IZation Labs

We’ve all heard of the ‘PSP’, Nintendo DS, and the numerous other handheld systems that dominate the mobile gaming market. There’s nothing wrong with them, some of them are pretty fun to have. But true tech-heads know better than to obsess over such childish systems, right? A real machine can’t be built by a big company like Nintendo or Sony. Put it this way; who would you rather buy an 800 dollar computer from? Circuit City, or your tech junkie friend who offered to build one for you? Exactly.

A few years back a handheld called the GP32 was released. It was practically the first of its kind. While it ended its run with nearly 30 commercial games under it’s belt, It was hacker friendly. It ran linux and everyone was welcome, no, encouraged to code for it. Imagine trying to get Sony to do that with the PSP. This diy attitude is commonly known as homebrew. The GP32 was a homebrew game system. And it developed a relatively huge following.

The GP32 couldn’t be found in many regular stores, but they could be readily purchased off of the internet. It ended up selling 30,000 units or so.

But there was dissent among the ranks at Gamepark, the company that produced the GP32. Some of the employees wanted to keep the console open source, so to speak. They thought it was important to continue to create consoles that can be easily modified and coded for. The others didn’t. So they broke apart. The ones who wanted to create hacker friendly systems became Gamepark Holdings, and the employees who wanted to create a more commercial console found themselves out of a job when Gamepark went bankrupt.

Gamepark Holdings, however, seemed to prosper with their release of the GP2X.

The GP2X was quite a beast. Like its younger brother, it had a few commercial games released and a large homebrew following. *Personal Note. I have spent more hours playing with this handheld than any other PSP, DS, or Gameboy I have ever owned.* The ability to emulate older systems like the SNES, NEO GEO, and even computers kept it apart from the rest of the gaming world. Once again, you would never find this in your local Walmart, you would have to order it off of the internet. Incidentally, it was one of the best systems I have ever owned.

A minor revision saw the GP2X with a superficial makeover and a touch screen. It was called the GP2X f-200. It added touchscreen functionality to the built in operating system and any game that the developer would support. The handheld didn’t only let you play games. It could do practically everything the PSP could do, in many cases going above and beyond. Watching videos in various formats, listening to music, looking at pictures, even reading e-books.

As the GP2X ended its run, a few new systems from Gamepark have emerged. They have the potential to be a nice little series of handhelds, but their announcement has been over shadowed by the announcement of an even more monumental system.

The Pandora.

The Pandora is about to become all that the GP2X aspired to be. The basic story is that a group of hardware and software hackers got together on the GP2X and GP32 forums and started asking people what they want to see in their next gen handhelds. They came back with tons of input. Based on that input the team started designing and building the Pandora. The highlights are in the specs.

• Texas Instruments OMAP3530 processor at 600MHz (Manufacturer reports that it can be overclocked to 900MHz^[7])
• 256MB DDR-333 SDRAM
• 512MB NAND FLASH memory
• IVA2+ audio and video processor (based on the TMS320C64x+ DSP Core at 430MHz) using Texas Instruments’s DaVinci technology
• ARM Cortex-A8 superscalar microprocessor core
• PowerVR SGX 530 (110 MHz) OpenGL ES 2.0 compliant 3D hardware
• Integrated Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• Integrated Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (3Mbit/s) (Class 2, +4dBm)^[8]
• 800×480 resolution touchscreen LCD, 4.3″ widescreen, 16.7 million colors (300 cd/m2 brightness, 450:1 contrast ratio)
• Dual analog nubs; 15mm diameter, concave, 2mm travel from centre
• Full gamepad controls plus shoulder buttons
• Dual SDHC card slots (currently up to 64GB of storage, supports SDIO)
• Headphone output up to 150mW/channel into 16 ohms, 99dB SNR
• TV output (composite and S-Video)
• Internal microphone plus ability to connect external microphone through headset
• 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
• USB 2.0 OTG port (480Mb/s) with capability to charge the Pandora
• USB 2.0 HOST port (480Mb/s) capable of providing standard 500mA current to attached devices
• Externally accessible UART for hardware hacking and debugging
• Brick prevention with integrated bootloader for safe code experimentation
• Runs the Linux kernel (2.6.x)
• 4000mAH rechargeable lithium ion battery
• Estimated 10 hours of runtime for video / general applications and 100 hours for music playback
• Dimensions: 140×83x27mm^[8](5.51×3.27×1.06 in) (nearly the same as a DS Lite)

Preorders have been made, and the first batch has sold out with no more systems being produced until 2009. Out of the box, it is powerful enough to emulate the original Playstation console with striking clarity. To put it all together in one sentence; The combined processing power of the Pandora is twice that of the original Xbox system, and it can do so much more. The open source and homebrew following that this system has sold 2000 units in 6 hours, and sold out in much less than a week. As of Christmas 2008, this device is far superior to any other handheld on the market, and it comes in costing 330 USD.

