Pandora's Box

Craig's new blog post about Michael's prototype :

Here is a quick and much requested video of the white Pandora which was built a few days ago. It is the first fully working, portable, near final unit. Still some things to tweak up which we are not happy with, but we are almost there now.
You can see use of the keyboard, the nubs, the dpad, the action buttons, the LEDs and the touchscreen.
The game is Quake@800*480 via the SGX (solid 60FPS with dynamic lighting), the OS is Linux (Angstrom). We will do a video with Quake3 soon.

Additionally there was couple blog posts by ED :

So, what has happened during the last days, you might ask?
Well, besides me starting to make the Pandora Matchbox theme to be more finger-compatible (so you can use it without stylus), Michael finally got his case and he began to assemble it properly.
I also had to do a lot of boring stuff... finding out a lot of the legal stuff and doing phone calls.
If you're not interested in legal mumbojumbo, you can skip the rest of this blog entry.

Have you ever thought about how complicated it would be selling a battery within Europe? Firstly, you need to make sure nothing serious can happen... and if there are any special infos about how it has to be wrapped up. A lot of phone calls were needed to find out anything about that, as nobody seems to know much about that — not even the guys that are supposed to check if everything is fine. Well, I found everything I need to know. Even if some stuff is weird. Even the size of the «don't-throw-it-away»-icon on the battery has to be correct...
Another thing about the batteries is that you actually need to take care about the recycling... I did also take care about that.
Similar stuff for the Pandora itself: Recycling is something that needs to be taken care of... that's fun, eh?

Anyways, after those boring legal stuff, back to the really important things now: Finishing the Pandora and the OS!

I don't think I need a lot of words in this blog entry — I just posted a video (HD again) where I assembled a Pandora prototype case.
Two things are important:
1. I broke my flat ribbon cable, so I can't show the unit running (a new one is already on the way to my place).
2. The motherboard doesn't fit perfectly, as the final case is for MK3 and the board I have is MK2, we moved around some stuff.

Apart from that: Enjoy :D

Video is after the jump.

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Blog, Hardware, News, Pandora Video, Game, OS, Prototype

A new post from EvilDragon on the official blog…

Hi,
I told you, cpasjuste is currently working on a simple and clear launcher, using skeezix libpnd to work with PXML.
cpasjuste just posted a small sneak preview of the menu, you can see how PXML works (showing icons in categories, preview pictures, etc.).
skeezix libpnd is already pretty advanced. Together with vimacs, he made it possible for EVERY dev to easily use PXML and therefore, automatically add games and programs into the right categories as soon as you put an SD card into the slot!
We will show a video with that feature included into the matchbox UI as well soon!
Now onto some news on the case: The company is working on it already, however, a few files got errors while exporting them. We are working together to fix them, should only take a couple of days.

Watch video after the jump.

Viridior and the Gentoo team now have their own news blog. Check it out.

We started our own news/blogs site to help us keep track of Gentoo Pandora development. We are charging forward at full speed to get a nice small and functional image well before the Pandora ships, if your interested check out http://gentoo.openpandora.org, it has a RSS feed.

PXML, the ‘ID Card’ of all Pandora applications, has just been updated.

skeezix together with cpasjuste implemented PXML into his lib_pnd (yep, every dev can use that lib and easily read out all PXML stuff).
PXML has changed slightly to be more easily read by his library, so I updated the specs.
For those who have no idea what PXML is:
It is basically a file which devs include within their games archive. The Pandora menu reads out that file and can automatically sort the game into the correct category, show descriptions or preview pictures and associate filetypes with. So basically, the user puts all his games onto the SD Card, inserts that into the Pandora, and the menu becomes automatically populated.

Download: PXML v1.5

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Blog, News, Official, Software Blog, OS, Prototype

If EvilDragon’s latest Angstrom video didn’t float your boat, perhaps it’s worth checking that you’re actually in the water. Or, maybe you’re just holding out for some Gentoo news. And Gentoo news we have, courtesy of Viridior and his merry band of distro devs.

Hey, we did a lot of good work to get Gentoo ported to the armv7-a platform. Looks like we will have something to install the day you get your Pandora. No worries, this is the ‘dev’ image, finalized user images are the next goal and can be produced much quicker.
Gentoo-pandora-dev-0.0.2 is released. (And it works great on the BeagleBoard)
You can see the full software inventory here.

Highlights…

[software]
bash
vim
nano
screen

[compiling]
armv7a-softfloat-linux-gnueabi toolchain
gcc-4.3.2
python-2.5
perl-5.8
distcc

[networking](usb works) (eth not tested but should work)
ssh
nfs
ntp
autofs
rsync
wireless-tools

Installation instructions here

You can find us in our normal stomping grounds in FreeNode#gentoo-pandora

Yes, yes, the dreaded D word. It does sound like it’s only a little blip on the radar, though. And here in the Pandora community, we know blips.

