Official blog: A big thanks to all of you!
February 11, 2010EvilDragon has taken the time to list the great contributions that people have made to the project and some history of it’s birth. Frankly, I can’t say more or add more than what ED has already said:
A big thanks to all of you!
Well, it has been a wild rollercoaster ride. It was fun. It was annoying. It was amazing. It was frightening. It was unique.
I think most of you experienced the same during the loooong waiting period we had up until now.
There were times when I asked myself ‘What the heck have I gotten myself into?’.
There were tons of rocks blocking our road – and each time I feared “Okay. This is it. Now everyone is gonna cancel and I have to pay debts for the next 20 years!”I think I’m not the only one in the project who experienced the same.
On the other side, there were many things that kept us going. The progress the project made. How much you anticipated the videos. The reactions on the board when you saw the first prototype. And when you saw the first prototype case.
It was a long and bumpy ride. But now we we’re there. Many many boards are finished already and are just waiting for the cases. The cases that took so long. But finally, we were content with them. We gave the green light. All that’s left now is the production.
During the last days, activity on the boards has raised. And what I did read there made me happy.Some devs I know and respect since the good old GP32 days received their Pandora – and they all do call it a beauty.
The whole community seems so happy that we finally finished it. The ranting has stopped.
Now I’m really sure what we did was the right thing. And that’s why I want to say THANK YOU! Thank you all!
Thanks to…
… Michael, who really did a fantastic job designing the system and organizing so many things around the production.
… Craig, who was the guy that started all of it and kept us going. He was the one taking most the risk. And he was the one who convinced us to do it!
… Fatih, who did source a lot of the parts and companies we’re working with.
… DaveC who decided the complete case all alone! A great achievement!
… notaz, who did work on a lot of lowlevel stuff and is now fixing various bugs that are still left. A very nice and talented chap!
… DJWillis for working on the OS image and getting WiFi to work!
… skeezix for developing the PND system and contributing various other stuff to the OS
… cpasjuste for working on various ports and pmenu.
….vimacs, for supplying quite a few scripts and helping skeezix with the libraries and PND system.
… Pickle for porting many many games.
… Squidge for testing the SoCs.
… all other devs that did help us in some way
… and of course all of you! The community! The ones that kept us going! The ones that laid their money into our hands to produce this great little machine! Thanks!So, what will happen next?
We don’t even know yet how many cases the chinese factory is able to produce until the new year or IF they are even able to produce them, however, the most important thing is that nothing needs to be changed anymore. So in worst case, they start the mass production after their new years break which is February 22nd. Not a big deal after waiting for such a long time.
Of course, once this starts, we’ll try to finish your Pandoras as fast as possible. Will be a few weeks, I guess, as we shouldn’t forget about shipping. The cases need to be shipped from China to America (takes a few days). After the Mass production, they need to be shipped to us (takes a few days as well) and from there they need to be shipped to you.
We’ll keep you informed about what happens as usual.
As most work is going on with the OS right now, I’ll set up a status page with what has to be done and what has been done for the OS soon.Want to shake hands or talk with me?
You all do know me from the boards, I guess. However, if you want to meet me in real life: I’ll be at the CeBIT in Hannover, Germany on March 6th. From 12pm – 1pm I’ll be doing a presentation about OpenSource gaming handhelds. Of course, I’ll have the Pandora with me. So if you happen to be there, why not join us there? I’ll be posting more information about this soon.
What’s next? We wait a small bit, and have a gorgeous hand-held that can do more than most expected.
Pretty incredible that this project is still alive after years of setbacks. Kudos, guys, kudos.
(Please don’t silkscreen it…)
So they really are going to ship them all to Europe before shipping them to customers? Man, I was hoping we could cut out that step to save time for US customers.
It hasn’t been confirmed either way yet; ED may have been referring to Europe orders only in his post.
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/51942-official-blog-a-big-thanks-to-all-of-you/page__p__812293&#entry812293
woot the world is just too perfect right now, Pandora is done, New Nintendo DS this year (maybe) and psp is dying <3
the psp go is dying, you mean, the psp(umd ver.) is just sort-of hanging around..
Psp dying? Really? How come it’s taking first or second place in hw sales in japan in the last months?
Lol, Japan is such a small market… and always biased towards home brewed hardware
“It was a long and bumpy ride.”
