New Pandora's Unofficial Roadmap


chuckr

Still Fresh
Joined
Mar 30, 2009
Messages
93
Age
72
Location
Calverton Maryland
I'm VERY impressed with the implementation of the new unofficial roadmap. The problem, as I see it, is that the pandora's development timing is a lot different than your ordinary commercial project would be. The best way to handle this (as is the correct way to handle ANY PR problem) is to be extra forthcoming. The unofficial roadmap (I think that term probably stems from a worry that some folks may try to take all of those "best guesses" as firm promises, and I'm sure there must be crazies like that) does a fine job of giving me a good feel for the present timing of the project.

I have a couple of suggestions, if they sound good, and time exists to do it, maybe you could think about it. First, store the unofficial roadmaps in some sort of source code archive system (like cvs or svn) and allow users to be able to page backwards or forwards, to get a feeling for project momentum. I don't suggest random access, both because all dates don't actually have entries, and making the access just "Page forward/backward" will accomplish the goal of illustrating project history while making the interface simple as possible.

Second idea, regarding the entry for "mass production, testing, shipping", you are clear that the rate will probably increase, but could you give your idea of the most likely rate? I mean, first (week, month, whatever) 5 boards, 2nd period, increase by X percent, all dependent onb these most likely factors. Correct that last statement to reflect reality, and it will give a better feeling for what that subheading represents.

I personally feel that anyone who tries to hold you to your guesses is realistically unstable (for a basically hobbyist project), so I think you folks might be getting a bit too defensive in some ways. One sentence at the top, making this clear, really ought to drive away the deranged well enough, don't you think? Always reading the endless qualifications just feels unnecessarily painful, is all.

I sure am looking forward to using the Pandora, although I might not be using it primarily as a game platform. Might well be the best embedded devel platform I've come across, with suitable storage connected up. What fun I'm going to have! So please don't read these ideas as any sort of criticism of the Pandora project.
 
The Unofficial Roadmap is maintained only by the writers of the Unofficial Blog and has no input from project leaders/devs. The reason why it's called the unofficial roadmap is because it is totally unofficial. There's no reason to store these roadmaps in a versioning system repository - there isn't terribly much time before shipping (based on current estimates), so doing something that involved would have a very high cost to benefit ratio. Lastly, you're asking for a lot of specific information that not even the project devs could give - there's no way the authors of the blog could provide that kind of detail.
 
Well, I don't care too much to argue it, but I'll tell you what's in my mind so you can see what motivated me. First, you said that the shipping date is real soon, but the info on the roadmap gives the impression that even the first units won't be shipped for about 60 days, but it's also unclear about how long it might take until the last unit ships(it says the shipping rate will ramp up, but that gives no clear idea what that might mean in fact, how fast that rampup could be). Using either cvs or svn would be trivially simple, both to save and to extract, so that couldn't be a factor.

About the "lot of information", it could be as simple as "5 units the first week, increasing by 50% compounded weekly", and if you feel that's too much information, then I guess then we're just not agreeing. All the rest of my comments don't ask for anything whatsoever, so I can't figure out what else might have motivated your comments.

Anyhow, I didn 't implement that page, so I have no right to "require" any changes, but I still think that both using a limited history, and making the ramp up of the shipping rate clearer, are easily accomplished, useful ideas. I was just so happy about that Roadmap showibng up....
 
chuckr said:
Always reading the endless qualifications just feels unnecessarily painful, is all.

Agreed 100%, they're as painful to type as they are to read. :D What's more painful though, is the result of not doing this. Once a little factoid or a date gets into circulation, it starts getting posted as fact. Someone mentions it, ten people react to it as if it's official, then a fire has to be put out. I'm trying to minimise this by ramming the "unofficial" point home constantly. There will still be people who don't get it, and will complain about the dates being wrong. Having said that, I think some of my wording is pretty clunky and I plan to tidy it up.