Anyway, the moulding company found an error on one of the parts and need to tweak it, so it’’s going to take a little longer — craigix

It probably won”t be much of a delay (it’’s just a missing join on one part), I do wish we had done an SLA* at the same time though, but never mind. — craigix

Just another day at the office by the sounds of it. There are still plenty of other things going full steam behind the scenes (software development, keypad layout) so it’s not like the pause button has been pressed.

News, Pandora, Rumor, Software OS, Production, Prototype

New blog post from ED, with video:

Hi,

still waiting for the case, however, I got some news: According to the factory, it should be finished by next week, so there was a one week delay because of the chinese new year here. Could be better, but it could also be worse!

So, in the meantime, I injected MDaves theme into my Angstr?m image of my Pandora devboard and can show you a nice video (HD  ).

It shows, how easy it is to change the icon size to suit the menu to your needs.

As a little bonus I also ran some first version of ScummVM. Some seconds are missing though, as the video footage was broken for some reason. Watch video after the Break.

App instalation explained :

We’re building a system to make app installation stupidly easy.

We’re still banging it out, but assuming it all comes together and works (and it should, we’re nearly there) ... you’ll download special apps in a bundle, a .pnd file. Inside that will be a directory structure and so on for the app to live, but users won’t care (unless they unpack it into a directory.)

So an entire app (all its data etc) can be downloaded as one file, dropped onto an SD card. Stick the card into Pandora, and te launcher shows the app in its category. Tap to run and it just works. No unzip, no set up... just download and run. Piece of cake. (You are of course able to unpack it, futz with it, put it in anywhere you want on sD or in NAND, etc.)

We also intend to build the OS in such a way that you can just use Angstron packages if you want to, but thats suboptimal. (I can explain why if you want.)

Anyway, its going to be easier than on the gp2x, which was not really rocket science either

We or I will start writing up some docs on the wiki soon, so folks can get an idea how it wll/does work.

(For devs... it is pretty easy to pack up the files into a .pnd; trivial on linux, a little work on Windows.)

In response to the current timeplans there have been a few comments from EvilDragon and Chip:

EvilDragon

CE shouldn”t take one month — I know the test itself can be done in a couple of days and we”re looking for a company that won”t give us a long wait before they start testing.

Chip

The case manufacturer already has the CAD files, as they are the ones making the CNC prototype as well. That is why we went with CNC (as opposed to other, much faster rapid prototype technologies). Since it is the same factory, we know they have the exact dimensions down. Since it is the same machines in the same facility, there is little chance of (and no excuse for) variations between the prototype and final cases.

These cases are being made in China. As I understand things, the cases will be shipped to TX where everything will be assembled and tested. The completed, tested Pandoras will be shipped to the UK and from there to everybody who ordered one.

EvilDragon

… and to Germany ;\)

Chip

It would be cheaper in some ways (to ship the ones destined for the US to MWeston), much more expensive in others. MWeston has a day job which would preclude him from boxing and labeling hundreds of Pandoras in a reasonable timeframe. I have offered to do it, but Craig declined for what are actually quite good reasons that I”m not sure I can discuss. Rest assured that it is being planned in the most reasonable way possible.

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Blog, Hardware, News, Software Blog, Video, OS, Production

A new blog post from EvilDragon :

Hi!
While we're still discussing about the final keyboard layout and font (it's not as easy as you would think), devs are continuing working on the OS.
At the moment, we think that a generic english keyboard layout would be the best, but regional ones can additionally bought for a few bucks. This is not final yet, but it tends to that direction.

Well, back to the OS.
DJWillis got 3G (UMTS) USB-sticks working in his latest image! He's still tweaking a bit, but there should be a video there, soon. Yep, it means you can go outside and surf anywhere with your Pandora if you got a mobile phone surfing flatrate and a compatible stick.
He also included locales support, so upon release you should have a localized version of the OS on your Pandora.
Meanwhile, cpasjuste started coding a nice menu to run apps in minimal mode (as it would've been too complicated to finish gmenu until the release). The menu already supports PXML Format (which has changed a bit, but we'll release the new specs of it soon).
I'll take a video of it once it is running fine, which should be about next week.
I'll also start coding an app which helps every dev creating PXML files by simply filling in all the required and optional field and click on «Create it!».

And last, but not least, cpasjuste released a small Pandora Toolchain installer which automagically downloads needed files and libraries and installs a toolchain on Linux system, which can be used to compile for the Pandora.
This is not the final and official one yet, however, if somebody wants to see if some of his projects compile or want me to test their programs on a real Pandora, here's his (or her) chance :)

Blog, News, Pandora, Software Blog, OS