Quotes Thread For The Blog


EvilDragon said:
Well, never used Bluetooth for anything, so I thought I'd just try it out.

I got a mobile phone with Windows Mobile 6.5 and my Pandora.

Enabled Bluetooth on both. The Pandora discovered the phone (as phone) and I could connect to it and send files over. No prob with that.

BUT as a lot of you will probably want to use the phone as modem, I'd like to try that out.
The Pandora can discover and use a variety of Bluetooth device. I can select what it should discover in a dropdown menu (usually, it's set to all devices).
The devices it can use seem to be:
  • Input Devices (mice, keyboards, ...)
  • Headphones, headsets and other audio devices
  • Phone
  • Modem
  • Computer
  • Network
  • Camera
  • Printer

I guess what I would need for an internet connection would be either modem or network. But my phone says it's a phone - and doesn't seem to offer internet to the Pandora.

Now my question:
Could it be that Windows Mobile 6.5 doesn't offer that? Can't I use that phone as modem for internet access?
The WM6.5 interface is the most cluttered I've ever seen (well, maybe except for Vista), so I have no idea if I am doing something wron here or if this is even possible.

The Pandora Bluetooth function seems a lot more easy and logical for me ;)

So, anyone who can help me there?
EvilDragon said:
Aaah, first step: Found the setting for Internet sharing in my WM6.5 mobile phone.
It's not where you would expect it (in the Bluetooth settings dialogue), but in Program Files.
Now, let's try more :)
EvilDragon said:
Tor said:
Yeah, it could be a DUN or PAN issue, as winmo seems to prefer PAN these days and Linux-based systems are often DUN-oriented. The Nokia tablets, for example, supported DUN out of the box but PAN had to be hacked in by the users.

Okay, my phone says it's PAN, that might explain it. I still can only find it as phone... need to dive in more.

BTW: Software I'm using on the Pandora is: GNOME Bluetooth Properties 2.28.6 and Network Manager.
wuwtk said:
Since the other threads are becoming more offtopic and cumbersome ive decided to start a new thread for this.
So I decided to do some test on my Droid as for heating and the processor. I know that it uses a 600mhz cortex a8 processor underclocked to 550mhz, which I believe is extremely similar to the Pandora. So I have my phone rooted and using setcpu app for overclocking and tempmonitor to keep an eye on the temperatures ive decided to see how hot the cpu can get so at least we can get a basic idea of what overclocking can do to the processor. Recently Quake 3 was ported to the Droid so i picked this as my test. And also sorry if this does not help at all when it comes to the overclocking issue in any way. Just doing anything i can do to at least try and help.

At normal temperatures at 600mhz it was at steady 31C.
After playing Quake 3 for about 10 minutes it at 36C.

Overclocked to 800mhz it was hovering around 31-32C idle.
Overclocked to 800mhz while playing Quake 3 for about 10 mins was at 37C.

Overclocked to 1000mhz it was at 33-35C idle.
Overclocked to 1000mhz while playing quake 3 it was at 40C.

At 1000mhz everything ran perfectly fine with no crashing, although only running for about 10 mins, but the keyboard and the back started to become very warm.

I know that this is a very informal test and may not help this subject at all, but i figured id try. If anybody wants me to test anything else for longer periods of time or different things in general, please tell me and i will try within reason.
 
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mindlord said:
My final report on Midori

It's a fine browser, still not as feature complete as I'd like. The crashing issues have completely dissappeared, but so did the ad-blocking functionality. It's configured and turned on, but doesn't work. I'm probably to blame there and I should probably delete my .midori directory and re-configure. I've commited myself to using it over Firefox for at least a month now that it doesn't crash. The speed is just too nice to pass up on. I don't think I have much else to report other than that, Pandora users should be happy overall.
emil10001 said:
In an effort to be useful, I've posted a couple of things here.
Apps(tweet) said:
"New: PicoDrive 1.0 - Megadrive / Genesis / SMS / 32X / Mega CD / Sega C.."
notaz said:
^ Why the hell did he post this, it's far from finished and is unlikely to be done for release. And surely I won't give it inconsistent 1.0 version number..
"New: PrBoom (Doom interpreter) 1.0 - Plays Doom1, Doom2 and mods."
"New: Giana Returns 1.0 - Pandora port of the remake of the C64 classic."
EvilDragon said:
Tor said:
I expect my USB-Ethernet dongle to work, as it works fine on both x86 and Beagleboard. Driver is in the standard kernel.org kernel. That should keep me going until wi-fi gets good. In the other thread I asked about a mailing list for contributing hackers, I'll ask it here too in case it gets overlooked in either long thread! :)
That does work. Some devs (like vimacs) do use that for developing, as they don't have a breakout box ;)
skeezix said:
I've got Kronos running nicely (Magnetic Scrolls so far, with pics) on the Pandora dev unit. Looks really sharp :) I'm upsizing the fonts, try to make things more easily readable on such a dense display.

