Official News

EvilDragon's Pre-Order Survey Thread

Thu, 09 May 2013 22:38:33 +0000

Just a quick information:

I got the results of the survey.

Everyone who chose to upgrade for 270 EUR will get an eMail real soon as well as the first ones who selected to get it for 200 EUR.

If you haven't gotten your survey link email although you tried to contact Craig, you can also let me know your details.

In that case, send me a PM with your order number and address and choose what you would like:

* A 1GHz RIGHT away (for 270 EUR)

* A 1GHz (for 200 EUR), would be the next ones to get it.

* A 1GHz (for 150 EUR), they come after the 200 EUR ones

* A 1GHz (for 100 EUR), they come after the 150 EUR ones.

* A Rebirth (without any payment), though this might take a while

* A CC unit (without any payment), should happen faster as well

TV-Out Cable - Prototype finished (2013-05-03)

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:18:11 +0000

Global Components just received a prototype for the TV Out Cables!

I'm going to pick it up today and will do a lot of testing with it.

If it works fine, it's finally time to go ahead and start the mass production (takes about 2 months - yes, REALLY ))

Remember: If you're interesting in getting one, please put yourself on the waiting list on the shop:

https://www.dragonbox.de/en/accessories/119-pandora-tv-out-cable.html

This helps me to find out how many cables I need to order and you'll also receive an eMail as soon as the cable is finished.

(If you already preordered right from the beginning, no need to do that, we got your order already).

Now, about already preordered cables:

I'm currently trying to ship out the cables to everyone who has preordered and paid one without any further costs (means: to both mine and Craigs customers).

However, Craig has over 500 customers waiting for a TV Out cable, which means it'll cost me a couple of thousand euro to ship them out.

I'm trying to compensate this, if everything works out fine, you'll all get them without any further payments.

But I cannot tell for sure if this works. In worst case, I'll have to charge production and shipping costs for you - but will give you a corresponding voucher for my shop as compensation.

So i.e. if I have to charge 10 EUR for the TV Out Cable, you'll get a 10 EUR voucher and could use that to order an SD Card cheaper together with it).

I'll let you all know in time

Attached Thumbnails

Final preorders, action required

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:34:48 +0000

Hello!

I hope you are all well.

Those of you on the final (old) preorder list will be getting an email this week, action will be required when you get this.

I'll post here when we send this email, there will be a multiple choice question which I'm writing a perl script to handle now.

This is so I and Ed can finalise what we need to do to finish up the preorders.

Thanks,

Craig

One queue cleared, TV Out cables finally coming and some other tidbits (2013-03-20)

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 04:12:11 +0000

Wow, it has been quite some time since the last official news post - and quite a few good things happened since then.
I'll try to do a summary and hope I won't forget anything important.

One queue cleared - let's clear the next one as well!

Thanks to some generous customers in my queue who upgraded to the 1GHz version, my queue advanced a lot faster than I imagined... and is now CLEAR! Thanks a lot!

I just finished sending the remaining address confirmation emails to my customers.
However, some emails have not been answered. So if you ordered from me (gp2x Shop) and haven't received your email or unit let, please head over to www.dragonbox.de and use the contact form to let me know your order number.

Let's hope we'll be able to clear Craigs queue as well. We don't know an exact amount of customers left, but I will do my best to keep the deliveries going.
There are some ways to speed things up... for example...

Support us and the investors by upgrading to a 1GHz unit

I know quite a lot of you are sad, angry and disappointed for having waited so long and still didn't get your unit.
I want to personally support you as good as possible and will do so by sending out units I can afford from my profit.

But I'm limited to what I can do and I sure do not have unlimited funds (unless someone wants to sponsor me a few 100K EUR ))

So if you can afford it and want to support me and others waiting in Craigs queue, it would really be helpful if you upgrade your preorder to an instant-delivery-1GHz-one.

This would not only get you a faster unit immediately, but it would also clear the queue... and help me get the money quicker to pay the investors back.

I would personally be thankful, but I can also understand if you don't want to put more money into the Pandora.
The upgrade price would be 270 EUR (without VAT). That is the mere production costs, I'd love to give it to you cheaper, but I can't afford to make debts here.

If you want to upgrade, please send an email with the upgrade wish and your order number to openpandorasales@gmail.com
They'll send you a voucher and an information how to upgrade. Don't worry, the full upgrade process (incl. payment) and shipping will be handled by me, so you can be sure the unit will REALLY ship right away.

