A loong official blog post from EvilDragon.

Long time no blog post – and a lot has happened, really!

First, let’s start with some OS development.
The OS is getting better and better. We will probably add another minimal menu, similar to gmenu2x with no fancy effects and graphics but PND-Support.
This is for all the purists of you.

Also, notaz and DJWillis are slowly stepping forward in getting WiFi working.
While it’s not perfect, the packet loss is decreasing and things are getting better.
It might still be a long way (or it might be finished soon, you never know with such things), but it’s improving.

I also successfully managed to setup a Bluetooth PAN connection to my mobile phone. I got an IP address via DHCP, I got DNS resolving and I could ping the phone.
Pinging websites outside of the phone didn’t work yet, but that might be my mobile phone (custom cooked ROM, never tried Bluetooth PAN before).
As I did use the terminal to set that up (it only takes a few lines to do so), the next step is including this into the Network Manager.

Next let’s go on to the Mass Production:
As most of you already know, we moved the assembly from US to UK – we’ll do it ourselves!
This is because the company in US finally gave us a price for doing this – a ridiculous high price.
The boards will still be populated there, but we will assemble the units ourselves. Craig is currently setting up the village hall to turn into a proper place to do this, including buying everything needed (ESD stuff, etc.)

Our current roadmap is like this:
(note: It still depends on the case production and on the board production. This is based on the dates they did tell us – but as we already experienced a few times, we are a small client for them and therefore have low priority… let’s hope they keep their dates this time!)

March 18th: Production of 1000 cases is finished and will be shipped to UK.
March 22nd: 1000 cases will arrive in UK and will be inspected. If all is well, the next 3000 will go into production.
March 22th – March 26th: 500 populated and tested boards and all parts will be shipped to UK.
Approx. April 1st: Assembly will start.

Yep, another promise broken – whereas the company in Texas told us they can test 1000 boards a week before, it’s now down to 500 boards a week.
At least they kept their shipping dates for all the prototypes and testing boards so far, so March 22th – March 26th should hopefully be fine.

Some parts already started to arrive in UK, e.g. the PSUs are there.

We decided to start on April 1st to have a small bufferzone for the stuff to arrive.
It doesn’t make much sense if we all sit around in the village hall without having any parts to build together

The complete assembly process will be broadcasted live via Webcam. That will be fun!

BTW:
The Pandora stirred up a lot of interest in Germany currently.
I’ve been at the CeBIT in Germany doing a presentation about the OpenSource gaming handhelds and of course the Pandora.
It was crowded.
Thanks to Radio Tux, you can listen to the presentation.
You can also download the PDF I used for it here.

They also did another interview here.

And if anybody wants to watch it, we’ve got the full thing available as video on Youtube here.

Beware, it’s all in German!

After the presentation, a lot of guys (some from the community as well) could get their hands on the Pandora and play with it.
They all loved how well the controls and the keyboard work. Looks like our design is working well

That’s it for today – hopefully we have good news within the next two weeks!

Source | Forum discussion

The UK’s newest assembly line is showing the first signs of life, with the arrival of several boxes of PSUs and one very tired pigeon. (A few Twitterers mistook the boxes for something else from China until Craig cracked one open for a closeup. Arrgh!) Note that a UK mains plug is shown, but you’ll be getting something to suit your region.

Tweets: [1] [2]

Click here to view the embedded video.

EvilDragon gets busy on the INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY.

Silkscreening looks to be off the table for the first batch. Over to MWeston, who doesn’t mince words:

These cases will not have a silkscreen as that would push delivery out into April and even then Craig worried they would screw it up and stiff us with the cases. The problem is the mold company outsources the work and so they all have to be packaged up carefully, sent to this other company, printed, repackaged carefully and sent back to the mold company to be shipped to Craig with everything else. It could cause as much as another month of delays with the way we should trust them.

I built a unit using a silk screened case and I really liked it but the truth is, 10 minutes after using it, the silkscreen is forgotten and you don’t even notice it anymore. The way you normally hold it in the 170 degree open position means you can’t see any of it anyway. The LEDs are also color coded so maybe that helps too. The sticker under the battery with serial number and model number also has all the voltage and current details for the unit so in a way, not having that on the back is covered. I don’t know if any of this is comforting but it’s an unfortunate result of a product that can’t afford more delays.

(MWeston)

Edit: If anyone is unclear about what all this silkscreening is, here is an example.

Source

Click here to view the embedded video.

A triple treat on Youtube today for those who ticked the UMPC box on their Pandoria visa application. First up is a solid ten minutes of OS bits and bobs, delving into office apps, audio & battery settings, and multitasking. Tacked on to that is a further two minutes devoted to themes and colour schemes. No matter what operating system you’re coming from, there’ll be something in here to make you feel at home. To cap it all off, ED toys around with some Pygame source code and launches it from the terminal – all on the Pandora. Hey, stop giggling up back. Barbie Seahorse Adventures is awesome.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Craig tweets:

Looks like everything will have arrived here by the 22nd. How exciting.

