Nice introduction, thanks.
As you heard we'll talk about this little machine.
It's about the size of a Nintendo DS, and there are a few peculiarities about it.
First of all, there isn't a major corporation behind it.
This isnt' a device by Sony, Nintendo, Samsung
or some other large company.
The idea was born back in 2007
between a few people in an internet community
who were saying:
'so PSP and homebrew are nice,
but it's annoying how all the time
Sony keeps closing loopholes
and then people hack it again, just so that
we can run our own things on the device.'
And this led to the idea, 'Hey ...'
just a crazy idea at first: 'Let's try to build our own handheld.'
To figure out whether there was any way to do this.
And I'm one of those five people,
and this took a while because
there were many, many difficulties on the way.
If anyone wants to make this sort of hardware
they will at some point learn that it's not that easy.
But we did make it this far.
Now here we basically have
a complete pocket-sized miniature PC.
The great thing is, it's not just a PC,
not just a tiny netbook,
but we have game controls on here.
The reason is simply that all of us have
always been obstinate games, so ...
it was really a design specification,
we need excellent gaming controls.
A lot of people have held this thing and said
this D-Pad is among the best on the market.
Apart from that we have analogue controls,
we have a touchscreen in there
and we have the usual shoulder and face buttons.
In other words, this is a cross
between a netbook and a game console:
I can do word processing on this,
I can surf the internet, I can have it play music,
but I can just as easily use it for gaming.
Another important feature is that it's open, that is,
you won't need to jailbreak or unlock anything.
You simply get on the internet,
download games or emulators for free from hobbyist developers,
throw them on this box, and off you go.
How it works, and what you can do with it,
we'll show you live on the big screen in a minute.
But first a few basics:
Like I said, we have a keyboard,
gaming controls, high-res touchscreen,
then in the back we have ...
Don't be surprised that the colours on this don't match.
This is a prototype which has differently-coloured case parts on purpose
so I can easily tell it from the normal pandoras.
So we have the power connector,
USB, TV-out and a normal USB connection.
It's really like a little PC:
I can plug in an USB thumbdrive,
I can plug in a harddisk, I can connect
a DVB-T stick or a UMTS stick, and they'll work.
And similarly, the operating system is pretty much like on a usual PC.
I have my ordinary start menu,
which I can navigate with the D-Pad,
if I don't want to use the touchscreen all the time.
I can move the mouse pointer with the analogue controls as well.
For instance I can open my home directory,
or check the SD card to see what's on there, so
it really works much like any other PC.
And if people are saying, 'Man, that's incredibly complicated!'
It isn't really.
We made the whole system behave in such a way that
anyone who knows even a little about computers can use it.
I get the games off the internet,
download them, copy them to the SD card,
I can even do this directly on the pandora,
and then I can run the games right away.
Of course there are quite a lot of games.
A lot of them are linux ports,
which means there's everything from tiny diversions
up to relatively complicated and complex games.
For instance, here we have ...
Does anybody here know Battle for Wesnoth?
That is one of the best strategy games
available for linux, and it runs on the pandora
perfectly well and in high resolution.
That is, a small strategy game, pocket-sized,
and completely free of charge too.
The sound works, as you can here. Let's turn it down a bit.
That's another important thing I forgot to mention earlier:
We have a real volume control.
Not like with many new handhelds
where there's just a key combination or a couple of buttons for louder and softer,
no, we have a nice volume wheel.
Now here, if I start a campaign ...
let's just go with the intro ...
I have a classic strategy game right here on the big screen,
or on the go on the device's own screen.
Turn it down some more ...
Loading can take a little while, like in the PC version.
OK, let's skip the backstory.
Right. ...
Now as you can see
everything runs well, scrolls smoothly
as you'd expect from a turn-based game.
And it's displayed in high resolution.
Yeah, more backstory ...
Right. Now here I can take control,
navigate the map myself ...
I can play my turn,
move my units around as required
and once I finish my turn, of course
the computer opponent will do the same.
So this is one type of complex game
which you can run, and as you see,
It does run well.
Another thing this is really well-suited for,
and one of the reasons we're all here,
is retro games.
And there's a lot of possibilities now, so
one thing everybody knows, there is ... now where was it ...
ScummVM ...