Shoudl get Infocom/ZMachine going soon.

I also got BattleJewels running _very_ nicely. A good day :)

Want pics to help keep away the blues?

jeff
skeezix said:
Just did some cleanup .. can actually play Magnetic Scrolls nicely now; I don't have any 'cheats' in there yet, but wil be adding over time the automapper, note taking pad, word suggestions, maybe map d-pad to movement and various goodies like that. For now, just getting the games to work like they should :)

Lets see if I can have a few minutes to do a shakycam of a couple things .. (yay for video watching _text_ games ;)

jeff
skeezix said:
Posted crappy video here :)

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52240-moar-vids-mplayer-video-kronos-text-advent-battlejewels-action-puzzler-etc/

jeff
Mofokubik said:
I had a long talk last night with a former TI engineer. I asked him about overclocking and there wasn't much he told me that wasn't already discussed on these boards somewhere. From what I understand, you can generally push the cpu 30% past it's limit as long as you keep it cool enough. Not all cpus may have a die capable of handling 800mhz, this very limit of 600mhz is to have a consistent product since maybe 1 out of 500 cpus may fail in the process of overclocking. So if I understand correctly, they set the speed limit based on the overall quality of the product, so that it can be reliable enough to manufacture 1000s at a time and still back them up with a warranty. Going past this limit may not damage your product, but if it does it's your fault.

Also, i'm not sure if this is useful, but I found it interesting none-the-less:

http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/lit/getliterature.tsp?literatureNumber=sprz172f&fileType=pdf

under "important notice"

TI warrants performance of it's hardware products to the specifications applicable at the time of sale in accordance with TI's standard warranty. Testing and other quality control techiques are used to the extent TI deems necessary to support this warranty. Except where mandated by government requirements, testing of all parameters of each products is not necessarily performed. TI assumes no liability for applications assistance or customer product design. Customers are responsible for their products and applications using TI components... etc..
 
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EvilDragon said:
mindlord said:
Khan said:
By the way, it has been stated that cases production starts (presumably) on Monday so... are we waiting for an initial 1000 or 2000 cases shipping in order to speed up the process (as planned previously) or do we have to wait until the whole 10000 are finished?
You misread, Production of another sample to check the silk screening starts Monday. Full-tilt mass production won't start until the decide to scrap the silkscreening altogether or keep it like it is on the sample.

Errmm... nope? Full production will probably start on Monday, as I wrote down in the blog. If they manage to present us a nice picture of a silkscreen till then, we'll go for a case without at first.
Well, they might even be able to show us a picture during production, as the silkscreen is applied after that :)
 
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(Skeezix) Moar Vids! Mplayer (Video), Kronos (Text Advent), Battlejewels (Action Puzzler), etc.
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52240-moar-vids-mplayer-video-kronos-text-advent-battlejewels-action-puzzler-etc/
EvilDragon said:
And in fact, we have Gnome MPlayer GUI (which I use), but skeezix is a console man :D
Good thing you can do both with the Panda :)

I also do a lot using the console, but you don't have to :)
(Appstore betatesting)
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52232-appstore/

(forum lag)
EvilDragon said:
I'm pretty sure it's related to IPB... sometimes, it's only the GP32x boards that are slow, my other sites work fine.
Sometimes it's the whole server.

I just found out in the admin account that there are regular jobs that clean up the database, etc. of gp32x.de.

Might be related to that.
Apps(tweet) said:
"New: Super Tux 1.0 - Platform game starring the Linux Penguin. Mario st.."
"New: Wizzley 1.0 - RPG game."
"New: Ice 1.0 - Ice is an app utility."
(skeezix on the community blog about how overclocking works right now)
It’s in the menu.. System -> Set CPU Speed

it pops up a slider and you can pick a value from very low to very high and hit OK

it then pops up a warning confirmation box if you’re going higher than 600

(this is current behavior in our Dev firmwares)

jeff
skeezix said:
We do have vlc working already btw

720p is too much for sw decode at 500mhz. Even kranking up the clock might not handle it to well, but I didn't try from ramdisk (to eliminate sd latencies?)

I ran mplayer from cmdline since current file association is to totem, a nicer GUI but performs not as well. Also, I'm an old school commandline junkie :)

battlejewels is currently same as Wiz one. I will be addin head to head network, game lobby, etc. Having fun hacking on Kronos when I get a moment, but got lots of pnd and pxml fixups to do in the next week :)

jeffPhone

Vielen Dank, Lafazar :)
 
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Habe gerade nochmal mit Michael drüber gesprochen:
Die Anbindung des WiFi-Moduls an den OMAP sind einfache SDIO-Verbindungen, da kann nicht viel falsch sein.
Die Verbindung hält sich exakt an die vorgegeben Spezifikationen der Hersteller.