There are many details (technical and non-technical) that I would love to read about. You guys should definitely write a book to tell the whole story.
It has been said that they plan to document it… I can’t speak for them though. so I don’t know. But there was at least two threads on it.
while I agree with the sentiments a quote from pulp fiction comes to mind here, “lets not start suckin each others dicks quite yet boys, there’s still work to be done” or something along those lines.
aww hell, congrats everyone! ;D
Agreed, don’t count your eggs, and some such.
The glass is half empty, until it is drank. Then it is empty.
No one knows the future… except that time traveler over there ->
(sorry, was feeling poetic)
Funny I was coming here to post the exact same thing, but with more aggresive emphasis on the “was”… “was”??? ED you still haven’t shipped a single production unit, indeed no such thing exists yet.
Also, It’s a bit rich you talking about OpenSource gaming handhelds, there is nothing about the Pandy that is Open Sourced that you aren’t required to opensource by law, and it yet remains to be seen if you haven’t messed that up too.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased to see you’ve made it this far, and you should indeed be proud, but to quote the immortal Mr Wolf, “let’s not start sucking each…”
You speak as though you think ED had anything to do with this post, or was reading the replies.
“ED you still haven’t shipped a single production unit, indeed no such thing exists yet.”
The other view is that my comments are entirely legitimate, seeing as I laid down the cash on promises that it has yet to meet, indeed that have been demonstrated unmeetable. See: NDA.
“there is nothing about the Pandy that is Open Sourced that you aren’t required to opensource by law”
:- Duh.. Why don’t you suggest some pointers to ED then?
Criticism is the easiest job in the whole wide world….
A badly payed job though.I rather call it a hobby.
Using linux does not an open platform make. Check the history you will see numerous mentions of NDA’s – anyone who wants to contribute to the wifi or the 3d cannot.
They never said the hardware was open-source. And just because they use some closed source binaries doesn’t mean that it’s not an open-source system. If I have a linux box at home with a GeForce card in it, I don’t run it on open-source drivers, I use the binary blob that Nvidia provides. Why? Because it’s HELLA FASTER than the alternative. If you really want only open-source software, then don’t use the 3d driver and don’t use the wifi. but that seems kinda dumb, doesn’t it?
Right so there’s this website called archive.org, you may have heard of it.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080319072544/http://www.openpandora.org/
>What is the device designed for?
>It is designed as an ultra portable open source computer with gaming controls.
Notice they’ve dropped the name “OpenPandora” in favour of the plain “Pandora”. But it was when they were taking in money.
heck, don’t even have to go to archive.org… it’s still right here…
http://www.open-pandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=116&Itemid=25&lang=en
openpandora has always been the name of the company, not the handhheld itselff
Consequence_9 is spot on. The console has always been called Pandora. This conversation is ridiculous. If you want openmoko openness, buy an openmoko.
tnx gruso ;] now that I’m not on my pre lemme give a full response: the only reason the hardware isn’t fully open source is because they (understandably) don’t want to make it easy for a bunch of clones to be produced (seeing as there actually would be a market for that sort of thing). Just look at any other handheld & the number of clones there are of them. If they were to provide the schematics & whatnot it would be all too easy for any chinese company to come out with a PRANDORA of their own based on the team’s years of hard work & severely undercut the quality & price. Enough of it is open source that you’ve got enough information to do essentially whatever you want with it just short of producing your own, so I really don’t see what you’re bitching about. Good luck finding another handheld with all the comparable features that’ll give you even half the open-ness of the pandora.
I just want to point out at one common mistake:
Regardless what we think about it, Open Source is often particular business model, NOT just a CC/GNU/GPL freeware or so. Which is not bad.
e.g. Game Editor (game-editor.com) or Red Hat (www.redhat.com), are (driving) commercial open source projects.
Noo… it means that the data files/recipee used to create a thing are available, you are however quite correct in that there are no particular licenses associated with the term. A classic example is Microsoft’s open source stuff, which the earlier stuff was under a particularly restrictive license.
If the pandy team was any bigger, the OSI would probably have a shit fit about their abuse of the term.
So the pandora is a closed source handheld then?
It’s a mixed model
Thanks to all you guys with sticking with it. I can definitely imagine you had some sleepless nights with thinking things could be falling apart, but you kept at it.
