work out as planned with one.
I'll also have a meeting with a german company on Tuesday about keymat production. We'll see which one is best. :)
LCD testing PCB ---------------
Nikolaus also was mostly doing organisational stuff instead of designing. It turned out that the design of the LCD test pcb was already pretty complex so that it couldn't be populated with the small machine at GC. Using the big machine needs a more complex process and would need 3 weeks to get things started.
He is thinking about getting a small prototype machine for his company (so future boards could be soldered without using an external company), but he also found one company in Munich that is capable of populating the boards for us pretty fast. The test boards will be populated next week and then - hopefully - it won't take too much time to get the LCDs working.
Shoulder Buttons ----------------
For the case design, we're mostly working on the shoulder buttons together. It's not possible stacking them virtually - for various reasons. It'd be very complex and almost impossible with that small space we got in the hinge area, and on the other hand, it would be very uncomfortable for most users. I tried out Askarus mod (he modded a Pandora to have four shoulder buttons stacked up like that) and wasn't really able to push them without pushing the other ones as well. If you got a Pandora, try yourself: Open the lid fully and put your fingers where the shoulder buttons are. Can you think of a comfortable way stacking two shoulder buttons on top of each other? I can't - seriously. Unless you have very thin fingers (like Askarus does).
The best solution seems to be stacking them horizontally, beneath each other. The NeoGeoX has a nice solution for that, but the inner buttons are too hard to push. I think the inner buttons need a tad lighter push and it should also have a bit of a concave blob so the finger reaches it easily.
Of course, that's something we need to test, but it seems like a good solution to me.
Pheeew, long post with nothing to show this time. But quite a few topics have moved further along the road and that's important :)
As usual, you can discuss about that here: http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/16449-nothing-to-show-but-a-lot-happened...