Official blog: Preparations for the near future
January 18, 2010Only a Pandora developer could make a bunch of empty boxes sound enticing. As the latest test cases make their way to Canada for evaluation, EvilDragon briefs us on what we hope are the final stages of this long, nutty journey. (Some of this stuff you’ll know from a recent MWeston post). All aboard the hype train then Try to contain your excitement though, as we wait to find out if the light at the end of the tunnel is a green one.
This week should be an interesting week. The next (and hopefully final) sample cases should arrive at Michaels place. We’re all excited, as they will look so much better than the already good-looking cases we already got.
In the meantime, while it has been quiet around here, a lot of other things have happened.
Preparing the Assembly
Michael has spend all his time preparing for the mass assembly. He created a well documented assembly manual for the Pandora which contains several parallel processes that can be set up as stations. There are six sub stations and two main stations. The main stations (assembly of lid and assembly of base) require the most staff in order to crank them out faster. The sub stations require one person each (could be more if there are people) and are monotonous (ie. trim and solder speaker wires, apply copper tape, etc.). They could also be combined into more tasks and fewer stations.
Building the boards is a well understood process at this point and done very quickly. The pick and place machine can jam them out as quickly as you can keep the reels loaded. The boards are being built in batches according to how fast they can be tested. Currently that is going to stay at about 450-500 at a time. The process is to build 500, get them into testing and build the next 500 while the first ones are being tested. Once cases are available, the third parallel step will be to have a batch of 500 being assembled while a previous set is in testing and another new set is being populated.
All 4000+ antenna boards and LCD cables have been assembled and inspected. Things are progressing in the natural fashion a small run (by any big company’s standards) like this should be done. When the cases show up, this parallel process will fall right into place and pump out shipments at a steady and predictable rate that has been expected from day one. We can’t build and ship all 4000 in a day or even a week but it will be done as quickly as possible.
Michael himself will probably spend 12-15 hours a day on the floor helping to build building these bad boys to get them to you all as fast as humanly possible. It’s going to be an exhaustive and miserable process, but that will help speed things up a bit. Yep. You read right – some of you guys will actually get a Pandora assembled by the creator himself!
Preparing the OS
The devs have continued to work on the OS. DJWillis fixed (and is fixing) quite a few bugs while also doing various tests to make it NAND-ready.
The OS itself is in a pretty good state. XFCE4 is working nicely, all those installed apps (AbiWord, Midori, ClawsMail, XChat, etc.) run flawlessly. PND Discovery and starting is also working fine. The standard stuff (closing the LID switches off the backlight, battery charging, etc.) is also included.
Here are the current issues still to fix:
* Include pmenu as second startup-option
* WiFi works, but can’t be stopped once running. If we can’t fix the driver in time, we’d probably put in a small tool where you can enable and disable WiFi on start.
* Bluetooth works fine but is missing a GUI.
* Some permissions need to be fixed (so a normal user can change maximum clock speed, etc.). Nothing spectacular
* Other minor stuff (keyboard mappings, etc.)
* Include scripts to enable TV Out.So while it will surely not be perfect on first release, you can be sure playing, surfing, working, etc. works fine. It just is in need of more tweaking.
Preparing the shipping
I don’t know how Craigs shop looks like at the moment, but I got over 700 empty boxes lying around, waiting to be filled with Pandoras. We’re ready to ship them out as fast as possible when they come in!
So – everything is prepared from our side. And as soon as the cases are good… let the fun begin!
I hereby claim this top position for Her Majesty the Queen
first?
CONGRATULATIONS. Your small brain deserves some cookies for posting the first comment!
oh -snap- epic pwnage!
I’ve been ridiculed for my gullibility and naivity. “Wait for the second batch” they said, “vaporware” they cried. But soon the day of revenge will be mine…
So go on my developers, make me proud! Proud to be a pre-orderer!!
anyway this news looks good
the os “will surely not be perfect on first release”.
im wont bitch about that, only ask: how is os-updating going to be done on the pandora?
Magic Linux pixies will flutter into your house every so often, manually toggling the bits in the Pandora’s internal flash to update the OS to the latest version. This process is entirely automated for the user, other than the requirement to give the Linux pixies yummy cookies in return for their hard work.
tip; cookies with chocolate work best.
I should be excited about this… But I’m not.
That’s because this news doesn’t mean anything unless MW okays the cases.
I bet I’m on the same boat. I probably be excited once I get my tracking #!! Stay tuned.
Is there any way of knowing how far up/down the queue my order is? I have an order number, and my original order was placed and paid for on Sept 30 2008.
I’d love to be excited about “700 boxes lying around”, but I have no idea whether my Pandora is among the first or the last 700 to be shipped.
I’d also like to know this, having jumped in on ‘cancelled orders’ in march 09, whether after all this I’m even in this first 4000 batch!
