Brief Answers to the Big (Pyra) Questions


Yeah it was originally going to be a combo port like the one on your laptop, but they stopped making those. So they have to use a USB 3.0 one with eSATA signals on the 5 extra pins, with an adapter to convert it to an actual eSATA port.

Right - which means both of the USB ports are type A. One is using a USB 3.0 type A (blue?) and the other is using a USB 2.0 type A.

But that still doesn't explain why the plastic trim around the port is such a clean rectangle on one and (purposely) wonky on the other.

It took some searching, but I found a great picture in high enough resolution to show the intentional weirdness of this cutout.
groupshot_back-jpg.28927

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https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/test-the-keymat.80259/page-12#post-1419287

The plastics actually stair-step around the corners.

I'm not saying it's wrong - there was clearly some reason for doing this - it is clearly done on purpose. But why?
 
Looks like a case of dont-cover-any-of-the-port's-metal-rim, but close it up as far as you can as a secondary policy. And if I was so inclined to make an assumption, I'd say, to avoid mechanical conflict, while not being sure, how deep the port will sit. ?
 
As I say, it's the same on the Pandora, although it's a little hard to see in the black plastic there on the left hand unit. Since they're using the same part for the dedicated 2.0 port, this does expose all of the homing flanges that help you get a plug in and out.

That prototypes plastics seem slightly misaligned with those ports to me, but we know these prototypes were lacking the alignment pins to keep the mainboard in place. Whether the retail units will just have ports dead centre of those holes, or the tolerances of the holes has been tightened up at all since then, we'll just have to see.
 
Didn't realize Pyra was chunkier than the Pandora. Is the extra height due to the extra board?
 
If I recall correctly some margins are taken overboard a bit so now there's a lot of free space in the case.
It's the main alteration EvilDragon wants (but I guess that won't happen soon)
 
If I recall correctly some margins are taken overboard a bit so now there's a lot of free space in the case.
It's the main alteration EvilDragon wants (but I guess that won't happen soon)
Great, then it can double as a concealed container for secret stuff.
 
Can i use Bluetooth Devices like "Apple Airpods", my Bluetooth Mouse, and my Bluetooth Keyboard Out of the Box ?? I know that the Keyboard and Mouse works on my Pandora, and GPD Win, but i dotnt know about the Bluetooth Audio..

I have Pyra 28 so its on a quite early state of the Development, and i can remember Audio ditnt work at all yet (or one of the DEV Pyras ditnt have the Speakers installed),

And can i expekt that every USB Device, i had running on Pandora also works whit the Pyra ??, i also have a Fullsize USB Keyboard i would like to use on my Desktop, whit the Pyra as "PC"

I wants to Carry my Pyra like the Pandora in a Sidepocked of my Pants, and i think this ditnt harmd my Pandora much (only the collor of the Case is a bit weared up), on the Pyra, the whole Case is the Color, but the Pyra can be much hotter when running, and it should also be a bit warm even in Suspense Mode,
In Winter, somethimes i use to lay whit clots in bed and read something, but the Pandora is all the time in my Pocket, so its gets pretty warm,
Whill this be a issue for the Pyra??
 
Right - which means both of the USB ports are type A. One is using a USB 3.0 type A (blue?) and the other is using a USB 2.0 type A.

But that still doesn't explain why the plastic trim around the port is such a clean rectangle on one and (purposely) wonky on the other.

It took some searching, but I found a great picture in high enough resolution to show the intentional weirdness of this cutout.
groupshot_back-jpg.28927

page-12

https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/test-the-keymat.80259/page-12#post-1419287

The plastics actually stair-step around the corners.

I'm not saying it's wrong - there was clearly some reason for doing this - it is clearly done on purpose. But why?

was this the 3D printed case?
 
No, the 3d printed parts were off white. This was one of the first attempts to get an intentional dark grey I think.

Can i use Bluetooth Devices like "Apple Airpods", my Bluetooth Mouse, and my Bluetooth Keyboard Out of the Box ?? I know that the Keyboard and Mouse works on my Pandora, and GPD Win, but i dotnt know about the Bluetooth Audio..

I have Pyra 28 so its on a quite early state of the Development, and i can remember Audio ditnt work at all yet (or one of the DEV Pyras ditnt have the Speakers installed),

And can i expekt that every USB Device, i had running on Pandora also works whit the Pyra ??, i also have a Fullsize USB Keyboard i would like to use on my Desktop, whit the Pyra as "PC"
Yes, anything that worked with the Pandora should work with the Pyra. Anything less is a bug, which can be tracked down and fixed I hope. Apple airpods are an unknown to me, so unless they're doing anything evil that stops them using normal bluetooth channels, they ought to work, but I've lost track of how evil Apple are about peripherals these days.