EvilDragon tweets:

Production, here we come! Just confirmed with Fatih, cases will arrive in UK March 22nd. We’ll have the assembly site ready by then! Go!

Craig elaborates:

(The 22nd) is when everything should be here, including the cases. To be on the safe side we probably won’t start until a few days after that.

I feel a lot more confident about this now we are back in control.

Our own assembly line, this will work far far better for batch 2 and so on. It should always have been like this.

Perhaps not quite the news you were waiting for today, but solid information beats cold silence in most cases. This gives Craig ample time to set up the new production line with things like ESD protection and business hammocks, and ED the opportunity to set up the best webcam feed this side of the Thames. Whatever that means.

Sources: [1] [2] [3]

It’s set to be Panarchy in the UK in the coming month, as team Pandora descends on a sleepy village in the north of England to finish what they started in Texas. This change of plan has come about following an exorbitant quote from the factory in Texas (think six figures) to case up the first batch of Pandoras. It seems that MWeston’s stringent assembly procedures were a little daunting for the Texans, who expressed their concern with zeroes. So MWeston sent the procedures to Craig instead, who just happens to own suitable premises for the job.

At this point a lot of readers will be asking questions and wanting answers fast, so let’s jump into some bullet points:

• The cases will now ship from China directly to Craig.
• The Texas factory will continue to populate the boards, this hasn’t changed. They will send completed boards to Craig.
• Finished Pandoras will ship directly to customers as they are assembled each day.
• Michael (MW), Michael (ED) and Fatih will all be jetting in to Craig’s home town to do the assembly work themselves (along with some extra help).

Craig is not at all distressed by this development, as it gives the team tighter control of the product they’ve sweated over, and could cut down the time it takes to get the first units out the door. If nothing else it’s a reminder that it really is just a handful of guys behind this project, and to have them taking these final steps in such a personal fashion adds that little bit of zing to the first batch adventure. EvilDragon even hinted at setting up a webcam in the workshop. Should we hold him to that?

Sources: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

We all want news, and many of us are waiting with baited breath. So, when we have a bunch of news at once, we can wonder. Is this really good news, or are we just hoping? Well, we have some news from the Official blog. I hope everyone is as excited as I am.

EvilDragon

Chinese New Year holidays are over – work has begun at the factory!

We are in daily contact with them, so here is a brief roadmap of what should happen when:
At the moment, the machines are maintained, cleaned and prepared to go into normal production run again. Production will start during the next days, probably on Monday. Then lots of Pandora cases should be spit out each day
While they do this, we try to make them another Silkscreen sample and send us a picture of it (not the whole sample) within this week. If it’s fine, we’ll use the silkscreen – if not, we’ll just go with plain cases, to not waste anymore time.

As for the OS, the devs are really working hard on it right now (despite not having time, as they have so much things to do in real life).
It will surely not be the most polished OS ever released yet, but if you want a polished OS, go get an Apple (and miss all the fun we’ll all have by enhancing the Pandora OS together!)

So, what can you expect, what will not work, where are tweaks needed?

What does work:

* The desktop fully works. It’s like a normal PC desktop. You have your file manager, your windows, your apps, etc.
* PND system is working. You can simply copy games onto your SD Card, put it into your Pandora – and PLAY!
* Apps: Installed apps do work fine so far. That includes Midori, Abiword, Orage, Pidgin, XChat, etc.
* Audio Playing: XMMS working fine.
* Movie Playing: Working… but has some issues (see below)
* USB Devices: You can connect USB Sticks, harddisks, mice, keyboard, etc. Normal things run out of the box.
* TV Out: The TV Out cable works fine, SVHS only for the moment though (see below)
* Power Saving Mode: Yep, it’s included and does work. At the moment, it should last for about 50 hours, not too long, but there might be a lot more components which could be switched off to save more power. Good enough to leave your Pandora lying around for a few hours without having to reboot it.
* LED Warning (Blinking) on low battery with automatic shutdown when the battery status becomes critical.
* Keyboard, us nub as mouse, touchscreen, everything working.

What issues are there?

* The biggest issue: WiFi is still work in progress. The driver works, without using SDIO it was slow (about 1200kbps), DJWillis is working on it, but it’s time consuming. It MIGHT be ready when the Pandora ships, but it might be WiFi will still take a bit longer. Maybe some devs want to help out here once they get a Pandora in their hands
* There’s no software audio mixer yet. This means you can only use the volume wheel. No big deal if you’re just listening to music or playing games, but multiple sounds at once will not work yet. Also, the equalizer isn’t yet working.
* Some apps have to be optimized for the small screen: Fullscreen apps like Midori, Abiword, etc. do look fine. Some stuff however (XFCE4 Settings, etc.) are using windows bigger than 800×480. They are completely usable, but you have to move the windows around to access all buttons.
* Movieplayer: While basic movie playing works, it does not use any hardware accelerations yet. DVD Quality xvid videos do play fine, but H264 is too much without hardware acceleration. Also, in windowed mode the videos are playing before the menus. Watching movies in fullscreen mode works nicely. Things should be way better when hardware support is included
* There is a lot to tweak and optimize here and there. Bootup speed can be increased, more themes (fingerfriendly ones?) could be created, some minor issues like the normal logout of Ubuntu-Netbook-Launcher doesn’t work (you need to use a menu entry), etc. Nothing serious that makes the unit not usable, but there are a lot of things that can be improved within the next months!

