The Rise of Pyra - A story about the past 6 months


From what I know: ED is still building and sending Pyra. Progress is slow, and many pre-orderers don't answer when their Pyra is finally ready.
Working a lot for little progress and little recognition is how people get burnt-out, I hope ED is still fine.
 
ED is doing way more than this sleepy community deserves :D;)
Me as well hopes he's fine!

I think it's a bit strange that for a device, where every consideration is about open-source in mind, all communication has shifted to a proprietary platform.
For me, discord is a cool und fun platform for nerdy chit-chat. But it should not be the only source for news and announcements...
 
I've got no desire to use discord whatsoever.

Is there anyone from here using it that could relay the odd bit of news to us less sophisticated folks?
Would be nice to know how Trixie runs on the Pyra.
Some users here put quite some work into Bookworm to eradicate some annoying flaws.
I would like to upgrade to Trixie, but since packages.pyra-handheld.com is dead, it's not possible atm...
 
the banner says "official site" .
discord is not viable.
unless ED ordered more pyra main boards then there can not be more than 500 Pyras in the wild.
i really hate that the Pyra has come to this but fundamental issues at the birth has killed this off. the worst was pickingaCPU that the manufacturer abandoned. With no or very little documentation and known bugs.
ED not posting or even visiting his own "official" website is telling.
i so wanted this in the begining and i am now grateful that i didnt have the spare cash to preorder.
 
i so wanted this in the begining and i am now grateful that i didnt have the spare cash to preorder.
If you don't have a preorder and you aren't making the software better and you aren't adding anything to the wiki, why do you keep coming to the forum and absolutely dunking on the project?
What did you spend money on to improve your life?
What personal growth have you done to make your life better?
What projects have you taken on to make the world a better place?

Do you just get an itch and wonder if you can purchase a pyra off the shelf and when the answer is no feel the need to beat the point home?
Would you even have the money to buy one if it was available?
If you think there is an alternative that is already on the market that is going to fill your need, go buy that.

Addictions are terrible and come in many forms.
 
no idea what your problem is mate but i have been very vocal in defending this project over the years.
what my life is like and what i do are completely irrelevant to the subject.

The facts are irrefutable. I dont want it to be over.
its been over 12 months since ED posted here.
Askarus has done as much as is possible in getting as many Pyras as possible made.
there were only 500 mainboards made in the first batch. there are over 1100 preorders.

When was the last Pyra sent? we cant know as ED isnt here to tell us.
has a second batch been ordered? we cant know as ED isnt here to tell us.

there is a difference between being realistic and being a pesimist.

what have you done for the project? why do you think that personally attacking me in any way furthers the Pyra?
Am i only allowed to be interested in the Pyra if i can code ?

You are coming across like the shopkeeper in the Month Python Parrot sketch...
Dont worry that its dead, its got beautiful plumage.
 
I've got no desire to use discord whatsoever.

Is there anyone from here using it that could relay the odd bit of news to us less sophisticated folks?
IRC is still there and pyrabot bridges to the discord channel.
 
You answered none of my questions directly. I'm going to answer yours in good faith. If you fail again then I'm going to assume you are a troll.

no idea what your problem is mate
My problem is your attitude. To complain about something without doing anything about it is childish ranting. I guess you are welcome to it but be prepared to be called out. Progress is slow. ED has said progress has been far slower than he wanted. He's run into an excessive number of technical and social issues, some of which he probably shouldn't have talked about (employee stealing stock)

i have been very vocal in defending this project over the years.
VS
i really hate that the Pyra has come to this but fundamental issues at the birth has killed this off.
Is it time to call it? its been in flatline for 8 months at least now.
cheers, its the lack of ED's presence on the boards that people interpret as the project being abandoned.
Some of your history of posts don't come across as defending.


what my life is like and what i do are completely irrelevant to the subject.
Ok, so can your opinion be irrelevant to this subject too?