I wants to Carry my Pyra like the Pandora in a Sidepocked of my Pants, and i think this ditnt harmd my Pandora much (only the collor of the Case is a bit weared up), on the Pyra, the whole Case is the Color, but the Pyra can be much hotter when running, and it should also be a bit warm even in Suspense Mode,
In Winter, somethimes i use to lay whit clots in bed and read something, but the Pandora is all the time in my Pocket, so its gets pretty warm,
Whill this be a issue for the Pyra??
I'd expect that once they've got the unit to power down cleanly, it should end up using similar amounts of power as the Pandora. There are more peripherals, but they can mostly be powered down I assume, and I'd expect the CPU to have a similar low power mode as the Pandora. Again, maybe not all that will be present when you first get your units, so you may need to carry on using your battered pandora in your pocket to listen to music or whatever while hunkered down in bed through the cold winter months.
 
Regarding the AirPods I'd suspect it depends on the Bluetooth standard the rely on - if the Pyra's hardware provides the needed functionality or BT protocols. ?
 
The Airpots are also working whit non Apple Units, I have per Exempel a Bluetooth Transmitter that also works whit them,
They also work whit Android Phones,

When I poked carry my Pyra, it’s only in Low Power /Standbye Mode so I don’t have to boot it up every time,
I don’t want to use it under hot conditions..
 
Yeah, that sounds promising then. As far as I can tell, even if both devices support AptX, that can hold a multitude of codecs, so if the airpods can only speak something severely patent encumbered, they might not be supported by debian out of the box, but it'd be pretty dumb of apple not to support something common and less problematic for strictly open source users.

Apparently debian's standing on potentially patent encumbered codecs has changed since I last used it, and for example, mp3 playback should work out of the box without having to install any 'bad' codecs these days. That should help in making things 'just work'.
 
Great, then it can double as a concealed container for secret stuff.

Just avoid the transparent one ;)
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Apparently debian's standing on potentially patent encumbered codecs has changed since I last used it, and for example, mp3 playback should work out of the box without having to install any 'bad' codecs these days. That should help in making things 'just work'.

Will pyra ship with plain debian ? or it will be customized to make it user friendly ( e.g., include codecs, emulators, telephony apps and other stuff to make it work out of the box)?
 
Will pyra ship with plain debian ? or it will be customized to make it user friendly ( e.g., include codecs, emulators, telephony apps and other stuff to make it work out of the box)?
It will be essentially vanilla Debian with a Pyra specific Debian repository that will include any custom things like customized setting, drivers and such on an OS level. I doubt it will be pre-installed with any game emulators from the start, but you can easily download them.


And sure you can download application from the debian repository if you like, but there is only 32GB of space for the OS and your home directory and since the Pyra deals with removable media extensively and the .deb system doesn't deal with having applications installed on removable media well. We're taking an approach to application packaging like we did with the Pandora with it's PND system, the new DBP packaging system allows applications, games and other media to be easily managed on SD cards. Removing an SD card and putting in another allows easy changing and doesn't break any linkages.

We have that repository already working, and some like myself have already played with it on development boards and such.

https://pyra-handheld.com/repo/apps
 
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Can you say something about telephony app in pyra ? I am not aware of any good telephony app in linux.
 
Can you say something about telephony app in pyra ? I am not aware of any good telephony app in linux.
Well I'm not sure either, I've only plated with the OMAP5 development board which has no telephony capabilities, @hns has a few linux based phone projects under his belt and he's the designer of the circuitry, so there maybe some solution he knows.
 
Will pyra ship with plain debian ? or it will be customized to make it user friendly ( e.g., include codecs, emulators, telephony apps and other stuff to make it work out of the box)?
Mostly plain debian, as I understand it presently. We'll be using a specially compiled kernel which includes a few things not upstreamed yet, plus aufs support for dbp packages, but mostly everything else will be stock debian. Things like emulators will probably be dbp files, which you just drop on to a specially named folder on an sd card, and it appears somewhere on the desktop. And telephony apps don't exist yet as far as I know, and may appear in debian first, or may come out of the community, where they could be either (but probably will start out as dbps since they're probably easier to release and test with this community). Codecs as I say mostly seem to be a solved problem, and we won't have to have a codec pack like we did with Zaxxon on our Pandoras, because I can't spot a codec I use missing from the default debian install.

Edit: Looks like I didn't refresh the page recently enough. Oh well, I'll leave it here in case it makes anything clearer.
 
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