/respect
RubiX
BC Canada
So when the book “The Pandora Journey” Coming out? Will it be a PND?
The complaints about the hardware not being opensourced confuses me. What does that really mean? If they did share the schematics for the case etc then it could easily be recreated and potentially sold by other companies. This in turn means that the investment made by the pandora team would be lost and thus make it all a pointless endevour. Make no mistake that if no one invested in this then it would never of hapened. The people who invested in the project are not millionaires. They put their arses on the line and need to at least recoup their investment. I think I read a while back that Craig will only just break even on the first batch. But that was a while ago so it is likely he will make a loss on the first batch.
Software on the other hand just requires time to produce. Programming is a pure interlectual exercise and requires nothing more than a computer and lots of caffine
So people, as a hobby, contribute to development. The only way code would cost money is if you paid the developers. This is one of the reasons a lot of the big software houses refuse to open their code. For fear of loosing their interlectual property which they paid for through salaries.
The open nature of the pandora hardware clearly referes to the fact that the community contributed to the design of the hardware. The nubs, the keyboardm the touch screen and almost every single component was open to the community to suggest ideas.
So in short. ED is not only justified to talk about open source hand helds he is fact one of the only people in the world who IS qualified to do just that. Get your facts right.
Oh yeah and if you say “we are all investors” because we bought a first batch then do not bother. A few hundred quid does not represent risk. It represents a bit of commitment to the project. If that amount of money is a risk for you then why the hell did you pre-order!!
lol, “So in short” is anything but. :p
However, you get it, and I thank you for that.
If by a few hundred quid, you meant to say one million pounds, you’re right, we the investors didn’t put up much at all.
In regards to openness, have a look at real open hardware… http://www.openmoko.org
The software also requires NDA’s, so any idea of open is pretty out the window.
Fact checking, it helps.
oh i see, he’s a troll. oops! I fed him after midnight, are we gonna be okay guys?
Sorry but this is insulting bullshit, lots of hobbyist programmers also work as paid programmers and their hours of work are worth lots of money too.
Which part were you insulted by? No really, I don’t understand why that irritates you. I am a hobbyist programmer and a paid programmer as well. These two things are clearly separated in my mind, and I am not going to be in “paid programmer” mode when I’m coding for the Pandora. Will you be?
>> “The open nature of the pandora hardware clearly referes to the fact that the community contributed to the design of the hardware. The nubs, the keyboardm the touch screen and almost every single component was open to the community to suggest ideas.”
Why does everyone believe this? I’ve followed the Pandora before they even came up with a name for it. I can only recall three things that we got to really contribute any input on as far as hardware is concerned. We voted for…
1. Big heavy battery over small light one
2. Nice silver metal stylus over cheap black plastic one
3. Volume wheel over slider
The nubs, keyboard, touch screen, d-pad, action buttons, shoulder buttons, dual SDHC slots, wifi, tv out, usb port, case design and everything else was already decided on as of October ’07 when it was first publicly announced. I didn’t leave the boards until after all of the hardware was finalized.
Blue Tooth was added but they just announce that they were putting it in. I guess it could be argued that enough people nagged them about it so they put it in.
Still, I can’t figure out why everyone thinks they had some significant role in developing the hardware. Now, does this mean that Pandora isn’t what people want? No, of course not. The project wouldn’t have made it this far if that was the case. I’m not going to pretend like I made a difference though. The Pandora would’ve been just fine with the cheap plastic stylus. Oh…wait a minute.
Sorry detox. Nothing against you personally. This statement has been recycled a thousand time. You were just the unlucky one who finally got my response on the issue (which ironically wasn’t even a large part of your post).
Bah I saw the design it made sense. Linux neato. No portable computer comes with ram sockets. I am glad they went to 256, I know they should have gone 512. At least they can do what apple does and sell you every version of the hardware
OTOH they are producing an open box. If you jump in you can do anything you like, they have solder points for you to hack the hardware. Anything you are willing to code or pay someone else to code can be done easily (relative to real coders).
It is not a phone you will want to have your phone with you. And if you have a phone that can tether then you are mad mobile browser batman-o-rama. OH and it runs GC and PSX with dual (NOT DUEL, Unless you invent the dueling nubs game) nubs.