Revision history: I did put some thought into it after Monk suggested something similar. The blog doesn't allow for such a feature, and setting up + hosting it somewhere else wasn't really viable. For the sake of my free time I decided to leave it at highlighting the most recent changes. I'm also noting start/finish dates against each item on the list.

More detailed facts: Vorporeal said it all really. I've already gone waaay out on a limb by estimating completion dates. I want to keep all the other information in the roadmap as solid and well sourced as possible. I have to take responsibility for what I post, so I don't want to pad it out with theoretical numbers. There were some posts from ED several months back regarding the production rate, but given the fluid nature of the project I don't know if it's a good idea to cite old sources. If we get new info though, I will add it by all means.

Thanks for your comments, feedback is always good. :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here, I'll toss my random estimates out too.

I'm assuming that delivery will be over a month after production finishes for a board.

And I have no idea whether that would be delivery to your door, or just to the US for assembly. ;)

But now you have a big chart to spread around too! :D

pandorapcbproduction.png
 
Gruso said:
Sweet graph. I wonder how long before someone quotes it as official. :D
OOOOHH!! Look at the official info I found!!! I don't know what it means but I think it comes from one of the Pandora devs! What do you think about it?
officiallyunofficialgra.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:
gp2.eXe said:
Gruso said:
Sweet graph. I wonder how long before someone quotes it as official. :D
OOOOHH!! Look at the official info I found!!! I don't know what it means but I think it comes from one of the Pandora devs! What do you think about it?
officiallyunofficialgra.png
wow, sweet info! it looks official! like, as in, from craig! i'm quoting this for future generations! because of its officialness! (wow i can't believe that was actually a word...)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It would be stupid, if the picture wasn't the point with the quotes...
*sighs*
B!
 
If the info was truly official and from Craig wouldn’t we all then be officially confused with at least 2 more months worth of official questions? Great work on the unofficial site by the way it’s a great resource and (I’m going to be shot for saying this) one we really shouldn’t be needing yet here we are. It’s also nice to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.. fingers crossed (again).

Keep up the good work (I mean that totally unofficially or is it toally officially .. I don’t know now… )
 
chuckr said:
I have a couple of suggestions, if they sound good, and time exists to do it, maybe you could think about it. First, store the unofficial roadmaps in some sort of source code archive system (like cvs or svn) and allow users to be able to page backwards or forwards, to get a feeling for project momentum. I don't suggest random access, both because all dates don't actually have entries, and making the access just "Page forward/backward" will accomplish the goal of illustrating project history while making the interface simple as possible.
Ask and ye shall receive! (in my infinite spare time...)
http://www.paireepinart.com/pandora/roadmap/

Ask me again tomorrow and I'll add a feature so it will let you scroll through pages that have updated rather than a page each day. Click the Previous Day / Next Day links to scroll through the archive, and click the Raw Scrape link in case my prettifying parsing breaks at some point. The Raw Scrape versions will load much slower though.

It's pretty simplistic and it just archives the page every day (provided someone visits the archive at least once a day... I haven't set up a cron or anything to keep it up to date so it only scrapes the site if it's missing the scrape for that day and someone requests it.)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just throw up the blog post on a Git server, then everything should happen automatically (aka it'd be possible to track changes very very easily and things like RSSing the changes would be possible).
Maybe if I get bored some time in the future, I'll do it (Cron + bare git folder + Apache + gitweb = all you need).
 
Vorporeal said:
... there isn't terribly much time before shipping (based on current estimates), so doing something that involved would have a very high cost to benefit ratio. ...

You seem to forget, the Pandora was always going to ship in Two Months™.

I think a version repository sounds like a good idea.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
B-ZaR said:
Ooh, by that graph the deliveries start way before august 15th. When can I expect mine? :)

Beats me. Lets just say that those are PCB deliveries to the US, so the first 105 (or however many) PCBs are "on their way" to the US sometime this month. ;)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top