Er hat auch schon eine teure, sehr gut funktionierende externe Antenne drangehängt, diese führt zu den gleichen Problemen, es handelt sich hier also nicht um ein Antennenproblem :)

Exophase (der Coder hinter gpsp) vermutet hier in den fallengelassenen Paketen übrigens TimeOuts:
Das WiFi-Modul empfängt ja mit voller Geschwindigkeit, kann die Pakete aber nicht in vollem Tempo an den OMAP übertragen, da die Verbindung zu langsam ist.
Das Modul hat einen Timeout: Wenn ein Paket zu lange braucht, wird es gedropped. Und das passiert hier wohl im Moment.

Ich kann mich auch an die Entwicklung von DJWillis erinnern: Er hatte am Anfang massiv Probleme mit dem Treiber, da er Einstellungen wie Timeout, etc. nicht vornehmen konnte.
Kaum hatte er diese vornehmen können, ging WiFi. Langsam, aber es ging.

Aber auch beim längsten TimeOut gibt es bei solch einer Datenflut natürlich irgendwann einen Überlauf: WiFi läßt sich nicht soweit runterfahren, wie die SDIO-Leitung momentan läuft.
Dadurch kommt es zwangsläufig bei einigen Paketen zum TimeOut - denn der Bus ist quasi verstopft.

http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?p=114646#p114646

EvilDragon roughly translated said:
I just spoke with MWeston about this [WiFi/SDIO-Problem]:
The WiFi module is connected by simple SDIO connections to the OMAP, there is not much that can be wrong there.
The connection follows the manufacturer specifications exactly.

He also has connected an expensive, very good external antenna, which leads to the same problems, so it is not an antenna problem :)

Exophase (the coder behind gpsp) assumes timeouts to be the reason for the dropped packets:
The WiFi module receives full speed, but cannot transmit the packets full speed to the OMAP since the connection is too slow.
The module has a timeout: If a packet takes to long, it is dropped. And that's what's probably happening at the moment.

I remember the development by DJWillis: He had massive problems with the driver since he could not set things like timeout etc. As soon as he could do that, WiFi worked. Slow, but it worked.

But even with the longest timeout there is an overflow eventually: WiFi cannot be slowed down to how the SDIO channel currently runs. Therefore some packets will invariably experience timeout - since the bus is stuffed.
 
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Apps(tweet) said:
"New: PicoDrive 1.0 - Megadrive / Genesis / SMS / 32X / Mega CD / Sega CD"
Why the hell did he post this, it's far from finished and is unlikely to be done for release. And surely I won't give it inconsistent 1.0 version number..
 
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ED via Twitter said:
Geez. I hate ALSA. The settings are so complicated. Anyways, Software mixer and multiple audiostreams from different apps are now working :D
 
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skeezix said:
wermy said:
Never heard of battle jewels -- looks fun! I noticed in the video it said it was the demo version; is this a pay-for app?
traditionally I make it freeware, though it has been for sale on some platforms. I'm figuring to go free on pandora but am tempted to charge $5 or something for multiplayer for the hosting, lobby etc. Or maybe free all the way, dunno :)

kronos is gpl freeware
Skeezix on Community Blog said:
I will be adding multiplayer (note: to Kronos)
skeezix said:
Pickle has a bunch of Dosbox videos up on his youtube page.

I need to find my WC2 actual CD and figure out how to get it happy in Dosbox; my current one is demanding the CD key and a couple WC2cracks I found just kill it :) (I actually own 2 or 3 WC2 CDs.. pre-BNet and BNet edition!)

I do have working Master of Magic, Civ 1, Wizardry 7, and Eye of the Beholder 1, if you want me to take 30s run through each of those.

jeff
(Pandora binaries on N900?)
skeezix said:
yeah, most of your problems would be 1) lib differences (one firmware having libs the other doesn't) or 2) pandora-specific behaviour (ie: a pnd file, you could unpack to get the bin, or add libpnd to the n900 :) but if the binary is opening up the pandora nub, you're out of luck.

A lot of files should be reasonably interchangable.

jeff
(Pandora signature banners)
Jourdy288 said:
2ajaveu.jpg
Code:
[url="http://www.openpandora.org"][ATTACH=full]6563[/ATTACH][/url]
KodeIn said:
main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=33&g2_serialNumber=1.png
Code:
[url="http://www.openpandora.org"][ATTACH=full]6565[/ATTACH][/url]
Craig(tweet) said:
It looks like [...] and at least some of the Pandora consoles will be assembled in the UK.
(Video decoding through DSP)
EvilDragon said:
Yep, you can be sure it will happen, no worries.
The stuff exists, it just takes time to implement it.

