Emails To Me


efegea said:
QUOTE
*I've made a GUI will you use it?

Show us a working version at 800*480 and we will take a look, or better yet post it here and let everyone try it.
Are you sure that's a good idea? Releasing the gui for all the people before the pandora is out?

For coding a gui one needs some information :D i.e: will the pandora be running an X11 server? with opengl (es) support?

The window manager will be a little tricky to show to you.

If someone code a gui and you like it and it's choosen as the official for the pandora, will he/she "win" something? I mean will be there a reward for him?



craigix??

EDIT: I have another question:

QUOTE
*I'm a dev can I have a PCB free?

In some cases yes, a lot of devs already know they are getting one. If you think you can be of help with the first version of the firmware and have experience please get in touch when we start the MK1 preorders.



I'm a dev, as you know know I'm coding an interface, and also have a few projects interesting for the Pandora. What I mean with this is that as I'm coding an interface I'll need a real device, doesn't matter if it's only the pcb and spare pieces (at least if I can code for it and run the interface on it)
 
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I don't get what the big deal about Al is. I would much rather hold a device made of C, H, O, and N.
 
MAKE THE SHELL TITANIUM!

Titanium RULEZ!

Also I will give you $20 if you take my pre-order now!

EDIT:

OMG I have a suggestion!

For all the mini USB/Micro SD/other ports make a cover for them!

Or make the Pandora Titanium. Either one would make me a happy camper. :lol:
 
Make a cover for them like on the gp2x, where the first thing you do is rip them all off as they get in the way?
 
Lol, maybe the first thing you did was rip them off, but I like them to keep out dust 'n' stuff :)
 
Not that I really care either way, but I could see where that would be useful, since people are probably going to want to just throw it in their pocket because of the clamshell design.
 
Squidge said:
Make a cover for them like on the gp2x, where the first thing you do is rip them all off as they get in the way?
After nearly 2 Years of heavy GP2X usage, all the rubber covers at my Handheld are still at it's place. ;) I never had trouble with this and I think, the Idea of a protection for all the ports isn't bad. ED& Co. will find a way to do this and I know they solve this ways better than GPH did. :)
 
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For everyone who's interested in the whole "cost of aluminum cases vs. plastic cases" argument. (warning, this might be boring to some)

To do injection molding (i'll shorten it to IM from here on in) of plastic is a different process from IM using metal. To get you more aquainted with how the IM process works, here is a great link. (ah lovely wikipedia).

Two main differences between the two materials are the temperatures that you heat the formed material to, and the materials you need to use to create the molds. For IM of a plastic material, you can get away with an aluminum mold that only requires machining. Since aluminum isn't overly expensive as a mold material and is quite easy to machine, your mold costs will be low. I would estimate that you could probably get molds made for about $1500 USD (these would be known as "tooling" costs). Aluminum is also a lot stronger and more durable than plastic, making it ideal as a mold material.

IM a plastic material will require you to heat it to beyond it's melting point to allow the material to flow into the mold cavity. For plastics, their melting point is anywhere from 200 Celsius to 350 Celsius. Conversely, the melting point of aluminum is 600-700 Celsius depending on what alloy you use.

To answer the question of whether you could use an aluminum mold for making an aluminum case? the answer is no. This is because you don't want to come close to the melting temperature of the mold during IM. Assuming you were making a case out of an alloy that was slightly lower than the mold, you'd still have a soft mold which would gradually warp and weaken over time. Edit: whoops, I just realized something I didn't mention...and kind of embarrassing I didn't initially clue into this (being a Mech. Eng). Melting an aluminum material inside an aluminum mold will make it impossible to remove. You'll be essentially welding the two together! :D

To make an aluminum case, you'll now need a mold material that is harder and stronger than aluminum. It will need to have a melting temperature that is higher than aluminum. These materials are usually steels and are heat treated to make them hard so they will be durable for many IM parts. Heat treated materials are hard and expensive to machine, driving up the costs of the mold (estimate the mold could now be in the $6,000-$10,000 USD range). Aluminum is also a harder material to IM properly (more complicated machinery to operate the molds, higher injection pressures, temperatures, etc.) and so the costs for each part will be more expensive. Instead of one plastic part costing $1-$2 to IM, you could be looking at $10-$25 per part, (or much much more) with low volumes such as Pandora.

Only $10 more per part to make them out of aluminum you say? I'll gladly pay the extra you say. Well, it's not that easy because IM costs are closely tied to quantity. There are minimum costs associated to do business and with low volumes for those who want an aluminum case, that means that it's completely unreasonable to make a few hundred aluminum cases. The case will be way more money than the rest of the unit.

If you want an aluminum case, then buy the Pandora with the plastic case and measure it out and have a machine shop make you an aluminum one. There are a few shops out there that I know that will do it for beer :D (provided you simplify the part and well, have a good repertoire with the machinist/shop) ;) I wonder how long before these mods come out.
 
thank you prairiefire, that was enlightening.
As you mentioned it would be possible to get a machine shop to do it. However, instead of measuring the pandora case I think it would be way easier if the pandora designers would provide usable data (e.g. AutoCAD or whatever the case is designed in) to the community. So I can just give it to a machine shop and they can make a metal case for me.
craigix, MWesten, EvilDragon: May I ask you to provide such data when the unit is completed?
Maybe some would say that they shouldn't give it away as there may be copycats selling Punduras or somehting. In my opinion this may happen but seeing how small the market for the pandora is (compared to e.g. the iPod) I think it isn't too dangerous. I at least wouldn't buy a fakepandora just to save 20 Euro.
 
pandora said:
Lol, maybe the first thing you did was rip them off, but I like them to keep out dust 'n' stuff :)
I didn't rip mine off either - I carefully dismantled my GP2X to get them out in tact. It may be difficult for most people to appreciate, but when using serial all the time, they become *extremely* irritating.
 
