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OpenSource Handheld News - Gp2X, Dingoo, Wiz, Pandora, GCW Zero and Caanoo is a News and downloads site for Open Source Handhelds, We have all the latest emulators, hack, homebrew, commercial games and all the downloads on this site, the latest homebrew and releases, Part of the
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THE LATEST NEWS BELOW
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June 1st, 2011, 01:51 Posted By: wraggster
Play Asia are selling the Caanoo for a great price of 115 dollars, 30 dollars off for now:
features•Color: black/blue
•Powered by an ARM9 533MHz + 3D GPU
•2 gigabyte flash memory
•128MB ram
•SD/SDHC card supported
•OS: Linux
•Vibration Motor / G-Sensor
•146(w) x 70(h) x 18.5(d)mm
descriptionThe Gp2x family is getting a new member this Summer: the Gp2X Caanoo.
Optimized for wireless gaming and application the Caanoo is another leap from the current Wiz system, taking open source handhelds to a new level!
http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...j-70-3w5n.html
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May 29th, 2011, 13:24 Posted By: wraggster
Heres another update from the Openpandora Team Concerning the Pandora Console:
Well, you might've seen that the volcano is iceland is spitting out ash again. This of course will cause a delay of about 8 months.... naaaah, just kidding 
While the volcano IS spitting ash, we're still too busy working ourselves through all the PCBs we got to even realize a delay in PCB deliveries. So unless every transport method is cut for the next week, nothing bad will happen.
Anyways, back on topic, as you probably would want to know what happened during the last weeks and months. A lot has been going on behind the scenes and now I'll try to summarize it all.
1. What's the status of the first batch?
We're just round the corner for the last 1000 PCBs of Batch 1.
While this doesn't mean that 3000 units have been delivered (we also need to check and build the PCBs into cases, don't forget that), more than half of the Batch 1 units have been delivered, and deliveries go on.
There wasn't a week where no Pandoras had been delivered, we just test, build and ship out continually.
There was a slight drawback as a lot of units suddenly had a new error with WiFi that we never had before, but those boards are already back to be fixed as well.
CircuitCo is not just producing the remaining PCBs right now, they are also fixing boards that had issues from the very beginning in parallel.
When all PCBs have been populated, there will probably still be a few hundred to be fixed, some might even be unrecoverable (those poor boards will remain forever in our hearts... hey, I heard an easy way to dump unwanted boards is to bury them in the desert  )
Some of the unrecoverable boards might be sold to you for a cheaper price. It might be there will be boards that work but a couple of buttons are not usable, etc.
We'll see about that, first we need to see how many broken PCBs there will be in total.
Note: If you check various sites about PCB production, it's normal having about 10% of boards that need to be fixed if you do a production run with such complicated boards, so we're pretty much within that range.
I'm sorry that I can't tell you any accurate numbers here. As you might've seen on the boards, I tried to do so. I really did. But it eats too much time. Too many different factors are involved, like the amount of boards with issues, the amount of boards produced, the amount of boards RMA'ed, etc.
Believe me: It's not our intention to hide anything from you, it's just too much additional work. And we're pretty much stuffed with work right now anyways.
The shipments will continue and as soon as there are bigger issues, we'll let you know, don't worry.
2. What's the status of the second batch?
The second batch is currently being prepared, parts are being paid and delivered. Batteries have already arrived.
Preparations for Batch 2 take about 1 month, and that's probably the time needed to produce the remaining PCBs of Batch 1 and work on the boards with issues.
It might even be the second batch will start while some PCBs from the first batch are still being fixed. Of course this will have no effect on the queue itself
With Batch 2, we introduce a new board revision of the Pandora, Rev6b. Don't worry though, the functionality will be same as the current Rev5, but some things have been changed to improve the production process (i.e. increase the size of some soldering pads that were causing issues with Batch 1, improve the placement of the shoulder buttons to save a lot of manual labour, etc.). So we'll have fixes here to improve the production process.
This was possible since we had quite a few issues with Batch 1 PCBs that kept repeating. This surely is a clear sign to improve the layout in that area.