The preorder donation fund

The preorder fund has also been a great success so far:
Community members are helping out to clear the queue by donating money - either to fund full units or allow a limited amount of customers a cheaper preorder-upgrade.
Thanks to everyone donating so far!

If every regular visitor would donate 1 EUR per day, we could ship 3 Pandoras each 2 days - that would be amazing (but highly unlikely, of course).
But it shows that even small donations can help a lot

If you haven't seen it, check it out here.

Support us and get a signed, fully populated defective PCB

As some of you would get something back for their donation, here's something special:
I've got a few defective Pandora PCBs, fully populated but non-booting, signed by me.

This might be interesting for some collectors out there.
If you want to check it out, head over to my shop.

I hope to add more merchandising accessories soon as well.
Thanks for the support!

The TV Out Cables

It has been quiet for quite a while for the TV out Cables.
That's because it was really hard to find a company that can produce the cables in quantities below 10,000 for an affordable price.
But Global Components did it once again - they found acompany and I'll receive the prototype in about 4 weeks.
If that cable is fine, the mass production will be finished after 7 weeks.

If you are interested in getting the cable, please head over to my shop and put yourself on the notification list. This will help me knowing how many cables I actually need to order.

Promotion and Sales

Quite a few blogs and other press news sites have currently a Pandora for a review.

I agreed witht them to take their time, as the Pandora is not an item that can be reviewed within a few hours.

I rather have it they keep it for about 2 weeks before writing their review - otherwise, it's not really possible to give it a fair review.

So expect some more publicity soon. ekianjo also did a great start with his new blog!

Software developments

A lot of amazing developments have happened.

We've got a great Nintendo DS emulator now, a lot of new games and other software has been released with the DragonBox Coding Competition, and lunixbochs libGL (OpenGL wrapper) is becoming better and better, so we'll probably see quite a few more OpenGL games heading to the Pandora soon.

skeezix also created something awesome: Compo4All.

It combines modern leaderboard-online-gaming with classic Hiscore-Arcade-Competitions.

Play classic MAME games like Bubble Bobble, Ms. Pac Man, Mr. Do, Donkey Kong and more against other community members in an online leaderboard battle.

You should really try it out, it's a lot of fun!

Amazing times ahead!

I think that's enough for a current summary.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks to you all for your great support - without you, the Pandora would've been dead already, that's for sure.

2013 DragonBox Coding competition closed!

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 23:28:15 +0000

Hello,

What an impressive selection of applications we have this year.

I am pleased to announce the competition closed.

Our entries this year are as follows:

Applications:

apkenv + apkenv.ui - Submitted by crow_riot

Claws Mail - Submitted by Canseco

Code::Blocks and CommandLine Compile Everything - Submitted by ptitSeb

EasyTAG - Submitted by Canseco

Imagination 3.0 - Submitted by Farox

LibreOffice 4.1 - Submitted by ptitSeb

PLUM - Submitted by freamon

potpourli - Submitted by DREDD

RISC OS - Submitted by Raik

SOLEIL - Submitted by Linux-SWAT

Xplanet - Submitted by F_Slim

Total of 11 Applications

Emulators:

8Blitter - Submitted by Lordus.

DraStic - Submitted by Exophase

PPSSPP - Submitted by ptitSeb

Total of 3 Emulators

Original Games:

AquaVenture - Submitted by iprice

Chav Fighter - Submitted by slenkar

Earth Invasion - Submitted by mcobit
Escape from Castle - Submitted by KidPaddle

Eval Master - Submitted by Linux-SWAT

Frootopia - Submitted by iprice

Hexgem - Submitted by pepone

Microbes! - Submitted by _wb_

Muon - Submitted by slaeshjag

Number Mind - Submitted by Yoshi

P01: Trigger Happy - Submitted by pmprog

Puzzletube - Submitted by Ziz

zTunnel - Submitted by Green7

Total of 13 Original Games

Ported Games:

EDuke32 - Submitted by mcobit

PanLink - By Nilsnsn

Stratagus - Submitted by Canseco

Widelands - Submitted by Canseco

XLogical - Submitted by ptitSeb

Total of 5 Ported Games

All up we have 32 entries which have been announced here on OpenPandora Boards. There's bound to be more that ED knows about