Pyra Handheld Preorder Has Launched!

[kojack]

https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/

The Pyra is the sequel to the Open Pandora.
Imagine a linux based laptop with dual core cpu, touch screen, back lit keyboard, heap of ports (including usb2, usb3, hdmi and sata), sd and micro sd slots.
Now also imagine it's small enough to fit in your pocket (the size of the first Nintendo DS).




The Pyra runs on a 1.5GHz Omap 5 ARM Cortex A15 cpu (the cpu is on a socketed board so can be expanded later).
It has a 720p 5" resistive touch screen (resistive due to more accurate tracking of a stylus).
It includes a D-Pad, dual analog joysticks, ABXY buttons and 4 shoulder buttons, since one of the purposes of the Pyra is retro game emulation.
It's got 32GB of internal storage, a micro sdxc slot in the battery compartment and dual sdxc card slots on the front.
It's not running a mobile OS, it's basically a full desktop linux distro built for ARM.


The original Pandora had crazy long battery life and great audio quality, so the Pyra should be similar. The Pandora (with a 600MHz Cortex A8 cpu) was able to emulate an Amiga and Playstation 1 at full speed, and could even run dos games like Balder's Gate in dosbox, the Pyra will be much faster.


At the moment the preorder is a partial payment used to begin manufacturing. The Pyras with 2GB or 4GB of ram have a preorder cost of 330 euros, with another 170 (for 2GB) or 200 (for 4GB) euros paid when shipped. There's also versions with 4G mobile support, it costs 400 euros for preorder with a further 200 (2GB) or 230 (4GB) euros when shipped.


The OS is open source (except the drivers for certain bits like the GPU, that can't be avoided, the manufacturers won't give out source). The case is designed to be easy to open in case you want to hack around in it. The full specs for the case will be released. As a complete opposite of Oculus and Microsoft, the Pyra OS has zero info phoned home to Dragonbox.


The main purpose of the Pyra (and Pandora before it) is retro gaming. The Pandora had emulators for everything (DOS, N64, Playstation, Amiga, C64, Mame, etc) and they ran great. But since it used a desktop OS, you could do word processors, coding (I had Codeblocks and GCC on my Pandora), whatever. It's a great little tool for sys admins, a full linux terminal with wifi in your pocket.

[VizionVR]

What do you think about this for an HTPC? Any heat issues over time?

[tommet]

If you want an ARM based HTPC you'd probably be better looking at a RP3 or an Odroid C2.  (RP3 has better community support, but the Odroid C2 is more capable processor wise.)

[cybereality]

Everything about it sounds good, though I'm not sure I dig the color.

[kojack]

VizionVR said:

What do you think about this for an HTPC? Any heat issues over time?

It would technically be fine at that, although it's not really designed as a set top box. A dedicated unit, or even a raspberry pi, would be vastly cheaper.
It would probably be great as a controller for a chrome cast though.

cybereality said:

Everything about it sounds good, though I'm not sure I dig the color.

That's just a render. The final colours will be decided later (possibly a selection). Currently the prototypes are transparent. It's very likely going to have a black one, like the Pandora.


Here's a video of the prototype from march.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4t9Ys8wI6k

[cybereality]

Ah, OK. Thing looks cool actually, but I don't think it's for me (not sure where I would ever use anything like this). Most casual gaming use can be done by my phone, and if I want to do serious programs or work, I can use the Surface Pro tablet I recently got. But I could understand the appeal for some people.

[Aldha]

I like the specs and the fact that it's Linux based (for reasons other than gaming). But for gaming, I'm more interested in GPD's Win10 Console, with windows 10 I'll have access to more games, and the design is pretty cool.

[kojack]

Yeah, the GPD does look pretty cool. I don't like the keyboard though, it doesn't look like the gaps are distinguished enough. The Pandora keyboard was surprisingly good.

Battery life of an Intel Atom running Win 10 vs an Arm running Linux though? Even Microsoft can't get their Surface Pro 4 to come close to the advertised battery life. The Pandora used to be able to get up to 100 hours of music playback if you turned the screen off.

One thing that was really cool on the Pandora was it's PND package system. A PND was a container for prebuilt apps with metadata that described how to use them. When you inserted an SD Card, the system scanned certain locations for PNDs. Any it found would be automatically installed into the OS (environment variables, paths, desktop icons, menus, etc). When you ejected the card, everything was cleanly removed again. For example, insert a card set up for programming and within seconds you have a full dev environment, then eject and nothing is left behind. You could also put alternative operating systems on SD cards and boot them, use one slot for OS and one slot for apps/data/games. Dual sd card slots seems excessive, but my Pandora was never without both slots occupied.
(This was needed because the Pandora had a tiny amount of EEPROM for the OS onboard. The Pyra has much more, plus a microsd card for extra storage)

[cybereality]

That GPD thing looks cool (and definitely more sexy than the Pyra render) but I'm not sure about the Atom chip. I had an Atom netbook and the performance was horrible, even for simple stuff like web browsing. But maybe the tech has improved lately.

[kojack]

An update to this ancient thread.

I received my Pyra today! Yes, I ordered it in May 2016, almost a month before my CV1 shipped.

A tiny team and various manufacturing issues (plus a pandemic) delayed it quite a bit.