3. What about the Premium Pandoras?
If you haven't had the time to follow the boards recently, you might not know what these 7-days-Premium Pandoras are all about. Why should someone get a Pandora earlier if he paid long after a preorderer?
Well, we didn't like the concept for the Premium Pandoras ourselves, but in fact they help everyone and we didn't have much of a chance.
All the issues we didn't except also did cost money. A LOT of money. Each Pandora does cost us about 400 USD just for production because of that - and that's way more than we sold it for.
We could've just continued to deliver all the units, hoping no one would want any refunds, hoping to get the PCBs faster, hoping to not run into any other issues that cost money, etc.
We could've continued - but it would've been a risky business, and if we ran out of money, it would mean NO Pandora anymore for anyone and NO money back.
That wasn't an option for us.
So we decided to go the safe route and get some money using the Premium Pandoras. And yes, it certainly helps A LOT.
Of course, Premium is not just an option for new customers. Existing customers can pay the price difference between their original paid price and the new Premium price and therefore also get the unit right away.
Just contact the shop where you bought it. And most certainly, you are not FORCED to pay more. You can also wait. Both normal and premium orders are shipped out, so if you're not in a hurry, you will get your unit for the originally paid price.
4. What about the OS?
We as well as devs from the community are also working on improving the OS.
As more and more non-dev users get their Pandoras, it's pretty clear that the usability has to be improved and the Pandora should become more userfriendly.
Work has already been started. PNDStore exists as an optional application. It connects to the internet and can automatically install new applications as well as update existing ones.
It's just click and select. The GUI is a basic GTK one right now and lacks some features, but it is fully working already and currently heavily being worked on.
It will also be included into HF6. So once HF6 is out, you can install games by simply running PNDStore and selecting the game you want.
Of course, if you don't have a WiFi connection, you can also download the PNDs on any PC and put them onto the SD Card as well, just like before.
MiniMenu will also make use of these features, so MiniMenu will not only be a program launcher, it can also be used to install and update existing programs as well.
Thanks go to all the devs involved in developing that system.
Craig also wants to work on his own solution to make the Pandora more userfriendly. Once that's finished, it will also be include in the OS. It will totally be your choice of what you want to use.
I've also started to work on a small Quick Start Tutorial new users can start either with the First Start Wizard or anytime later. This will explain the basic features of the Pandora and will make it way more easier for new users to use it.
Besides userfriendlyness, HF6 will also get some bugfixes and improved battery charging and handled (thanks to WizardStan for his help here!).
HF6 will most probably be the last Hotfix before we move on to a major new OS version, based on the lates main OE (OpenEmbedded).
A first version is already up and running and we will do active testing and bug finding now.
5. Other tidbits
As you've read above, we had some repeating issues with PCBs during production. The most annoying one was the batch with the boards where WiFi wasn't working.
I am currently working together with CircuitCo to improve the testing routines. A lot of PCBs passed simply because some things have not been tested.
For an example, the WiFi issue: The current test initialized the module. If that worked, the WiFi test succeeded. Not much more was needed, as the module handles everything itself. This worked fine for the first 2500 PCBs - and then suddenly there was an issue with a batch of boards where the modules initialized but couldn't connect to any networks. Therefore, we improved the WiFi test to also connect to an AP and download a file. Takes a few seconds more, but will prevent that issue.
There were some more repeating errors we didn't expect, so the testing setup has been optimized to prevent more and more errors. It's a learning curve, and there will always be issues you would never expect. The main importance is to react to these errors and improve things. And that's what we're currently doing.
I've also setup a webcam where you can watch me work on Pandora PCBs every now and then. I can't tell you when it's on, as I work on them when I find the time, but I always post in IRC and at the boards when I go online.
There's also a nice article on The Escapist about the Pandora. I can only repeat myself: Thanks to EVERYONE helping us out here. Devs, the community, the preorderers the premium updaters and new customers. You all help us to keep going, and almost everyone who got a Pandora agrees that it was worth the wait and all the work!