I'd say the Pandora OS will enhance QUITE a lot during the next few months :)
ED(tweet) said:
Tweaked ALSA a bit more. notaz fixed battery plugin (now completely working) and keymapping in console. Keymapping fully working!
 

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EvilDragon said:
peca said:
EvilDragon said:
Should be 8 LEDs:
From left to right: SD1, SD2, BT, Wifi (last too might be other way round, forgot :D ), two empty spots then Charge and Power :)
LEDs 7 and 8 are populated on the board? What colours are they please? :)

Not populated, but you CAN populate them.
I thought you meant LED connections above, not actual LEDs populated, sorry about that :)
 
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(DaveC) Launcher Gui Concept - Fast Loading Simple To Use
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52283-launcher-gui-concept-fast-loading-simple-to-use/

torpor said:
For sure, the Pandora is going to be a Music-making workstation BEAST!!! I've gotten MIDI working just fine (on Beagleboard/Touchbook), and I just use standard old USB-MIDI class-compatible cables (See EBay), and I also have all of the Korg Nano- (Keys/Pads/Control) products plugged into my Beagle - this works fine as well, as Korg smartly implemented them as standard MIDI class-compliant devices. As soon as I get my Pandora I'll be smoothing everything out and demo'ing the Pandora connected to the Korg Nano-* controllers, running seq24 and maybe the odd soft-synth or three .. ;)

So stay tuned!

Also, there is definitely going to be a lot of attention on this aspect of things - I've heard from a lot of very cool people in the underground portable music-making machines scene, and for instance the GameBoy Music Club guys (here in Vienna) as well as the lsdj/littlepiggy/ds-tracker developers are all very interested in the Pandora - alas we won't see much progress until the Pandora is actually out there in the right hands, but I assure you that the box is going to be very open for music-making .. ;)
EvilDragon said:
WizardStan said:
EvilDragon said:
The company does want an incredible high amount (about 100USD per unit, AFAIR) just for assembling.
That would be a whopping 400.000 USD!
Reality check? Shouldn't this have been something you figured out months ago, when it was first suggested that the factory offered an assembly floor? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad a backup plan came together (seemingly) so quickly, but what if there hadn't been such an option? :eek:
Problem was: The company didn't want to make a quote as long as they didn't know how much work it was. Then they got the documents from Michael quite a few weeks ago and needed up until now to make the quotes.
Nothing bad, just a lot more hard work for us ;)
EvilDragon said:
kmob said:
So what's the status of the non-case, non-board items needed to assemble the Pandora (screens, speakers, LCD cables, etc etc)? Have they been shipped from Texas (I think we were told they all were all ready and waiting in Texas) to the UK? If not, when will they be shipped?

Given the potential issue with shipping delays and customs problems combined with the terrible luck OP has had so to date it might be an idea to get those shipped from Texas ASAP!
They will most probably be shipped together with the populated boards, as we couldn't do anything with them before that anyways.
(Location of assembly in the UK)
craigix said:
No, I own the old Village hall. So it will be done there. If anything we think this will speed things up.
(OS update handling)
EvilDragon said:
For the beginning, we'll have full flashs until things are smooth :)

Then we'll setup a repo server where tested and working packages are in. They can be updated when you're online.

Maybe we'll even setup a testing repo where you can get a more buggy but bleeding edge OS (and help us report bugs :) )
 
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RE: March 22nd uk parts arrival date
craigix said:
It 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.

confimed by EvilDragon via twitter
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! :)
 
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EvilDragon on german forum said:
Richtig!
Jetzt geht alles los.

Evtl. kommen die Gehäuse auch früher in UK an, aber wir MÜSSEN eine Pufferzone einbauen.
Gibt keinen Sinn, wenn wir alle nach UK fliegen (wir und andere Helfer) und dann liegts noch in der Post ;)

Craig besorgt alles benötigte für den professionellen Zusammenbau, Michael kümmert sich um die Teile, Fatih um die Gehäuse, ich um das OS.

Und am 22. / 23. landet alles zusammen (die Teile, das OS-Image und wir :D ) in UK - und dann gehts rund.

Und wer meint, ich würde ne Woche danach Urlaub machen... schön wärs.
Das wird Knochenarbeit. Wir wollen ca. 12 Stunden pro Tag zusammenbauen.
Ich werde auch öfters pendeln müssen, da ich hier in Deutschland schließlich auch anderes zu tun habe (meine Zeit als Dozent in diesem Semester bricht in München wieder an, da darf ich also einmal wöchentlich hin, Eishockey (Live-Bildmischung) hab ich auch, da kommen jetzt die Play-Offs...)