This video is a Mark 0 Pandora, development version. The final product looks like the image pictured above. Ignore the commercial fanboys who talk down the Pandora and prefer their Nintendo DS. Tell them to look at the specs, and when they are blown away, just say “I told you so,” and walk away. For more detailed specs, check out this page on their wiki. When the next systems are being sold, I’ll be buying one, so keep an eye out for a review. I can’t wait!

We spent the better part of five hours at the Propeller expo yesterday, and it was an enormous success. I am happy to hear that they are most certainly going to try to make this an annual event! It was every interesting, I met some amazing people and they made both myself and my significant other, Genny, feel extremely welcome.

We arrived a little late, as we had a previous engagement. The expo started early in the morning, around 8 or 9-ish, but we arrived closer to 12:30. The expo itself had upwards of 70 people there, some of them from as far away as California, and we even had Paul Baker, a Parallax Applications Engineer there to speak with us. It was only a forty minute drive for us, but it would have been well worth the trip no matter how far the drive.

There were all kinds of projects on display, created by people ranging in age from 11 to upper 50s at least. There were autonomous vehicles, lighting displays, product demos, a magic touchscreen Etch-a-sketch, and even a set of bells hacked to ring when their corresponding notes on a midi keyboard are pressed.

A special mention goes out to a young man named Thomas. He is eleven years old and is positively brilliant. He nearly has a savant-level of understanding of computers and technology. Let me illustrate.

While we were talking, I mentioned that it looked like his (yes, his) Macbook Pro had crashed. He said that it was actually just a screensaver he had located on the net that consisted of crash and error codes from unix and linux based operating systems, as well as various other programs. Wow. Okay.

He is running Parallels on his Macbook Pro, so that he can interface his microcontrollers with the computer, and showed me an example of writing a very simple “Hello World” program for his Propeller, which we got on the topic of after I asked about freedos, or something to that effect.

He also pulled up some files from his home ftp server that he had set up. He saved a Dell Optiplex from being trashed at a local mechanic shop and installed freenas on it, which is a Free Network Attached Storage system. He then routed it and set it up so he could call up files on his home computer from anywhere in the world via the internet.

Keep in mind that this young man is only eleven years old. I can’t impress upon you enough just how blown away I was. I think he could have out-coded my electronics professors from last years classes when it came to the Propeller. His father is very proud, and tells us that Thomas is almost entirely self-taught. He said that he listens to what Thomas tells him, nods politely, absorbs as much information as he can, and then gets out of the way. Thomas is an active member of the Parallax forums, and I’m sure that he has a very bright future ahead of him. I hope to see him again next year!

For a ten dollar per person entrance fee, everybody left with at least 130 dollars worth of components, including two Propeller Prototyping USB boards, two forty pin DIP propeller chips, and a ultrasonic sensor module. There was even a sensor product manual, a propeller sticker, and a fancy little spinning propeller that I enjoy flying outside. :] There were multiple vendors there, and its a good thing that they didn’t take debit or I would have spent a lot more than I did.

While there I picked up 15 one dollar solar cells, each one rated at 4V open, and 80 MAs.
I also purchased a 50 pack of USB connectors for 5 bucks, and a Micro datapad, which is a very popular little piece of equipment when your microcontroller projects require user input.
Altogether I spent 22 dollars on other items.

There were quite a few speakers, the most prominent one being Paul Baker from Parallax. There were also prizes given out throughout the day, ranging from sensor kits and professional development boards to Boe-bots and Hydra kits. We didn’t win any, which was okay, because I was already extremely satisfied with my ‘haul’.

The man who set up the entire event, Jeff Ledger, has posted a gallery of images from the event, so if you want more pictures, head on over here. Thanks Jeff! My full gallery can be found on the next page.