Thanks!
http://www.openpandora.org/index.php...emid=2&lang=en
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May 28th, 2011, 23:27 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://boards.dingoonity.org/dingoon.../formido-3413/
2D shooter from bird's-eye view on your Dingux!
Quote
Hi, this is my new port named Formido.
This game was created by Mika Halttunen.
Goal is easy, just kill if you want survive
right/left to turn
forward : X
backward : Y
Shoot :L
special :R
Quit :select
Pause: start
You can change default key by edit formido.cfg
Discuss it here: http://boards.dingoonity.org/dingux-releases/formido/
formido.tar.gz
Author/Porter: Coccijoe
Download: http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...0,1,0,0,37,500
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April 30th, 2011, 01:23 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=947505
Jagged Alliance 2 is one of my favourite turn-based strategy games, in fact one of my fave's of all time
Thanks to the devs, beta testers and donators who helped me port this.
Jagged Alliance 2 Release 1
Screenshots:
 
Gameplay changes since beta 3:
• Quickload (Alt-L) is now enabled during enemy turns.
• Press SHIFT to skip through militia turns (useful for stealing guns from dying enemies)
Other improvements since beta 3:
• Easy "data" folder importing. Simply drop your JA2 "data" folder into appdata/ja2strac-qcast/ (more info below)
• Icon, preview images and readme added.
Installation instructions:
You will need the original datafiles from a windows install or linux JA2 CDs.
IMPORTANT: These files must all be in _lowercase_, including the folder name itself, i.e. "data" not "Data" and "maps.slf" not "Maps.slf".
A first-time installation is configured as follows:
1. Run PND once.
2. Copy your JA2 datafiles "data" folder to appdata/ja2strac-qcast/
3. Run PND again, the game should load
Enjoy
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April 22nd, 2011, 01:32 Posted By: wraggster
Lavalit have released a new SVN build of Openbor for the Dreamcast, Wii, Wiz, GP2X, Dingoo, PC, Linux and PSP
OpenBOR
----------------------
OpenBOR is a continuation of the Beats Of Rage 2D game engine, which was originally
created by the wonderful folks over at http://www.senileteam.com.
History
----------------------
In 2004, Senile Team released Beats of Rage, a free beat-'em-up for DOS inspired
by SEGA's Streets of Rage series and using sprites from SNK Playmore's King of
Fighters series. The game spread only by word of mouth, but it nonetheless
amassed popularity very quickly. Senile Team soon released an edit pack allowing
anyone interested to create a mod for the BOR engine.
In 2005, Kirby2000 asked Senile Team to open the source code to BOR. They
agreed, and OpenBOR was born. Development on the engine was continued by the
community, and still is to this day.
r3342 | sumolx | 2011-04-20 16:06:59 -0400 (Wed, 20 Apr 2011) | 1 line
Changed paths:
M /engine/LICENSE
M /engine/README
M /engine/build.sh
Added Mac OS X to README and cleaned up whitespaces in LICENSE.
Download Here
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April 18th, 2011, 21:12 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=946859
Announcement
I have decided to organize a cross-platform coding competition for our favorite handhelds. Of course, every competition must have some conditions, and this one requires you to team up with one or more of your fellow members to produce a game. We hope this will bring people together and spur collaboration across platforms and professions.
Genre
There is no limit to genre, but it has to be a game, new and original, so no ports or emulators.
Platforms
You can submit a game for the following platforms: Pandora, Caanoo, Wiz, Dingux. You can also submit your game for several of the platforms.
Prizes
I have put up 100 euro to the winner and I hope you will donate more to the prize pool, so we can provide prizes for 2nd-4th place as well. The prize pool is common between the platforms.
Submitting
You have to submit by the end of 25th June 2011. Details on how to submit will be posted on the website later.
Voting
Members of the communities will rank their favorite games, and this will be used to determine the winner.
After the submission deadline, all games will be made available for download, and members of the community can rank their favorites until end of 8th July 2011.
Winner
The winners will be announced 10th July 2011 and will receive their prize on 17th July 2011.