Ein Zuckerschlecken wirds bestimmt nicht, aber dann bestimmt doch wieder schön :)
http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?p=115139#p115139

EvilDragon roughly translated said:
Right!
Now everything starts.

Maybe the cases arrive earlier at the UK, but we HAVE TO add a time buffer.
It doesn't make sense for all of us to fly to UK (we and the other helpers) if [the cases] are still with the post ;)

Craig gets everything necessary for a professional assembly, Michael looks after the parts, Fatih after the cases, myself after the OS.

And on the 22./23. everything (the parts, the OS-image and we :D ) land in UK - and then it's on.

And to whoever thinks I would do a vacation the week afterwards... I wish.
This will be back-breaking work. We plan to assemble 12 hours a day.
Also I will have to commute often, since I have other things to do here in Germany (my time as a tutor this semester begins in Munich, I have to go there once a week, I also have [to do] ice hockey (live image composition) and now the play-offs start...)

This will definitely be no picnic, but all will be good again. :)
 
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(Pickle) Pandora Sgx Driver Benchmarks
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52297-pandora-sgx-driver-benchmarks/
skeezix said:
Yeah Q3 actually plays pretty well, and it's pretty smooth and consistent. I'm no good at guessing but it felt about 30fps with a bunch of bots killing me when I tried it, but no clue. I was happy to see it running :)

also not sure which gles<->gl impact.. Probably an adapter whci would take off some gps? A pure gles rewrite would speed up, but be work :)

jeff
notaz said:
darkblu said:
niiice!

would a kind soul provide the outputs from eglQueryString(EGL_EXTENSIONS) and glGetString(GL_EXTENSIONS) with the new drivers, please?
My first ever *gl program outputs:
Code:
display: 0x1
eglInitialize 1, 1.4
EGL_VENDOR: Imagination Technologies
EGL_VERSION: 1.4 build 1.4.14.2514
EGL_EXTENSIONS: EGL_KHR_image EGL_KHR_image_base EGL_KHR_gl_texture_2D_image
  EGL_KHR_gl_texture_cubemap_image EGL_KHR_gl_renderbuffer_image
  EGL_KHR_vg_parent_image EGL_IMG_context_priority 
EGL_CLIENT_APIS: OpenGL_ES OpenVG
Pickle said:
Heres the es 1.1 bits:
Code:
GL_VENDOR: Imagination Technologies
GL_RENDERER: PowerVR SGX 530
GL_VERSION: OpenGL ES-CM 1.1
GL_EXTENSIONS: GL_OES_byte_coordinates GL_OES_fixed_point GL_OES_single_precision GL_OES_matrix_get GL_OES_read_format GL_OES_compressed_paletted_texture GL_OES_point_sprite GL_OES_point_size_array GL_OES_matrix_palette GL_OES_draw_texture GL_OES_query_matrix GL_OES_texture_env_crossbar GL_OES_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_OES_texture_cube_map GL_OES_blend_subtract GL_OES_blend_func_separate GL_OES_blend_equation_separate GL_OES_stencil_wrap GL_OES_extended_matrix_palette GL_OES_framebuffer_object GL_OES_rgb8_rgba8 GL_OES_depth24 GL_OES_stencil8 GL_OES_compressed_ETC1_RGB8_texture GL_OES_mapbuffer GL_OES_EGL_image GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays GL_OES_required_internalformat GL_IMG_read_format GL_IMG_texture_compression_pvrtc GL_IMG_texture_format_BGRA8888 GL_EXT_texture_format_BGRA8888 GL_IMG_texture_stream GL_IMG_vertex_program  EXT_texture_env_add

craigix said:
These messages about 'but why didn't you know' 'this is bad management' 'you don't know about manufacturing' is actually your own naivety about the industry.

We were originally estimated a far far lower figure for assembling the units which inexplicably ballooned to over double with no real explanation. Maybe they just don't have time to assemble the units. Maybe they don't want to. Maybe there is more money elsewhere.

This does happen in this industry for any of the above and more reasons.

Who really knows - what I do know though is that it should have always been done here. It makes so much more sense and gives us so much more control.

The whole team is looking forward to this now.
craigix said:
The whole team is tired of these posts by armchair project managers.

If you want to lecture us in making a handheld please put your cards on the table and let us know of your own amazing inventions which you have brought to market before getting all high and mighty here.