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Thanks for explaining that in an easy to follow way for everyone.

One thing though, I'd love to know where we could get a plastic mould for $1500 and an aluminium one for $10,000!

It's more like $25,000+ for just the plastic low volume one and $100,000+ for a high volume one, for aluminium I'd expect hundreds of thousands, but if you know somewhere which can do this for a lot less please let us know, it could save us some serious money.
 
I just stumbled upon this thread after speaking with Evil Dragon. I read his post on gp2x.de and asked him what he meant. He said that only the 100 first units will have aluminium casing.

So that explains that.
 
craigix said:
Thanks for explaining that in an easy to follow way for everyone.

One thing though, I'd love to know where we could get a plastic mould for $1500 and an aluminium one for $10,000!

It's more like $25,000+ for just the plastic low volume one and $100,000+ for a high volume one, for aluminium I'd expect hundreds of thousands, but if you know somewhere which can do this for a lot less please let us know, it could save us some serious money.
haha. Okay, i'll admit that I pulled the aluminum mold cost out of no where. I haven't ever needed to do aluminum die casting before and that was a rough guess. I certainly believe you on your cost of $100,000+. That doesn't surprise me!

As for the $1500, that assumption was comparing the outside of the case with similar sized molds that I have sought and received quotations on, and a guess as to what the inside would look like, assuming it was similar to the inside of the '2X (the company I work for makes custom oceanographic instruments, not consumer electronics, so there is a difference there). Obviously I don't know what the inside of the Pandora looks like, where the ribs/posts/cavities are. Again, your quotation of $25,000 for a plastic mold does sound reasonable, but I don't know who you would be speaking with or the geometry of the entire part. :)

One thing is for certain, molds can be expensive (which is why we try to avoid them and have most of our plastic stuff machined and all of our metal stuff welded, cast or machined)
 
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fusion_power said:
When ALU is so expensive, why even cheapest Mobile phones/mobile Devices have a Metal hull? Mafia-connections of the Companys? :lol:
I can't remember seeing any cheap devices with metal hulls. The cheapest I can think of is the iPod Shuffle, and that's basically just like a tube of aluminium and a tagliatelli-like strand of it that are both cut at certain lengths so they can jam the electronics inside them. Much simpler than a Pandora and much MUCH higher quantity.
 
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craigix said:
It's more like $25,000+ for just the plastic low volume one and $100,000+ for a high volume one, ...
:blink: ...ok, that's expensive. Would it be cheaper if you CNC the molding forms out of a Aluminium-Block and then send this to the Company? :ph34r:

Magnulus said:
I can't remember seeing any cheap devices with metal hulls. The cheapest I can think of is the iPod Shuffle, and that's basically just like a tube of aluminium and a tagliatelli-like strand of it that are both cut at certain lengths so they can jam the electronics inside them. Much simpler than a Pandora and much MUCH higher quantity.
Ok, maybe because of contract-bindings of Mobile phones.
Maybe a ALU case can be done with cold-forming. A big Press, much pressure and you have a nice Alu-case...maybe... maybe not. ^^"""

Hm, why everything always is so complicated...and expencive? :lol:
 
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fusion_power said:
craigix said:
It's more like $25,000+ for just the plastic low volume one and $100,000+ for a high volume one, ...
:blink: ...ok, that's expensive. Would it be cheaper if you CNC the molding forms out of a Aluminium-Block and then send this to the Company? :ph34r:

I don't think they can do that. The molds will have to be compatible with the machine they are using and their engineers would want to be the ones responsible for the design of the mold. This will ensure that the runners leading into the mold are designed properly for their machine, that they can do stress analysis/deflection analysis on the mold cavity for their operating pressures and to make sure that they have control for how the plastic flows into the mold to eliminate air gaps in the plastic and uneven cooling. A lot of their billing comes from the Non Re-Occurring Engineering design they have to do on the tooling, in accordance with the machining.

This would be why my $1500 original estimate was quite low.
 
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I really respect what you guys are doing...

I would like to know what types of investment you are looking for. I'm very serious about this! Please could you PM me so we can discuss this further.
 
BadB said:
I really respect what you guys are doing...

I would like to know what types of investment you are looking for. I'm very serious about this! Please could you PM me so we can discuss this further.
Why not PM craigix?

Or if your really serious, ring him up :)
 
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Squidge said:
BadB said:
I really respect what you guys are doing...

I would like to know what types of investment you are looking for. I'm very serious about this! Please could you PM me so we can discuss this further.
Why not PM craigix?

Or if your really serious, ring him up :)


If you think PMing craigix will work, then I'll do that. I just assumed that he would get a lot of PM's because of the Pandora stuff, and my request would just filter out.

I'm afraid I don't have a direct telephone number to get in contact with him...

Thanks for your reply :)
 
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