More info
For more help getting started, please visit www.riotdigital.com . Also, you can post request for team members on our very own Job Office
Good luck and have fun
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April 18th, 2011, 20:59 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://boards.openpandora.org/index....ds-2011-04-15/
Some of you might've seen that I was a bit unactive during the last week. I've still got so much work to do. Besides building Pandoras (which I will also do this weekend), I had so much to do in my normal job, so I didn't have much time to post.
Anyways, some good things have happened and I want to inform you about those for sure.
First, the first 2000 of the new LCD cables have arrived.
They have been built by a company that is specialized on flex cable production. Some of the biggest notebook manufacturers worldwide are their customers.
These guys optimized and extensively tested the cables - this should be the final end of the purple tint of death!
Click on the picture for a bigger view!
About 1000 of those will be used for the last units of Batch 1, the next ones are for the first 1000 units of Batch 2.
Speaking about Batch 2: The next 4200 batteries are on the way to Craig via sea and will arrive early May.
Next, onto what CircuitCo has been doing.
They continued with their weekly shipment of boards, which is something I'm really happy about! Last weeks they shipped 150, this week, it was 200.
Also, thanks to the boards we sent back that had issues when we got them, they optimized their testing process to ensure that all boards they are shipping to us are working now.
The debugging and fixing of broken units also made some big steps: Quite a number of boards had the same issues. They found out for most problems what part caused that issue and can therefore now repair all those boards without too much hassle.
With todays shipment, a total number of 2703 boards has been shipped to us, about 200 were broken (mostly due to the old nubs) and are currently being reworked.
Let's sum everything up:
* 2703 boards shipped so far
* CC has been doing reliable weekly shipments during the last weeks
* They are improving the testing to make sure we don't get any boards with issues anymore
* 2000 new LCD Cables have arrived
* The batteries for Batch 2 will be in UK early May
As usual, I'll keep you updated 
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April 12th, 2011, 00:58 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=946167
New versions of these emulators for WIZ and CAANOO:
- PCSX4ALL 2.2: New version of this PSX emulator for WIZ and CAANOO, with some optimizations in GPU and SPU and some compatibility improvements in HLE and GPU.
- MAME4ALL 2.6: New version of this MAME port for WIZ and CAANOO, with TV-Out support for the WIZ and a CAANOO port based on Simon's one but it runs a bit faster.
They are available for download in my new Web Page.
First shown in Retro Encounter.
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April 7th, 2011, 02:01 Posted By: wraggster
News from the Openpandora team:
Some might've seen I haven't posted much since Wednesday... I had a lot of work in my other job, so I'm sorry for the lack of updates.
This means, that I'm late again with telling you guys the latest status from CircuitCo - the numbers I'll post here are the status from March 29th.
Basically, they finished and shipped 200 more boards to UK within one week.
Production and repairments are working side by side, the 73 boards that had LCD issues have been fixed, for example.
Well, here is the quick overview from one week ago. The numbers in (brackets) are the ones I last posted, so you can see what happened.
Boards shipped to us so far: 2603 (2403)
Boards currently being tested: 130 (177)
Boards left to build: 410 (550)
Boards currently being debugged (more info below): 404 (447)
Boards currently being touched up: 313 (293)
Here are more in-depth infos for you guys:
Boards with LCD issues: 0 (73)
Boards with SD Card Slot 2 issues: 22 (22)
Boards with various issues (audio, nubs, etc.) but booting fine: 106 (76)
Boards that need to be reworked (as mentioned above): 150 (150)
Boards that don't boot: 126 (126)
http://boards.openpandora.org/index....in-2011-04-05/
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April 3rd, 2011, 21:39 Posted By: wraggster
News via http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=945026
Dungeon Master was the first mouse driven 3d first person RPG -- it created the genre that is popular today. Eye of the Beholder was directly (and they had were proud of it) a clone (for the PC, while DM/CSB were originally for Atari ST and Amiga, and later PC.)
These run full screen or windowed on Pandora and, with the touchscreen acting as mouse (plus pandora specific keybindings to make it more convenient.)
The two games are included in the package; other dungeon packs can be gotten from around the net.