You might also want to consider some of the consoles which never made it to market even with TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS of investment, yet here we are managing on a tiny budget with no debts.
[quote name"ED(tweet)"]"Cool. Just ported a PyGame-Game on the Pandora. Using a text editor, I could make changes and try them directly on the unit. No PC needed!"
"I uploaded a YouTube video -- Pandora: Things to to when you're NOT playing http://youtu.be/T1COcy40b_c?a"
"I uploaded a YouTube video -- Pandora Quickie: Changes themes in the OS http://youtu.be/tSjV9cRAKfM?a"
"Internet Video edited and ready. Will render and upload it tomorrow though, want to go home now and grab some food :) "
"I uploaded a YouTube video -- Pandora: Developing on-the-go with PyGame http://youtu.be/1hYv54euXVQ?a"[/quote]
(Umlauts and accents)
EvilDragon said:
Caine said:
ED, I think you should remap that compose key. Shift + Return is a quite common key combination.
Not really a big deal, as long as you don't press a modifier key ('"´`) directly afterwards, the compose is ignored.
If it does indeed make problems, remapping is easy (just one config file), so I could change that within seconds :)
 
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Nub as mouse:

EvilDragon said:
paddy said:
One question ,can i use one of the anolog nubs for mouse movement
when in OS instead of the touch screen?

Yes, you can do so. L and R are the mouse buttons then :)
 
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Hot off the presses;

MWeston said:
Well then, prepare to be disappointed. 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.

From this thread.
 
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EvilDragon said:
Mithrildor said:
ED: I found something really, really weird. @4:38, the % of charged goes down from 68% to 67%. But the timer goes up instead, it goes from 6:32 estimated time left to 6:37. Is this a bug or is looking at the CPU usage too?

EDIT: Just saw that after AbiWord it goes even up to 6:47

Could you explain this please
Sure. You were absolutely right - the remaining time changes according to the actual usage.
If you close the lid (which turns off the LCD), it even goes up to 18 - 20 hours.

I was running an emulator before the video which needed a bit more power. Therefore, it corrected itself when the CPU usage went down again.

Has been pretty accurate for me :) It said 45 minutes left yesterday night while working on it, and after about 43 minutes, the battery was empty.
Alpha2 said:
ED, just wondering how many lines of code were actually needed to get the game running? Will all Pygame projects really be so easy to port?

Also, The provided themes a re awesome, whie you were switching between Windows look alikes I was thinking "If there's a Mac look alike I'm going to laugh my ass off" 10 seconds later I needed some glue. I wonder though what's the process for changing desk top images? I would imagine there are dozens of pictures in already the OS, but if the Nand isn't something you want "Joe Average" to mess around with will it still be possible to place your own personal images as the desktop background?
It depends :)
I put Snowball on the card and ran it. No prob, worked fine without any tweakings.

Barbie Seahorse Adventure needed more work:
First, you can't do your own button configuration in-game (you can do so in Snowball), so you need to change that in the code.
Also, it was meant to run 640x480, so I had to change one parameter. That part of the game is well coded, so it worked out of the box just changing the resolutions.

After changing those two things, it was fully playable - but slooow.
Unfortunately, the game engine is VERY unoptimized (it even says in the sourcecode that it's unoptimized ;) ). It needs a lot of CPU power (I know it ran on the gp2x with about 1 frame per second).
As I can't code at all, I couldn't change the game engine, just sped up the movement of all the sprites.
This makes it a bit more choppier, but still playable.

If someone can optimize the engine, that would rock.

Anyways, back to topic:
PyGame games work out of the box, unless they want some non-Pandora-nice resolution (1024x768 :D ) or OpenGL.

I want to wrap up more games, so I guess when the Pandora launches, you'll have a lot of classic pygame retro-like-games ready :D
EvilDragon said:
rabidpoobear said:
But then again I usually run the games windowed and at a fixed aspect ratio so I don't have to deal with the aspect ratio thing.
Works pretty well on the Pandora. A 640x480 pygame screen on the Pandora looked nice and what centered.
Looks like it always centers the screen. here :)
(silkscreening)
ED on German board said:
Warum wir das erst jetzt wissen? Tja, weil wir von den Chinesen dadurch, dass wir jetzt in der Massenproduktion sind, eine Roadmap erhalten haben (daher kennen wir ja auch den 22. März als Datum).
Why do we know it only now, you ask? Well, we got a roadmap from the factory, because the cases are in mass production now(hence we know the 22nd as date).

Mit Bedruckung war die RoadMap deutlich länger... vorher haben sie uns das nicht gesagt (warum auch... *kopfschüttel*) :)
The roadmap with silkscreening included would have been much longer... they didn't tell us about it before.
-------------------------------
Ich nagel mich auf nichts fest, aber ich gehe stark von aus, dass wir die in Zukunft bedrucken werden.
In so großen Mengen sind Bedruckungen immer günstig :)
I won't commit myself, but I assume we'll apply silkscreening in the future. Printing in large quantities is cheap.
(PND related directory structure)
EvilDragon said:
Wait a second? WHAT are you all talking about?