Let me think where I keep my Scumm ...
Exactly.
Some may know this from their PC:
There are ways and means now
to revive the old Lucas Arts classics on modern hardware.
Of course this is a case for the touchscreen.
Most of you will have some vague memory of this one:
Day of the Tentacle, a true PC classic.
So these point and click adventures,
I can carry with me and play them on the go.
And they're well suited for a touchscreen, so
I can have a look around, and use anything ...
There's that too: PC classics, up to a Pentium 90 or so, will run on this.
Or particularly these adventure-type games.
Another thing you can do with this,
and these are among the showcase projects:
Let me just change the tv settings for this.
PC emulation is one thing.
But interestingly, this is also
a portable playstation.
You can use this thing
to run playstagion games.
Let me show you an example:
Here's something you can also play on the tv at our stand.
Here we have Spyro,
a proper classic for the playstation,
and as you can see, this thing runs
at full speed, no problem there.
Of course on the pandora's screen as well,
it's running full speed.
Particularly the fans of retro classics
will really enjoy this machine.
There are several other emulators as well,
other classics of course.
I expect everyone will recognise this one as well:
Probably many of you, like me, grew up with him:
Another classic, Sonic the Hedgehog.
And of course there's no problem running this either.
I just noticed, it's a little jerky here on the big TFT.
Unfortunately these new TFT screens do this to old games,
even if you plug in the original consoles.
A lot of the times there's stuttering.
But here on the small screen
you see no stutter whatsoever.
You can also test this over on the normal CRT television.
So, yeah, that's just another thing.
And then there's something which to me
is like the holy Grail of emulation,
so I'd quite like to show you.
We have ...
hold on a second, I'm launching the emulator ...
There.
This too has ...
yes.
This too has savestates.
Again a lot of you will recognise this.
If you've passed our stand, you'll have seen it somewhiere.
This is the original Turrican 2.
By which I mean, the genuine Amiga version,
that is, I have a portable pocket-sized Amiga here.
I have a portable C64, I have Super Nintendo, I have Playstation ...
Here you see how smoothly it runs.
... so here I have an Amiga emulator with no issues.
Including sound.
Let's load another game which
again quite a few might know ...
Speedball 2.
Here again it's nice to be able
to work with savestates.
This saves me the long loading times
which the Amiga used to have.
Well, and here I have
another classic, Speedball 2,
fitting in my pocket.
And this is really the essential characteristic thing about this handheld.
I have a complete emulation station for my pocket,
I can develop my own software if I want to,
but I can also join up with the community
and work on various things, and,
well, I can browse the internet, I can write email,
I can play the old classics and run new games.
All that in this little box which will fit in a pocket.
In additon I have two SD card slots,
so I can put up to 256 gigabytes of memory in there.
Now, if you're wondering how long the battery will last ...
We have a few pandoras lying around over there for people to play with,
and we don't change the batteries on these.
They run from morning to evening on one charge.
We get 12 hours of playing out of that battery.
Now if we just close the pandora
and leave it lying around somewhere, then the battery will run up to 150, 160 hours,
that is, on standby.
At home I just have this lying around,
and when I need it, when I want to play something,
I just open it and play,
and I recharge it like every three days.
But the battery is replaceable too, which means
I can buy a spare battery and keep one charged,
so I could play 24 hours on two battery charges.
Which I hope nobody will try, because
that sort of thing isn't really healthy.
But say I'm on a plane somewhere,
if I'm traveling somewhere,
I can simply read a book, I can simply type some text,
or I can simply read some comics, listen to music,
play a game or two,
all on one device.
And it is completely open too. The really important thing is the philosophy:
This device must remain open.
You will never have the problem that
one day a firmware update breaks something
because we want to block that activity,
but rather, the point of this device is:
People can do with it whatever they want.
There are different operating systems too.
Our factory default is to put on a fairly quick Linux system.
To demonstrate the 'quick' part of that,
I'll show a little example.
Now if I just launch a word processor
and then maybe some document viewer on top of that,
so I can load a PDF ... there.
Here we have a small PDF document.
I can move the windows around as usual, I can switch here,
like on an ordinary PC,
and as you see, this really works without issues.
I can maximise and minimise windows,
and it just works with no particular slowdowns.