When was the last Pyra sent? we cant know as ED isnt here to tell us.
Model: Mobile EU, black
Pre-Order date: 2016-05-02 11:03am German time
"Your Pyra is ready" mail: 2025-06-02
Final delivery: 2025-07-31 (there was a problem with my voucher; partially my fault that it took so long to solve it)
July last year. Which is a long time, but it seems like people aren't excited about getting to their orders and sharing the information.

has a second batch been ordered? we cant know as ED isnt here to tell us.
Unlikely. ED had posted that he had chosen to keep units on the shelf for people who HAD preorder but hadn't got around to responding to emails. Which is really sad. Maybe people abandoned their email account. Maybe they couldn't afford the final payment but don't respond.

what have you done for the project? why do you think that personally attacking me in any way furthers the Pyra?
Am i only allowed to be interested in the Pyra if i can code ?

You are coming across like the shopkeeper in the Month Python Parrot sketch...
Dont worry that its dead, its got beautiful plumage.
I've updated uBoot to fix some timing issues which enabled 20-100 (forget the exact number) boards to boot and be tested so ED could get them to customers.
I preordered a second pyra to help get the order count up to 1000.
I purchased a OMAP5432 dev unit so I could start getting my feet wet in Linux development before the first units started shipping. This is going to be much more useful when I can get it permanently set up because I'm no longer confident that the boot sequence is setting up the cpu correctly.
I offered a patch for libarchive so that the scanning process in DBP was significantly quicker. Wally was floored that I fixed the issue he was having before I received my preorder unit.
Updated the wiki with detailed information about what RAM chips are used.

I'm attacking your attitude because it feels like a paper cut to the project. I'm hoping you stop. The negativity hangs with the people that are trying to do what they can.
I'm assuming you think it is a bad thing that I've 'attacked' you with my questioning. Does that mean you think you are attacking me? Is that ok?

I asked you directly why you keep coming to the forum and you didn't answer. I don't know what your interest in the Pyra is. Maybe instead of asking a question, tell me what your interest in the Pyra is. Do you want a little handheld? Do you want to see someone's project finish? Do you like watching collaboration?
From your posts, all I see is someone who dunks on the project.

I've bought the parrot. You haven't bought the parrot. Why do you care if the parrot is dead or not?
 
While I agree with you sentiment, everyone knew they had to wait a long time to receive the Pyra (just like the Open-Pandora), the observation that the last period was very quiet is also true.
That doesn't mean the Pyra is dead I pretty much have one next to me at the moment and it works. Does it provide the same experience for me as the Open-Pandora at the moment, not yet.
So it really feels like a glass half full/empty situation. I can understand people thinking the long wait should have been over, ED probably also hoped it would have been finished by now.
But that last part, where we either accept it won't gain much traction anymore or we continue ourselves to wrap things up, that's where I think the discussion is about.
The Pyra usually makes progress by just one (or a few) people banding together to get stuff done, just like with the Open-Pandora. Being too negative, too demotivating, doesn't help with that.
Or who knows, it also could help, pushing some people to take action... In the end I hope everyone wants the story of the Pyra to have a good ending.
 
TL:DR
so, im only allowed an opinion if it agrees with yours.. ok
are you Graham Hancock? cherry picking the bits you want that agrees with your idea.
DILLIGAF mate. i really dont care about you or your opinion. you do not have the right to tell me what my opinion should be.
as for buying a Pyra?? how ? the only Pyra i could have bought in the last 12 months is from the "for sale" section on this forum.
there are over 500 orders waiting for a Pyra. Please in your most optimistic way tell me when they are going to get a unit?????

rant away Mr Keyboard warrior. i will not waste my time any more.
 
i really hate that the Pyra has come to this but fundamental issues at the birth has killed this off. the worst was pickingaCPU that the manufacturer abandoned.

Well, I don't think so. Pyra had near all possible faults-issues when selecting near every aspect of it. And CPU is bad (for example, no suspend mode), but NOT WORST part of Pyra errors. I think one of the worst was molding plastic decisions. They selected worst material-manufacturing (for this case-use) and worst company. It took years of wasted timed, money and ED burning. Even after turning to other better company, cases-parts needed a lot of manual rework (time-cost).

I think it would be much faster and totally much cheaper (even although unit cost would be higher than a functioning molded plastic case):

1/ Aluminium case/parts.

2/ CNC on aluminum or plastic. CNC would permit near immediate prototypes, near 1-day corrections. Imagine the difference with years and years lost for the molded plastic.

3/ A mix of aluminum CNC for big parts and plastic CNC for small ones.