The good thing about .PNDs is, that you put them all into one subdirectory and they keep their config files, etc. elsewhere.
That way, you don't need to install anything.

Want to delete the config (because you messed it up, maybe)? Then simply delete the folder of the app in the appdata directory.
Want to delete the app for a while but keep the config? Then delete the PND and keep the folder in the appdata directory.

It's that easy.

You want to have the datafiles and configs in the SAME directory as the PNDs?
Heck, if I have 50 PNDs in my menu directory, I surely don't want to have 50 config files in this directory... THAT would be messy and cluttered.
That would like putting ALL games and configs into ONE directory (without subdirectories)... is anyone doing that on the WIZ or GP2X??

This is no way anything like a DLL hell, as the app will have ALL THE DATA NEEDED in it's PND! (except for datafiles like Quake, etc. which we can't offer).

So if you delete the appfolder, the program won't stop working, it would just be as if you had just installed it fresh on the SD card.

You can simply download an app from the appstore, save it to the PND-folder - and run it. It works, I tried it. It appears instantly. And it does save its config files in the appdata-directory.

Here's how it works:
i.e. if you download SuperTux, you download the SuperTux.pnd and place it in the menu or the desktop folder. It will automatically appear in the menu or on the desktop.
You run it and change the configuration (button config, etc.).
It then creates a folder named "SuperTux" within the appdata directory. That's where your savedata is in.

Now, somebody created new maps you want to try out. Simply place them within the SuperTux-Directory in the appdata-Dir and run it. It works.
You can even create your own maps within that directory. Made a mistake and the maps don't work? Well, simply delete them and the original ones will be back, as they are stored within the .PND.

Easy.

So, of COURSE we need multiple directories. It's not like on the GP2X or WIZ. You don't EXTRACT PNDs. You simply COPY them onto the card and run them (you could compare it to placing ZIP-files on the WIZ or GP2X without extracting them).
But as config files (and datafiles for games like Quake) need to be put somewhere, they are being put into a subdirectory in the appdata folder. With a name so you know where you can find it.
The user doesn't even have to create the subdirectories - they will be created when you run a game. So as long as you don't need any special game data (which should be the case for 99% of all games), you don't have to do anything except for copying that PND file onto your SD Card.
And for emulators... well, it's up to the emulator dev where he allows your rom path. Most of them allow any path on the SD, so you don't need to use the appdata dir for that. But the emulator will save its config there.

The config or datafiles should NOT be put into the PND. If anything goes wrong, you'd need to redownload the PND. Here all you need to do is simply remove the folder in the appdata directory and restart the game. It couldn't be more simple.


So simply said, the directory structure is the following:

/pandora/menu/SuperTux.pnd
/pandora/menu/Quake.pnd
/pandora/desktop/SuperMarioWar.pnd

Then there will be automatic data dirs:
/pandora/appdata/SuperTux
/pandora/appdata/Quake
/pandora/appdata/SuperMarioWar

For SuperTux and SuperMarioWar (which are complete games), you don't need to worry about anything. They simply save their config file there. Delete the directory to restore the default settings. That's it.
For Quake, you place the datafiles into /pandora/appdata/Quake/
That's it.

It's not so hard, is it?

If anyone has any better ideas how to handle it, let me know. We thought A LOT about it.
EvilDragon said:
craigix said:
I also think the files should be in the same folder.

I hate the thought of this 'dll hell' of appdata.
What DLL hell? There are clean subdirectories for each PND you have on your card within the appdata directory.
You could even delete the whole appdata directory and the PNDs you have installed would simply run with their default settings and recreate their appdata/*-folder if they need to save anything there.

There are NO files directly in the appdata-directory. There are simply directories. One for each PND app that needs to save something.
Vimacs said:
And if a pnd never writes anything in its cwd there will be no appdata folder.
 
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(PND continued from post above)
EvilDragon said:
foft said:
Good explanation. One more query - what is a .pnd? A tar.gz of binary, lib and pnd.xml file?
It's an ISO that can also be squashfs'ed.

So games like SuperTux only need 7MB instead of 16MB on the card (as they don't need to be unpacked).
Or AlephOne with all datafiles is 97MB big. Unpacked (like you run stuff on the GP2X or WIZ), it does take about 200MB.
Vimacs said:
DaveC said:
Another huge issue with this pnd thing is how apps are put into menus. They are put into the menus that the CODER wants them to be in. This takes the control out of the user's hands and puts it into the coders. So now you have YOUR system arranged how THEY want and not how YOU want it.
There is a option in libpnd which allows you to have a config to override parts of the stuff defined in the pxml - so you can change the menu place if you really have to...