Now I can just decide
to grab the keyboard
and I can simply type away.
As you can see, once you're used to the keyboard
you can type very quickly with this thing.
This is another advantage compared to smartphones:
I do have a smartphone with a keyboard,
but that's so small and fiddly
there's no way to really write on that.
But on the pandora, I can.
I have here a proper all-in-one device,
which is also very well supported by its community, that is,
I go on the internet and I can chat with other users,
and I can talk directly to the developers,
which I don't think is possible with any other device on the market,
and I can discuss suggestions, write my own software,
and all that goes into the community in turn.
Now many people might say 'All right, Linux ...
there's not a huge number of games.'
Well, there's another option,
which I'll show you just briefly.
Because we can also
run a complete Android on this.
So if you're thinking 'OK, Android has a few neat games,
but gaming's just not the same without a D-Pad'
then you can run your games on this.
Let's see: Ooooh, I might need my other SD card for htis.
Do I ... yes, I do.
I'll just quickly switch cards.
Right.
Another nice feature: All the software and the games are stored on SD cards, as I mentioned.
Now if I just remove my card and put it in another pandora,
I'll have all my saves and all my software
right there on the other pandora.
So that's another nice thing:
If you're running two or three of these at home, and everyone has their SD card ...
there's no need to transfer the data from one device to the other by some detour,
because it's really all right there on the card.
Right. Now here we see ...
I'm just quickly booting Android.
That runs reasonably quickly on the Pandora as well,
and it'll let us demonstrate what's possible e.g. in terms of 3D.
Just takes a while to start.
Now. This will look familiar to anyone who has a smartphone.
We have no internet connection at the moment,
which is why it can't update the weather information.
So here I have your basic Android.
As you can see it's quite responsive too.
Now for a demo I'll use
this little racing game I once bought for 2 Euros.
And again here: Sound works.
And the nice thing is, this game runs
entirely using the gaming controls.
So I don't have to fiddle with the screen,
but I can play it while looking at the big TV.
And here you also see what this thing can do 3D-wise.
We have beautiful, high-resolution 3D graphics,
which is also running smoothly with no problem.
So it's really ...
It's not so easy to explain the Pandora,
because it's quite the grab bag of features,
and it does practically everything.
Now that I see your Angry Birds T-shirt over there:
Angry Birds would of course run as well,
because it does have a touchscreen.
So there again I have quite a few options.
For instance, a classic like World of Goo,
another typical touchscreen game, which runs smoothly as well.
The intro ...
So if I go here and start a level,
via 3d again,
'Flying Machine'
Again it's easy to see ...
Well, on the device's own screen it's less jerky.
Looks like once again the big screen can' t keep up.
But ...
Again you can see
that the touchscreen works beautifully here.
And, well, that's pretty much it for this level,
if you know this level, because they're floating upwards now.
But once again: Android games on the go,
linux games on the go, emulators on the go,
and everything is open, and whoever wants to can do something helpful within the community.
Now. If anyone has any questions about this device, I'm available and happy to explain.
Maybe some questions have come up.
Otherwise, we have our stand over there
with several Pandoras for you to try out.
And our staff is threre, who will answer any questions about the device,
and who will be happy to demonstrate things.
The price, with the normal version, is 440 Euros.
We basically have ... in two weeks we're offering another, slightly faster version.
That will be 666 Euros,
but that's mainly useful if you want to
do PC emulation mainly.
That'll run Win 95 with Starcraft, for instance.
Or if I want to use this PC to have Firefox open with 20 tabs.
But if all I want to do is play,
like Playstation etc., all that will run on the ordinary version,
entirely at full speed.
And that really is, weeeelll...
this device is special in the sense
that there's a really small team behind it.
I think it's really the first one that I know of
which wasn't developed by a major company.
By the way, we funded the whole thing through a community
before Kickstarter was a thing.
And if you're thinking, 'hey, didn't I hear
about this device four years ago?'
That's correct.
We had major issues with our assembly company in Texas,
they never managed to get the process right, and caused us a lot of wastage.
Now we've moved production to Germany, and all of a sudden it's going well.
We can now produce up to 250 units per week.
So there's no shortage any more.
You can now order this on the internet,
and it'll be delivered right away.
Any other questions?
Or requests to show something?