RANT ON!!!
WTF do you want? Do you see what you get with every other company out there. JUST STFU and go get a GO. While you are at it give Sony a BJ.
They are very close, it is surprising how long it took, so. Next time it will be much quicker. Step back and think, could I find a few folks who would help me bring a computer to market?
Sure it is under powered but better than an iphone 3gs. Really at the last hour people crying about open, go fuck your self. Have you put 10 minutes into creating anything that anyone else wanted.
RANT OFF
I for one can’t wait for our pandora overlords.
A few hundred quid does represent an investment. And it is a cool one, made by cool people.
I’m very grateful that my comments were incorporated into the design and made the device much better for everyone. That was an open process — the first of its kind.
Not the first, see http://www.openmoko.org – but indeed a very valid point. In that sense it has indeed been very open.
I think the XO also had a similar to openmoko style openness, although I haven’t followed that at all, so don’t quote me.
EvilDragon shouldn’t have posted as if the process were over.
“Well, it has been a wild rollercoaster ride. It was fun. It was annoying. It was amazing. It was frightening. It was unique.
I think most of you experienced the same during the loooong waiting period we had up until now.”
You haven’t shipped them yet, bro. We are still waiting.
Yeah but that fat lady over there, holy shit she almost stepped on you, is warming up to sing. I can tell the tone of the post is he knows there is too much momentum and very little could stop this now. Sure, I agree, don’t count your chickens… I think the stress has just been unbelievable and to let go of some stress is well deserved and shows that he knows there is nothing stopping Pandora now even if there is a minor setback.
We can list many things that could go wrong from here. Lets wait for the cards to fall and give the team a break, they deserve it.
I am still hoping for my Pandora to show up before march
even if it doesn’t I really do care that OP is successful. If they fail I won’t get to purchase P2 
. If they win I can look forward to PS3 emulation 7 years from now 
it’s certainly another major milestone thats just been reached, but i agree that we’re not out of the woods just yet. there are a thousand things that can still go wrong and i’ll bet that at leat some of them will.
i can understand why the devs are feeling like this though, it must be a massive weight off their shoulders to know that they’ve “done their bit” and that it’s now up to the factories to do theirs.
i’m a 2nd hour pre-orderer and i’m expecting to see my pandora in late march or april sometime.
“The ranting has stopped.” LOL…the ranting will never stop!!
Question about final shipping or something to think about..
If it is being assembled in US, why not ship to the US customers directly from here? Saves you cost.
I have already paid for the shipping so doesn’t matter to me..
That might happen, but it’s not confirmed. Red tape could prevent it.
Only the wait is left
That’s all any of us have been doing for the past 2 years.
I would gladly give up my Pandora if I could punch Craigix straight in the dick for all his terrible estimates.
Ok give it up to me after you punched Craigix in his dick
Mission Accomplished…
http://i.imgur.com/VApCd.jpg
lolololololololol
I thought I slipped dangerously far into troll territory, so I’d better do something funny quick. Feel free to use the image however you please.
Great work OpenPandora
LAST TWO MORE MONTHS FOR THE WIN!
(For the 8th time) doh ><
10 wait.
Nothing has changed (for me) after this post. While it may be nice the developers have gotten their pandora units, I am still waiting for mine and I will not be happy until it arrives and I know it works. As mentioned before, not all the hardware and software is open-sourced, rather it is “crowd-sourced”. What was accomplished was building a unit to certain specs using off the shelf (close sourced, encumbered) components. Very nicely done….but the components are not all open sourced.
If we do another revision of Pandora, we should try to use hardware components that already have good, working, open source drivers for them. Really, this should have been a pre-req during the selection process.
This is why Debian will probably not be moved to the Pandora — they won’t include kernel drivers for closed source hardware/software such as some keyspan usb serial devices and broadcom ethernet chipsets. Same will go for some of the pandora hardware.
While I dont have any big gripes about the product (ignoring the fact I’ve never seen one and I don’t have mine) we really should not mangle language and call things what they truly are not. The Pandora, while not completely open, is probably the most open gaming handheld out there.
The Pandora Project is more closely related to this project: http://www.local-motors.com/rf
in the sense of how folks contributed to the end result.
Sorry for the ranting and raving but seriously….no more “two more months” or even two more years.