Also i don't get why you are asking all those questions again - we had exactly the same discussion back in 2008 when the pnd system was invented.
EvilDragon said:
DaveC said:
B-ZaR said:
Hey, I've been arguing for the current implementation here, I just entertained the idea. His idea was to have all data, both pnd and the appdata under one subdirectory like so:
Code:
pandora/
pandora/apps/
pandora/apps/Quake/
pandora/apps/Quake/quake.pnd
pandora/apps/Quake/appdata/
pandora/apps/Quake/appdata/pak1.pak
pandora/apps/Supertux/
pandora/apps/Supertux/supertux.pnd
pandora/apps/Supertux/appdata/
pandora/apps/Supertux/appdata/customlevel.level   (or something)
So not just the pnd, but application-specific data directories too.

EDIT: emphasis on quote
That is what I was trying to say. With the above structure EVERYTHING related to an app can be in one subdir and not scattered into different directories in other spots. So everything Quake related would be in the Quake directory including PAKs and appdata. Want to delete or move Quake just drag the Quake folder to a new card or whatever and you are done. No need to hunt through a huge pile of directorectories which can be HUNDREDS of appdata folders in another spot to find PAKs etc. then go to a separate appdata folder make an appdata folder on the new card, move the quake appdata into the new folder appdata. It is just a waste of time and for nothing, it adds no benefit.
Well, this is exactly what I don't want.
If my SD card is full and I want to temporarily remove stuff, I open up the directory with all the apps in there, mark all PNDs I don't like and delete them.
Done. My settings, saves, configs (don't need much space) stay there.
Easy.

With a directory structure like above, I'd have to go into each subdir to find out how big the PND is, delete it manually, etc.
This takes WAY longer.

BTW: you can define your folders in a config file.
If you want the subdirs within the same folder as the PNDs, simply change the config file and you're set.
Another huge issue with this pnd thing is how apps are put into menus. They are put into the menus that the CODER wants them to be in. This takes the control out of the user's hands and puts it into the coders. So now you have YOUR system arranged how THEY want and not how YOU want it.

For example one coder wants Doom to show up in PORTS, the Wolf 3D coder wants it to be in SHOOTERS, the coder of Hexen wants it in GAMES, and the coder of Descent wants it is FPS.

Now you will have all of these games which are a similar genre scattered around in different menu spots. What if the USER wants all of these to go into a GAMES catagory in a menu? They can't do it. Now the user lost control of his own machine. I think this whole pnd idea is looking pretty bad honestly from a user's standpoint. I know the idea was to "dumb it down" so anyone could install an app but the user loses too much flexibility and control with this. I don't like that. I want my apps organized how I want not how someone else thinks they should be.
Nobody takes your control. The devs just define the default category.
Don't like it? Then ORGANIZE them as you want :)
We have included an override function for PXML. Don't like the category? Well, you can simply override it (someone could code a menu editor where you can simply move your PNDs around with drag and drop and it will change the categories to where you want them).
Those overrides will be saved, so if you remove the PND and put it back later on the card, it will still use the category YOU decided.

Such tool to change the categories and move the files around as you like is not yet coded - we'd rather have a working OS first than adding all the features that could be needed.
The base structure is set - all that's left is the little tool and you can move them whereever you like.

And if you don't want to use the PND system - nobody forces you to use the menu. You can also manually place the PNDs whereever you like on your card, open up your file manager and doubleclick them to start.
Like on the GP2X. Just that you don't start a .gpe, but a .pnd.


But that is one thing that pissed me off the most on my GP2X:
I once had a broken card so I had to re-setup everything again. So I downloaded 100 games, extracted them (they all were zipped up differently), put them into various folders and subfolders... and if I were using gmenu2x, I also had to manually put them into the categories myself.
This did take hours, and as I wasn't in the mood doing that, I didn't use my GP2X much after that anymore.

With the PND system, this is easy:
Download them, put them on the card and that's it.

If you want, you can keep a copy of the config files (and PXML overrides) on your PC, as it doesn't take much space.
Then when you lose everything on the card, simply put the PND files back, put your backup of the config files back, and it's exactly sorted the way you did it.
EvilDragon said:
Laurencevde said:
I expect there to be a variable that defines where the appdata goes to. Set that to /pandora/apps and you'll get pretty close to what you want. All subdirectories of /pandora/apps are apparently searched through to find .PNDs, so you can then put your quake.pnd into /pandora/apps/quake/, along with its app-data. One problem though: depending on the amount of files/directories your apps create, the filesystem on your card, and the speed of your card, finding all .PNDs might become slow if it needs to look through all data.
Yep, you can. It's a config file where you define all paths.

Crawling shouldn't take too long - I tried crawling through 50.000 files and it took 3 minutes.
So as long as you don't have too many files there... but of course, it does slow down discovery a bit.
 
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