The history of CSB4Win project is the author disassembled the ST version, then rewrite it line by line directly to C, and then refactored for years to turn it into a piece of code you could follow; he also extended it, to allow the engine more space to work in, do video recording for speedruns, and so on. Once the file format of the dungeons was cracked open, editors appeared and you can get many dozen of new dungeons to play through, including some all new game 'total conversions'; theres really a lot to chew on here!
The pandora port was done by a fine lad over in the dmweb forum, and he's worked very hard on this .. had to rewrite the audio routines and he's been busting bugs in the main engine and so on. I didn't do anything here beyond moral support, so all kudos are to him
Get it here:
http://www.diamondsword.de/csb/csbwin-11.059rc1.pnd
Feel free to pop it into dl.openhandhelds, but it may not be appropriate for app-store.
Legal: The original game developers (FTL) of DM/CSB have very kindly turned their eye for projects like this; they've emailed that distributing files for free and fan service is okay, but they aren't officially allowed to say anything, nor is anythign commercial anywhere near permitted. Hence, the original games are in this package, but its a little grey. Head over to the DMWeb site to nab dozens of other dungeon packs you can drop into the appdata to enable. (Those are not included, since explicit licensing from the dungeon creator, or if they re-used artwork etc, is unknown, so that wouldn't be kocher to include in the package.)
Enjoy.. this is one of the greats
jeff.
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March 30th, 2011, 14:09 Posted By: wraggster
News from the Openpandora Team:
Well, you guys asked for numbers, so here are some.
First, I need to apologize - the status I have here from CC is actually a week old... I found it while working through my mails. Sorry about that.
Still, it's the most accurate information so far I guess.
Well, here is the quick overview from one week ago:
Boards shipped to us so far: 2403
Boards currently being tested: 177
Boards left to build: 550
Boards currently being debugged (more info below): 447
Boards currently being touched up: 293
Boards shipped back by us for repairs: about 380
While that's all nice, I guess you also want some more in-depth information if possible, right?
Well "boards shipped" should be clear to everyone, but what's the rest?
"Being tested" means they have been produced already and are currently being tested if they work properly.
"Boards left to build" is the number of boards that haven't been started yet (though, as said, that was a week ago).
They got a new, better oven for the production and have been doing production test runs with that one. The oven was the bottleneck in the production, as they can only put a certain amount of boards into the oven at the same time. If that new oven works well, that bottleneck should be gone as well.
Now to the boards that are being debugged and touched up. That seems like an awful lot! What happened?
While it seems like an awful lot, it isn't at all. A failure rate of 10% for such a complicated board with such a small run is quite normal, and 10% would be 400 boards.
It's a bit more currently, but that has a reason: The bare PCBs have been lying around for a year now - and therefore, the solder didn't properly stick to the boards anymore.
This is normally not that big deal, a quick cleaning of the boards fixes that... however, they didn't realize it needs to be done before more and more boards had issues - and they all need to be reworked, which takes a bit of time.
Let's get deeper into the debugging:
"Touched up" means they already know what's wrong and just need to fix it, which is great. They will go to the testing once they are fixed.
Many boards that are being debugged have similar issues, which is also great, as it makes finding the problem and fixing it way easier.
Here are more in-depth infos for you guys:
Boards with LCD issues: 73 (CC already knows what's causing this, so these will go into touch-up state soon).
Boards with SD Card Slot 2 issues: 22
Boards with various issues (audio, nubs, etc.) but booting fine: 76
Boards that need to be reworked (as mentioned above): 150
Boards that don't boot: 126
As mentioned above, they got some more boards from us (about 380) which need to be repaired, however, most of them just have broken nubs, which is a quick fix.
And don't forget that these numbers are one week old, so touching up, testing and also the test run with the new oven should already be finished, it might even be that they shipped more boards to Craig already.
I've still got 30 finished Pandoras ready to be shipped out and Craig shipped about 40 more to me.
So while the speed is not as fast as it should, I'm actually happy how CC is currently evolving.
They are working on finding production issues to prevent them for the future and are telling us what's wrong with the boards.
They also got a new oven to eliminate the last bottleneck and are trying to optimize the whole production run.
