Intro & Faq Options

[Ferret-Simpson]

KK, well back on topic: We should set a definate date to finalise the hardware specification, and I think it should be a little earlier than you first estimated. If we finalise in December-ish, then the product won't be availbe for a good few months after that, by which time the list of available hardware and how it's interfaced will have changed and we'll have to begin again.

I'd say we should freeze the hardware list in early october-time for ALL developers. That would put us on track for something along the lines of a Q1-2/2K7 release. . . Right? But definately, we should have a Date, and GMT time so there's no confusion. Any posts after that can then be reasonably ignored, without "But you never said. . .!"

[Da_Blitz]

mmm, if you had read the link for the pcb people i gave out then you would relise that they are "rapid prototype specilists", i have had boards back from them in 1 week from the order date.

hardware gets frozen in the next couple of weeks, i dont have time to fiddle around for that long, the PCB design will take me alot of time

you seem to have in your head that we will be doing a limited production run, in fact there will be no production run. what happens is i give you the files, you send it off to the rapid prototyping company and they send you back a bouard, that way i dont have to collect any money and therefore i cant run away with it all and leave you guys with nothing while i buy a cluster of Z's

i expect it will take them 2 weeks to build the board and ship it from the day i send my order out.

[adf]

mmm, if you had read the link for the pcb people i gave out then you would relise that they are "rapid prototype specilists", i have had boards back from them in 1 week from the order date.

hardware gets frozen in the next couple of weeks, i dont have time to fiddle around for that long, the PCB design will take me alot of time

you seem to have in your head that we will be doing a limited production run, in fact there will be no production run. what happens is i give you the files, you send it off to the rapid prototyping company and they send you back a bouard, that way i dont have to collect any money and therefore i cant run away with it all and leave you guys with nothing while i buy a cluster of Z's

i expect it will take them 2 weeks to build the board and ship it from the day i send my order out.

If you sent me just a board, I'd be pretty disapointed

[Ferret-Simpson]

heh, The point of this is that we'll be buying the case etc separately ADF. We'll design it, and then there'll be a universal blueprint that we can have made up to order.

This way, we don't have to get FCC verification, or the equivalent in every other country we want to ship it too.

DB, I was making the point that it usually takes some time to put together the schematic, get one built, bug test it, get a second prototype built, bugtest that.

[Da_Blitz]

hopefully there wont be a second prototype, however the funds avalible just went up a bit

i am aware of that, but keep in mind that i am running on my own schedule which i havent made public and most likly wont (so you cant hold me to it). i am intrested to see how quickly i can achive everything

[INTERROBANG]

Security:
Key-signing of OS to prevent Unauthorised OS replacement.


I hope I'm not the only one who sees a problem with this.

[Da_Blitz]

i would take a guess and say "yes you are"

i dont really care, i have said all along that the user will hold the keys, not me. i will keep your keys in storage if you email them to me but that will be a security risk (if posible it will be done with a crypted email using pgp)

i will not ship with the keys in place, its optional but i will tell you how to make the device unhackable as posible.. you will be in full control. but if you F**** it up you will not be able to do anything with the device without compleatly lossing all data on the device.

also i have recently seen an in kernel key mechinism that will only allow signed kernel modules to run, its currently in fedora core 5 and has intresting posibilities for helping to enhance security

[Ferret-Simpson]

I can see about 20 problems with the keyboard, But the security? No. . I don't see a problem. . .

Generally, if you can assemble a PocketPenguin from the component parts, and you can use what is likely to be a Slackware or Gentoo based Operating system. . .

Then you should really be able to handle basic security. . .

[Da_Blitz]

that brings up an intresting point, out of the box you will need to know somthing to get it running, even if thats just which file to put on an SD card on first boot

of course the security i am trying to provide (ie against an offline attack) is not somthing i expect most people how know about securtiy to know how to implement properly

actually i would say that the key signing stuff comes more under the integrity column rather than security, while it is a way to help improve security it is an entity in its own right.

[Ferret-Simpson]

Ok, the project seems to have ground completely to a halt, with us all getting sidetracked by laptops and watches and all sorts of other fun!

Where does it stand right now, on the PocketPenguin!?

[Da_Blitz]

well its basically about chipsets, i know most of the chipsets i want but if i wanted to i could start wiring everything together and add things as required

pcb software is also somthing i have been wondering about as i do have some top end sotware but i cant exacttly let you guys have a copy if you want to modifiy it (basically not open source ) i could do what the open graphics card guys do however and print the design to PDF but i think that wouldnt be nearly as usefull to someone who wonts to submit a patch

as it is however i think i would be the only one working on it anyway

plus i might have found a radio engineer who could give me some advice (for UTMS and such)

[Dromede]

maybe it would be a good idea to make two versions of the pocketpenguin, one would be just a pda (without the baseband processor etc.) and the other would be a phone/pda. i just dont believe in pda/phone combinations because the batteries are still not up for it. i have a motorola a925 and i often find myself wasting two batteries in less than 8 hours which basically leaves me phoneless. and i need my phone to be on 24/7. i dont understand why should we (well, mostly da_blitz :-> ) try to build a proper phone/pda. there are lots of good phones out there, lets just concentrate on the pda/pocketpc aspect of the thing. i for one would love the price to go down to about 500$ and a form factor thats between the zaurii and the sigmarion 3.
oh yeah....

AND A BIG, FAT KAZILLION MaH BATTERY!!!! *_*

[Da_Blitz]

yes i would agree with you but i am still of the mind that if you dont want it then dont specify the chipset when you order it and it wont be soldered in

some things are unavodable, the gps chipset will in use the same chipset so some radios chips will be required as well as the wifi and such sharing antennas, but the option to drop most of the chips there and i only have to make one design then

i have a htc tytn now which i got just in time (fried the Z) and i get good battery life on it but i think the real killer is charging off of USB and possibly USB host (still researching that one as well as the posibility it has a disabled gps chip in it)

[Dromede]

sharing antennas? does that mean that it isnt possible to use wifi and gps at the same time? do you have a final candidate for a gps chip?

[Da_Blitz]

all an antenna is is a peice of wire, for maximum power transfer it should be 1/4 the wavlength long so an optimol wifi antenna is diffrent in length from a fm radio

dont worry everything will work at the same time i hope

for the chipsets i am getting very sneaky (perhaps too sneaky) and using the same chipsets as those that have linux ports already if posible. otherwise i do have 2 chipsets in mind.