Mobile hardware for the coat pocket?

Crivens

Crivens

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I'm thinking about getting me one of these Pandora devices. Basically, what I want is some small device running some open source system, but I am not bound to a specific arch. So a MIPS/ARM/PPC/... based device would be really nice.

Has someone any experience with the Pandora or can recommend something else? Running *BSD would be a bonus, but Linux would also fit the bill.
 
Was looking at this very thing as well.
I also settled on the pandora after looking into many other (smaller) contenders. Packs a lot of punch in that one board.
Also liked the less capable beagleboard http://beagleboard.org/.
 
What is your experience with the Pandora?
 
Sorry, I was somewhat ambiguous in my wording there. I do not actually own a Pandora yet but as a result of some research last fall on the topic I had come to the conclusion that the Pandora would be the best way to go (at the time).

Following this thread, as I also would be interested in hearing about others' experiences with Pandora and FreeBSD.


EDIT:
I'm an idiot. Not only did I fail to supply any useful information in my above post, I just now realized I read "Pandora" and mentally replaced it with "PandaBoard". 2 very different things. How embarrassing.
I will now sit quietly in the corner and keep silent.
 
Ah, ok. I feared as much.
Because before I shell out that kind of money, mainly to watch movies and do some light programming, I'd like some arguments to present to my better half ;)
 
OK, I finally caved in and ordered one Pandora.

That is more money than I spend at the pump to fill my car for one year, but less than what I spend on restaurant bills in 3 months. And I use my car almost each day ;)
 
I will report about that, sure enough. But first, the thing will run some Linux - no idea if I can make it boot FreeBSD. The -CURRENT has some configurations for that chip, that I checked before filing the purchase order.

Software which is readily available is, f.e., CodeBlocks or FreePascal. Oh, and Quake :)
Might be some time before I can test something. ;)
 
So, my Pandora arrived a week ago. Now I am forced to plug it in for recharging, and I have some minutes to write my first impressions:

  • Build quality
    • The Pandora is a bit thicker than expected, I would have liked it being a bit slimmer. Like this it would not really fit into a suit jacket without showing it's bulk. Good thing I very seldom have to wear a suit.
    • The case is plastic, no piano finish - which means no finger prints all over the place.
    • Something itches in my fingers to check how a custom made aluminium/carbon case would look like on it.
  • Handling
    • The keyboard is a little cramped, but what do you expect from something that can be carried around in your pants pocket? The shoulder buttons on the left and right are mapped to shift and control, making typing with your thumbs quite good once you settle for the right holding grip, which depends on your hand size.
    • The touchscreen is good, the resolution with 800x480 is adequate but 800x600 would feel more comfortable. Sometimes windows would open partly outside the screen, forcing you to shift them up to reach some buttons.
    • Runtime is given as 10 hours straight, which can be confirmed. I used it for one week, playing text adventures in bed, playing music, doing some light coding and the battery would not give up for a week. (take that, smartphone!)
  • OS
    • The Pandora runs Angstroem Linux out of the box. According to the web it is quite easy to run Debian on it simply by extracting a system on an SD Card and create a file on it telling uBoot to boot the card instead of the internal flash. This is a good thing as it makes bricking the hardware nearly impossible. System won't boot? Take out the card or use the key combo to get to the uBoot boot selector and you have a running OS.
  • Packages
    • Software for the Pandora comes as .pnd files. These are complete file system images which get mounted using a loop back and the resulting directory is then layered above the system by using the Linux way of unionfs mounts. I had to deal with this AUFS before, it is usable bot far from perfect. For example it has problems with moving of files, so you may expect programs to misbehave who do this. CMake is one of them.
    • On the upside, once you reboot you have a clean system again with no residues from the applications/games left. Good thinking on that, but it is what you would expect from a game console, would you?
    • I'll check if I can build a version of FreeBSD for the SoC inside and test if uBoot can boot it out of the box. Next month I may have some time for that.
  • Usability
    • I tried CodeBlocks on the Pandora. Due to the nature of the app format you need to supply your password on any startup. Also, on the small screen, the IDE leaves about two lines of text in the source window. You need to clean up the view, close some other subwindows, and then you may find it usable. CodeBlocks also comes with a command line mode, which I prefer. After starting it you can use cc, gcc or clang. Compile times are quite good, considering it is not a desktop. I'll check if I can build something bigger on it. Once a cross compiled SD card boots, it may need to build some ports ;)
    • The external display cable is currently not available. The USB connector can only speak USB2.0, so you would need a hub anyway when connecting more than one device. You may connect a hub and mouse + keyboard to that hub, and enjoy some kind of pocket workstation.
More to follow later.
 
Interesting! Thanks for the update on this.

I was interested... yet, for me, for that kind of money ($600), I'd rather buy a not-so-portable laptop (ThinkPad X200 or X201).

Any pics of your device?
 
Thanks to DD for the re-format. I was typing the text offline.

Pictures can be found here, the smallest unit starts at about 280€ (364 US$). OK, I took the bigger one, but I have plans <insert manical laughter>.

If you intend not to play games on it, the 3D chip will not really matter to you. And that is the difference between the lowest spec and the mid spec one. And the memory capacity.

I'll need to check how much memory my device needs for what I do. Once FreeBSD works on it, using a spartan desktop (various threads here) should reduce memory requirements somewhat. Currently they run XFCE4, but I think there is room for savings. A fast mass storage card would IMHO speed things up also. Currently I have no idea if the SoC can use both card slots independently at full speed, but using a RAID from SD cards may severely improve IO performance.

In the end, when comparing the hardware specs to the machine I used to develop my most loved software on, I'd say it is completely oversized.

But yesterdays bloat is todays streamline, is it not?

OK, so now I'll check if I can crossbuild a booting SD card for it.
 
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