By the way I think keys for keyboard are good for such a small device (they are too small to place gaming controls on top, but there was no more space if you wanted those gaming controls). If you look at a lot of other projects for pocket computers (and no so pocket size computers), most of them have horrible rubber or soft-plastic keys from horrible cheap small Bluetooth keyboards. So at least Pyra had some good points, but not enough to live.

i so wanted this in the begining and i am now grateful that i didnt have the spare cash to preorder.

So did I, and I am grateful for that. I followed Pyra from begin, even I remember initially it was going to have 1920×1080 pixel resilution (this was changed soon). A friend (who I showed Pyra project) was highly interested, as I was, but he did the same.

By the time Pyra was going nowhere, I ordered and received in 1-2 week products form Pine64 (PinePhone¹ with keyboard, PineNote, accessories).

BTW from ED shop I ordered and got two Pyra keyboards (keymat with keycaps), a Pyra case (and a Pyra bag), to see how it feels in person. I think that keyboard is remarkable, being so small. ED at least took a good decision. And I think there was enough keyboards (I remember a thread or post with the pics of a lot of cases with keymats; I don't remember if they were 1,000 or 2,000 but I am sure he could order how many thounsands as he needed). And they WORKED, not like cases-parts needing manual rework.

¹: But PinePhone isn't a pocket computer. It is a smartphone, and with keyboard it is not as good as a "working"-enough pocket computer Pyra would be (if it lived and worked good). I miss Pyra, or more exactly the thing Pyra could have been if not so much errors and bad decisions on it.
 
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As someone that had a heavy investment in the Pyra just have to say this,

With hindsight it's easy to say things would have been better doing this one way or another, but it was decided that the forum community here dictate much of the design choices, that unfortunately added a ton of complexity on the project and EvilDragon and hns did amazing job somehow designing around a ton of odd ball design choices and did their best to move through a lot of obstacles when things didn't go well.

That said I'm lucky I've had my Pyra for over 5 years now so I may have a different perspective to those still waiting, but I fronted money well before any solid design choices where even made, It was a risk for many that invested in the pre-pre-order, but that said I've donated a ton to Dragonbox to keep the Pandora project alive back in the day. But back on topic I see a ton of good things with the Pyra, Wifi works wonderful, keyboard is totally usable, while newer distros break with newer kernels, the Buster image is fairly capable, battery life is decent enough. The casing I feel is decent and much improved over the Pandora (I have three, I know how those break). I feel the most flawed part of the Pyra is the OMAP5, It was sold to us by Ti as a proper replacement to the OMAP3, but it's a different animal, more power hungry and not really suitable for mobile computing, Ti abandon this SoC mid Pyra production, that was unfortunate. It's just took too long to get Pyra's out to people with interest to work on this project. I wish I had the time or skills to fix everything.

The Pyra would have been an amazing device if it was released within 2 years after development, but here we are. I've enjoyed the community here during the Pandora era, and I wish the Pyra would have reinvigorated that spark again. I'm still hoping something would bring that back. For now I'm sharing my other projects and Amiga obsessions here on the boards.
 
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I'll add mine too then.

Pyra keyboard is way better than the Pandora for writing/programming, even dedicated INS / DEL / ESC / TAB / F11 buttons makes it extremely good especially while using VIM or Midnight Commander but also graphic tools.
The backlight makes it useful when there is low light around (with the Pandora I had to use the Display to illuminate the buttons), but also makes it even cooler to the eyes.

More related to the OS than the keyboard but with Pyra I can access TTY console just by using CTRL+ALT+F<number>

On the Pyra the Wifi is way better and I can actually browse the web with a decent browser, most of the latest posts I made while compiling stuff were done from Firefox on the Pyra itself, with different tabs open ... this is almost impossibile with the Pandora.

By the way I want to explain how fast you can go without the need of a mouse:
I'm using different desktop that I can rapidly switch with CTRL+ALT+ArrowRight (or Left)
on one I open Firefox with different tabs, that I can switch with CTRL+PAGEUP (or DOWN)
on the other I put a terminal that I can open with CTRL+PYRA, with different tabs (at least one with MC), that I can switch with CTRL+PGUP (or DOWN)

So I can go to the browser to read something, go back to the terminal and move some files then go back to the other terminal to launch something after having edited something, go back to the browser, etc... all without using the mouse.

The display is bigger, the sound is higher at least from the speakers, the device in general feels way more solid and is damn faster in many ways.