@Nick:
If you ordered on the first day, your queue position will be much closer to the first 700 than the last 700.
ED’s 700 boxes don’t mean much on their own though. His store (gp2x.de) only took a portion of the total orders, primarily German. Orders from most other locations went through Craig’s store (gbax.com). They will no doubt have their own pile of boxes ready to go, and there may even be some in Texas (although that is not confirmed).
No matter where your order is coming from though, they do intend to honour the preorder queue. If you ordered on day one, especially if you got in before the server crashes, you’re in a pretty good position.
@tehmeh:
If you have a confirmed order in, you are indeed one of the 4,000!
Thank you very much! This has put my mind to rest!
Oh wow – I had all but forgotten it; thanks for reminding me that I actually DID place the order on Day One.
They shut down preorders after reaching the first 4k units on Oct 11, if I recall correctly.
Well, truth be told I am not worried at all. Eventually I will receive, and enjoy, my Pandora. And from the looks of it, the first production run won’t take *that* long to produce, so even if I were among the last 700 it wouldn’t matter too much.
I think that pretty much everyone who placed an order early committed to the whole idea that they weren’t preordering something from Nintendo or Sony, and that it would be done when it was done. As for myself, I have actually enjoyed the wait- and even more so since sites like this one has been informing us all on – and giving us great insight into – the progress of the development.
My point in my original post was more in line with “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if my order number was relative to the queue number?”.
Cheers all.
The thing I like the most about waiting is all the things Ive learned along the way, how CE testing is done, that there is a version of linux made by the Ångström Laboratory, to never trust chinese people, how banks can be grumsy but mostly to not trust the chinese, especially not if they are making a case.
I bet many people here didn’t even know China had its own version of the Golden Week. I did not.
We also learned not to trust Paypal and not to trust banks with credit cards. And we learned to never trust any deadlines given by independent projects.
I DO hope however that we will eventually learn that at least some independent projects can be trusted a bit. People are still hitting me over the head with their “Vaporware” argument, and after all these years I really long to hit them back with an actual Pandora, at least the ones who haven’t died during last year.
Does anyone actually know one or more preorderers who have died before receiving their Pandora? Michael Jackson comes to mind, he sure had a huge collection of arcade cabinets, so I bet he would have liked the Pandora. ;_;
So where does the silkscreening fit in?
I won’t mention the Keymats and AV Cable. Except there.
Is it me or is there absolutely no estimate of the rate at which Pandoras can be assembled in this article?
I don’t know if they’re in a position to make estimates yet. So far MWeston has built less than 20 “complete” Pandoras from start to finish. That doesn’t really tell them how fast it’ll be in a production line situation. All we know is, they’ll start slow and get faster.
Surely they have *some* idea. 1 per day? 10 per day? 100 per day? “slow” and “fast” have zero meaning without any reference.
For what it’s worth I think they’ll produce a few dozen on the first day, and over the course of the entire batch will ramp up to several hundred per day.
That’s just a guess though, don’t you go quoting it people.
Sure, but they would need like several hundred of people just to test theirs hinges (‘cos 1 pandora/(person·day) just to test THEM)
But the average will be still 500/week thus couple of weeks + “2 more months™” for me.
Please avoid to use expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) as is quite unecological.
There are a non-porfit group in Canada that can help you on this called NaturoPack. Michael Weston, you could contact them
Here is a list of ecological packaging suppliers: http://www.naturopack.org/suppliers.html
http://www.naturopack.org
I don’t know if this will be needed, as probably most of the Pandoras will be sealed away in peoples cupboards/bank vaults, escalating in value, never being used and not polluting the Environs. Once in awhile they will take a trip to the vault to caress and cuddle the outer box
I think he’s talking about packing peanuts or something, not the actual pandora.
Don’t the Pandoras come in very close-fitted multiwall boxes made from corrugated? Those will offer impressive protection all on their own. Even moreso if they’re packed in larger shipping boxes.
Don’t forget to take pictures, when the production starts.
Pandora takeaway. May I have your orders please! ^^
I think the last six months of news releases has sucked the excitement from me. That, or the last few purchases of electronics.
Still looking good, hope to see my Pandora this quarter.
The only thing I really spot here is “for the near future”.
Everything else is not relevant for me.
So no case information yet. Is it a case of no news is good news or are the powers that be gonna mask any case issues with other news and new ways to try and cheer us up ?
Not even a tiny bit of news to post, sorry.
I do believe the cases are in transit though, and we’re still within a (relatively) normal timeframe for delivery. So, no news isn’t good or bad news, just… no news.
There have been some very cool software announcements lately though. I’m working on another big game roundup, it’s taking a little longer than I thought it would!
Thanks Gruso. I’m glad you are trying to keep us informed. I’m just one of those people that doesn’t mind being told bad news and would rather people be honest more than anything else.