So, except for WiFi, all things do work well so far but can be optimized a lot.
Please don’t expect to have perfectly working games and emulators on day 1 – adopting to a new system will take some time and except for some core OS developers, nobody has a Pandora yet. Once delivered, games should start to pop up and become optimized pretty fast!

Some of that stuff might be fixed until first release – let’s hope for WiFi!

source

So, thanks to ED, we have some good news, but more to the point: some honest and fair news.

We still haven’t been let in the front door of the app store (name pending), but as of today we can follow progress from a slightly different angle. Craig was wedged a Twitter API into his store code, giving followers a live feed of new additions to the catalogue. You can follow the dedicated Twitter account, or if you think Twitter is dumb, just grab the RSS feed.

EvilDragon has also been turning over the tweets, with a string of OS updates over the past week:

Standby mode working, battery LED blinks on low power, shuts down on critical power and display goes off when closing lid. Thanks devs!

A quick way to run an app: Press Pandora-Button, type in part of the name and press Enter. Works nicely in latest OS with XFCE4

Wooot, fullspeed movieplaying (not yet hardware accelerated) with the current image for DVD Quality movies. Okay, 720p x264 doesn’t work

Just finished keymapping for X11. Now ALL keys do work fine. The buttons are mapped to Pg Up / Pg Dn, Home, End for easy text editing

Oh, and Shift + Upper Firebutton is mapped to Compose key, so people can now also type special characters (tested and working fine).

twitter.com/PandoraApps | twitter.com/Craigix | twitter.com/EvilDragon1717

It’s the last nagging detail of the Pandora accessory suite. We’ve seen the AV cables, we’ve seen the power supplies, but where are the cases? No, not the ones in China. We know where they aren’t. The carry cases. Finally, Craig has posted a picture in the forums that believe it or not, introduces another question. Craig describes this as “the hardcase which will probably come with the carry case free.” This could mean that the case you ordered is larger, with this one thrown in for free. Or that the case you ordered is this one, and it comes with a limited edition Tote Bag (with Craig screenprinted on the front). Whatever the case, it does look pleasing. Better get one for Justin.

Source

MWeston’s Photobucket account has revealed a new picture: the Rev 5a Pandora board. This includes some new solder pads (serial pads near the EXT port, and I2C pads near the wireless chip), and various other thingies.

Update: Never content to leave a question unanswered, pandoratoday.de blogger Screeny dropped Michael Weston a line to ask what this 5th board revision is all about. The reply:

Hi,

There is not much to say. We made 105 rev4 boards. I tweaked a couple things and added a lot more test points, then called it rev5.

Rev5 is the paying customer’s board, rev4 [was] for testing and for devs to work with.

Michael

In other words, the thousand(s) we know to be in production already are the same revision that we see here.

Source

Thanks to notaz, we now got a working battery meter. You can also configure warnings and automatic shutdown

(EvilDragon)

Source

Click here to view the embedded video.

EvilDragon has been hard at work making those videos that we all love. First off, he shows us how easy it is to switch between GUIs as well as some Atari ST emulation. Then, after the jump he shows us some Amiga emulation using UAE (which runs flawlessly).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Discussion

The operating system hasn’t been given much attention of late. But the software developers have been working away to get you a stable operating system at launch. The official status page has been updated to include a table of OS features to expect at launch. Most of these will be working correctly by the time the Pandora reaches our grubby hands.

Keep in mind that this is the CURRENT state. A lot of things will be fixed until you receive your Pandora.

The List | Discussion

Let’s cut to the chase – there will be no mass production cases shipped before Chinese New Year. Despite the keen promises of the factory (4,000 before CNY) and the more realistic quantity requested by OP Ltd (500), employees giddy for the impending break did not meet the target.

They were unable to make all of the parts in time (in any numbers worth shipping). So they will finish the run on the 22nd+.

This just means that all the Pandoras will probably ship in a steady flow from then, rather than a small batch first.

(craigix)

If we learned anything from Rev3, it’s that rushing the injection moulding process can be a recipe for tears. So despite the collective sigh (all together on three… two…) this turn of events points to a more agreeable one-fell-swoop production run. Celebrations in China kick off tomorrow (Feb 14). Happy new year of the tiger, China.

Source