The only downsides I found for now are mostly software related, the battery covers a lot less time than on the Pandora, but I suppose this could be improved, the sound is not so good with certain programs, should be improved this too, the acceleration is not enabled for most of the things so some games are actually slower than on the Pandora.

Another thing I don't like are the side limits of the touchscreen ... but for now I was never even able to calibrate the stylus correctly, so I don't use this for now ... I hope that at least partially this could be corrected via software, because the Pandora was super cool with the Stylus.

In conclusion, in some future the Pyra could really substitute the Pandora and be an awesome upgrade, but must be under a lot of software optimizations before that will happens.

I miss the Programming Contests that were happening every year with the Pandora, them were really adding a lot of value to the device.
 
Well, I don't think so. Pyra had near all possible faults-issues when selecting near every aspect of it. And CPU is bad (for example, no suspend mode), but NOT WORST part of Pyra errors. I think one of the worst was molding plastic decisions. They selected worst material-manufacturing (for this case-use) and worst company. It took years of wasted timed, money and ED burning. Even after turning to other better company, cases-parts needed a lot of manual rework (time-cost).

I think it would be much faster and totally much cheaper (even although unit cost would be higher than a functioning molded plastic case):

1/ Aluminium case/parts.

2/ CNC on aluminum or plastic. CNC would permit near immediate prototypes, near 1-day corrections. Imagine the difference with years and years lost for the molded plastic.

3/ A mix of aluminum CNC for big parts and plastic CNC for small ones.


By the way I think keys for keyboard are good for such a small device (they are too small to place gaming controls on top, but there was no more space if you wanted those gaming controls). If you look at a lot of other projects for pocket computers (and no so pocket size computers), most of them have horrible rubber or soft-plastic keys from horrible cheap small Bluetooth keyboards. So at least Pyra had some good points, but not enough to live.



So did I, and I am grateful for that. I followed Pyra from begin, even I remember initially it was going to have 1920×1080 pixel resilution (this was changed soon). A friend (who I showed Pyra project) was highly interested, as I was, but he did the same.

By the time Pyra was going nowhere, I ordered and received in 1-2 week products form Pine64 (PinePhone¹ with keyboard, PineNote, accessories).

BTW from ED shop I ordered and got two Pyra keyboards (keymat with keycaps), a Pyra case (and a Pyra bag), to see how it feels in person. I think that keyboard is remarkable, being so small. ED at least took a good decision. And I think there was enough keyboards (I remember a thread or post with the pics of a lot of cases with keymats; I don't remember if they were 1,000 or 2,000 but I am sure he could order how many thounsands as he needed). And they WORKED, not like cases-parts needing manual rework.

¹: But PinePhone isn't a pocket computer. It is a smartphone, and with keyboard it is not as good as a "working"-enough pocket computer Pyra would be (if it lived and worked good). I miss Pyra, or more exactly the thing Pyra could have been if not so much errors and bad decisions on it.

One major fault was how orders were sent out. I complained about that when I was involved in the building process.
Building Pyras one by one depending and sticking to order numbers is a very bad decision.
Also trying to not anger any customers was a hindering factor.
What I would have done is this:

1. Scrap copper cases, only sell them as an extra, not pre-built Pyras. There are 6 options currently (no LTE, EU, US. Each one Black or Copper)
2. Build and ship in batches, send to all backers, who responds firsts, gets their Pyra first. Scrap that stupid order numbers. Waiting 2 weeks for a reply, then inform the next people when no response comes is a huge delay.
3. Downgrade all to 2 GB of RAM. 4GB causes huge issues. Better send out 2GB units than no 4GB units.
4. Probably give up on LTE for the moment and just ship units that are working with a gamble on what LTE module (if one at all) people get. they are non-functional anyways.

Next step
1. Ditch the stupid dual PCB design. By the time there comes a new CPU variant, new connectors (USB-C) become available anyways. Dual PCB just adds delay during assembly.
2. Ditch LTE, it is not functional, for the moment. way too expensive. Better utilize that huge room on the PCB for an easier design process.
3. Ditch the volume wheel but add 5 tiny buttons where the LTE antenna is (Volume +, Volume -, Play/Pause, Next, Prev)

Sure, that would require some huge PCB reqork, but we need a new CPU anyways. So better remake the whole thing for good.
 
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