At one point I even asked for a refund and was refused because I originally had paid for the unit with an American Express credit card. Pandora folks told me to contest the charges with AMEX to get my money back. AMEX wouldn’t do it because the charge was older than two months (go figure, there’s that crappy time frame mentioned again). So now I figure if this thing really will get produced and shipped…maybe I can have some fun with it and write some software for it.
The roller coaster ride may be over for some, but for myself I’m still in the dark, in the tunnel and have yet to see the light. For me, the light will be the tracking number that arrives in e-mail confirming the shipment of my unit.
Just throwing this out there… Does this mean that the Pandora cube is around the corner?
Nicely spoken!
After all this time it finally is coming together, and I’m very happy that I’m a pre-orderer myself. I knew from the start that OpenPandora was not a professional multi-million team, and I kept my promise to stick with the project until the very end. It’s great to see that now everything comes together like we all envisioned it.
I would love to come shake hands at CeBIT in Hannover next month, but unfortunately my wallet currently does not allow that. Which also makes me think: there was a short time when I really, really needed my money back so I could pay for some stuff going on in my life at that moment, but I decided that I should just stick with the project instead.
There is no doubt in my mind that OpenPandora will eventually become a very successful company in the open source market. They will become the GamePark Holdings for the western market. And I’m very glad that me as a poor student with some spare money could be part of its creation.
*tears of joy* =)
I feel the same
GPH did a bunch of half-designed poorly implemented products. They had some great pluses, but also too many faults, which is why they never did too well. I wouldn’t wish that on OpenPandora LTD.
In my mind the Pandora is a very well thought out device. It can’t suffer from the cheese-ball stupidity that ruined the GPX(my apologies to the folks who have a GPX)… I would have purchased one if it were a wee bit more powerful.
This is coming from someone who has been eyeing the GB since it’s inception. It just never had enough appeal.
Maybe the DS could have suckered me in but then I though I don’t want 2 small screens and some wacko game play. I want real controls on a portable. Smash TV anyone?
Thanks ED / gruso for posting some info about who has contributed and how, it’s interesting reading. I hope I can contribute something useful too, after I get a Pandora!
On the subject of open hardware I’d like to mention another example:
The original iPaq or “Itsy” was developed by Digital (later Compaq, now HP), and right from the beginning it had an open source hardware design (not including its ARM CPU and other proprietary components).
You can “build your own Itsy” and you can download the documents necessary to do so from the HP website, see here: http://www.hpl.hp.com/downloads/crl/itsy/index.html
The iPaq was a very successful product I would say. I bought one years ago, and put familiar Linux on it. HP continues to make new models of the iPaq handhelds. I am not aware that open-sourcing the hardware design has harmed its success in any way, and I am not aware of any commercial iPaq clones. Perhaps open hardware helped the iPaq to be successful, because the idea appeals to many geeks.
Anyway, I can also respect the open-pandora team’s decision to keep their hardware design secret. Perhaps they are also legally obliged to do so under NDAs, I don’t know about that.
I don’t believe keeping the hardware design secret will significantly hinder any company that wanted to clone the device and is experienced at copying other devices. It is a fairly simple computer as they go (most complexity is on the OMAP SoC). I suppose the board could easily be reverse engineered by inspection.
I also don’t believe that any company would want to clone this device, or could profit by doing so. That might change if it was insanely successful, like if it eclipsed all the big name handhelds and consoles. Meanwhile, I think no one cares enough to try to clone it.
If it gets to be as successful as the big name consoles or the IBM PC (something that actually has been widely cloned and copied) perhaps open pandora would not need to worry about finances very much at all.
Anyway, I hope the Pandora does become very successful and the team makes a huge profit without getting corrupted or selling out!
Go Pandora!!! <3 
Sam
Isn’t it a little *early* for a post like this?
Typically these go at the END.
They do, but the end is a long way off. This is just the beginning.
Pearls of philosophy aside, I think the timing of ED’s message was ok. It’s too early for Mission Accomplished, but it’s a good time for all the people involved to take a bow. The design phase is complete, and it’s in the hands of the case factory now. To us it seems premature because we don’t have our Pandoras. To them, after a few years of work, sleep deprivation and huge financial risk, this milestone is about as big as it gets.