That's A LOT better than before.
The Pandora is a VERY complex board to build, most companies we asked couldn't even do it.... and if they could, they'd do it for a MUCH higher price.
Well, I hope those numbers help you a bit to understand what's going on.
If you have any further questions I can give answers to, I'll happily do that.
http://boards.openpandora.org/index....rs-2011-03-29/
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March 20th, 2011, 21:44 Posted By: wraggster
Some more news from the Pandora Makers:
Some things in Pandora life are weird. Totally weird.
Like the new LCD cables.
We are all used to delays and deadlines that didn't work out.
It seems different with the new company who does the LCD cables (the new ones, way more robust and extensively tested that should NEVER cause a purple haze again).
The leadtime for the LCD cables was 6 weeks - so they should've been finished early until mid April.
However, they just called us today to tell us the cables will be ready within the next few days.
So we now have more than enough of the new cables to finish Batch 1 and start the first 1000 units of Batch 2.
We don't know yet though if the catastrophe in Japan will cause any delays with Batch 2... some parts (like ICs from Panasonic and TDK) are being used in both the Pandora and iControlPad - and they come from Japan.
The parts are ordered and according to the schedule from the distributor would've been there early April, so just ready for Batch 2.
With the current happenings in Japan, nobody knows what will happen right now. It will surely cause a major chaos in parts and electronic production.
But to be honest, if delaying Batch 2 by one or two months would help to reduce the suffering in Japan, we would gladly do so.
Sadly, it won't help... we can only pray for those people right now.
So of course we'll try to get everything ready ASAP, but right now, no one worldwide knows what will happen within the next few days 
http://boards.openpandora.org/index....ly-2010-03-18/
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March 15th, 2011, 01:32 Posted By: wraggster
Evil Dragon has posted a rather long post about the production of the Pandora Console:
Wow, what a lot of work! Time really flies if you have a lot of work to do... in case you are wondering what we have been doing, well, here is some update.
1. Production at CircuitCo
CircuitCo (the company that produces the Pandora PCBs) has really improved during the last weeks! They hired a lot of new staff, bought new machines and outsourced some (easier) projects to be able to concentrate on special jobs like the Pandora production.
There now is a quality assurance and production manager for the Pandora project who communicates with us, and yes, we finally get answers to eMails, questions - communication has surely improved.
While he still needs some time to dive into this complicated project, he seems to handle everything quite good already.
We also have a schedule, we should have about 3300 finished boards early April... that should be almost all Batch 1 orders. Of course, we'll try to build them as fast as possible, though we surely continue to test every single board to be working. Better be safe than sorry!
After that, it's resurrection time!
One thing we also didn't know when we started all this is that such complicated boards can have quite a high failure rate in production - sometimes up to 10% (and that's 400 boards!)
Well, there are multiple steps to build these boards, 8 layers with a lot of very small parts soldered to it... if only one part is off by 0.1mm, it might lead to a non-working board, or a board with partial faults.
These boards go onto a bone pile and then it's time to try and fix them - or remove the expensive parts (like the SoC, the WiFi Module, etc.) so that they can be reused on a new board.
You never know how many will be unrecoverable, but we sure hope not too many. As Batch 2 is planned to happen shortly after Batch 1, it might be some of the late Batch 1 preorderers will get a Batch 2 unit.
We'll keep you informed!
2. Production in UK / Germany
While CircuitCo were busy building boards, we were busy as well. Not just with assembly, but also with organization (don't underestimate the amount of work needed to get Batch 2 started... it's A LOT more than I personally imagined!). Aditionally, boards that arrived here that were partly broken needed to be thoroughly tested and packed up with an explanation for CC about what's wrong with them. This also takes a lot of time - I personally needed two full days to check 30 boards (and was able to repair 10 of them myself, yay!). I think I'm now 4 weeks behind with replying to my eMails... there's so much work to do I really don't know where to start.
The LCD Cables have all been soldered now, however, quite a few of them were broken from the very beginning. With the ones that broke from the start and the few ones that still break now and then, we are about 300 cables short. No big deal, as the next 2000 are already in production - and yes, they are from a new company who did extensive testing, so no more purple haze issues!
