DragonBox Pyra Goes Up For Pre-Order

[uid313]

Expensive, low performance, and embarrassingly ugly.

[Klassic Six]

Expensive, low performance, and embarrassingly ugly.

Strongly agree and the worst part is it designed in Germany. Who buy this shit?

[tigerroast]

Seriously, this is going to have kernel 3.something and will not be able to update it because the driver is closed.

Not true. One of the devs was testing the devboard with a 4.x kernel, with accelerated graphics.

[tigerroast]

And give me one reason why I should buy this over a (similarly priced) VR headset... (Or hell, a PS4 or XBone? Both of which cost less than this ugly device)

You can't exactly run Linux out-of-the-box on a PS4 or XB1. Or fit them in your pocket. Nor do they come with a 4G modem installed. They are also built with one goal in mind, not being general-purpose PCs. And they're locked-down.

A VR headset is smaller and more portable than the aforementioned consoles, but I'd wager it's rather dangerous to walk around in public with one strapped to your head.

You're really comparing apples to oranges.

[tigerroast]

I pronounce OMAP as "expensive yet outdated hardware".

Well, it's a good thing the CPU board is upgradable, so that in the future, you can simply replace the CPU board if/when a new CPU board for the Pyra is made available.

[tigerroast]

Expensive, low performance, and embarrassingly ugly.

First run of a small project, CPU board is upgradable, case can be revised/replaced in the future.

[tigerroast]

Yowza. That's a heck of a chunk of change for its intended purpose. I know you're getting a lot more for your money, but you don't *need* more than an RPi 3 for N64/PS1 emulation. I wonder how much this thing would cost if they could just use an RPi as the computing platform instead of getting something purpose-built. Pi-Top with RPi is barely above $300 US.

The SparqEE CELL can only provide 3G connectivity, which is not enough for mobile data for general-purpose use (especially videos and games). Expansion for the RPi3 also leaves something to be desired for general-purpose computing, especially when compared to the many options available for the Pyra. RPi3 only has single-band 802.11n WiFi, 1GB of slower RAM, comes with a very iffy audio amp circuit (as do all models of the Pi), and cannot get Gb Ethernet (this can be achieved through the Pyra's USB3-OTG with an adapter).

[tigerroast]

Wow, that is pricey. Nearly 600 E for such a device?

Small project. First run. It's always more expensive in the beginning.

the keyboards looks ... well, not usable to operate Linux. At least I did not spot a Ctrl key or an Alt key.

CTRL and ALT are in the middle, but you can re-map the keys to the shoulder buttons if you desire.

Furthermore I'd wonder if the controller still would work well with that generic layout as a gaming controller.

The Pandora controls were designed to play anything up to PS1. The keyboard was originally intended to play DOS games with. Now that there's extra pairs of shoulder and action buttons, as well as stick click for the nubs, I reckon you'd be hard-pressed to find something where you can't at least re-map the controls to an optimal layout.

Either way I should've stopped reading and saved time when I read the keyword PowerVR.

The CPU board is upgradable. Hypothetically, down the road, they could use a more open SoC. Freescale, perhaps. Either way, you don't have to be stuck with PowerVR if the Pyra continues to take off.

[tigerroast]

Michael, you should note that the CPU board is upgradable. The SoC is on a separate PCB and can be removed and replaced by another one. While the current CPU board has PowerVR graphics, a future one can have a different GPU that's not as locked-down.

[starshipeleven]

Not true. One of the devs was testing the devboard with a 4.x kernel, with accelerated graphics.

Was an obvious exaggeration. The driver is closed, this issue will happen within a year, like with all PowerVR.