The most annoying thing about the LCD Cables that were broken from the very beginning is though: We need to disassemble the cases again and replace the LCD cable with a new one... this takes about 10 minutes per unit, so 100 broken LCD cables mean additional two workdays!
That's where we really need to say THANKS to all of you who supported us with upgrading or buying the 7-Day-Pandoras! We really are swamped with work, and the additional money helps us a lot!
And sorry to those who can't afford it, but you can be sure we wouldn't do this if it wouldn't be necessary, those guys really help building YOUR unit as well!
3. Batch 2 progressing
As Batch 2 should start as quickly as possible after Batch 1 is finished, we are also organizing a lot of things right now.
The 4000 batteries for Batch 2 have already been produced and are currently sailing to UK. We already got cases for the first 800 units of Batch 2, which gives us a good start. Nevertheless, production for the remaining 3200 should start soon as well. Same goes for the LCD cables.
The next batch of Nubs has been ordered as well as the bare PCBs. The parts are either already lying at CC or are reserved at the distributor and ready to be delivered.
4. Production at other facilities?
As you know, there's been a lot of talk about moving to other facilities to speed up production or make it more reliable, etc. Well, that is, only if CC wouldn't work properly, but right now, they seem to be doing a good job.
They are able to produce about 800 PCBs per month right now, which is good enough for us, as we also need to build and test the units, which also takes time.
We contacted quite a few companies asking for quotatíons for Pandora PCB production. And it sure showed the Pandora is not your simple, common PCB.
The big companies either didn't want to start with orders lower than 10.000 or were booked by Apple (yep, Apple fully books multiple factories at the same time!). The smaller companies either had a long leadtime (up to 20 weeks before production would start), couldn't do it as it is way too complex or had unaffordable prices.
As CC wants to help us to optimize the board in the future to have less failures and a higher output and communication has improved a lot, we don't see any reason to move to another company right now anymore.
Never change a running system - especially if it is unsure that it will work better if you change it...
5. Things running through my head
Here's something you don't have to read if you're only interested in Pandora news, as these are some personal thoughts I had.
Quite a few might know me for a long time now: I'm always happy to help, trying to get things right (in honest ways) and I always try to please everyone. If there's anything I can do to help, I will.
When dealing with such a project however, it sure can take you down a lot. There were a lot of times where I was totally burnt out or scared of my future. If anything goes wrong, we owe you guys A LOT of money.
It would be my ruin, personally. I couldn't just stop thinking about how many trusted us and we couldn't deliver. Yes, I'm one of the guys who are not to good to handle risks emotionally. But thanks to you all, we're still here, we managed to survive.
However, I was still scared about all that... what if something goes wrong now? Having worked nearly all night and day on this project just to fail in the end and having debts of about 300.000 EUR... that really scared me a lot and made me feel uncomfortable.
Well, there was one more lesson I learnt during the last days: Whatever goes wrong now - it just money I would lose. Yes, a lot of money, but just money. I would still have food and a home to live in.
I guess everyone of you has seen the pictures and videos from Japan. A disaster. Terrible. It opened my eyes - I was being scared about a failure, where the worst case could be a lot of work with a lot of debts... but that's NOTHING compared to what all the poor people in Japan have suffered. It's absolutely nothing.
I wish I could help them, but unfortunately, there's not much I can do.
But the least I can do is write a few lines about it here... wishing them all the best. My thoughts are with the inhabitants of Japan, I hope the situation will improve soon. It's really hard to find the correct words for this situation, as everything that comes to my mind just sounds ridiculous compared to what's happening there. Words can't describe what the people are going through, and words can't ease their pain.
But I hope you are all with me when I say: Forget about the Pandora for a few minutes. Forget about any delays we had so far... give your thoughts to every single human who is suffering in Japan.
Pray for them... I will do so. The videos really showed me, how unimportant things like money, Pandoras or any other luxury items can be.
Thanks for reading.
http://www.openpandora.org/index.php...emid=2&lang=en
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