User manual

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The Pandora.

So your Pandora just arrived after being in the post for two months. Jolly good! But now that it's actually here, what on earth do you do with it? Don't panic! Let's take a look at what's included in the box (so you don't miss anything!) and then hop on over to setting it up for that extended Ms. Pacman marathon you've been waiting for!

Also, don't forget to hit up GP32X for questions/info/apps/fun/discussion! Ask on the Official Open Pandora forum if you want a definitive answer.

If you find a problem which is not explained after visiting the forum, be sure to report it in the Bug Tracker

Quick Start Guide

If you just want a quick walkthrough on how things work (tl;dr) have a look here

Introduction

The Pandora is a combination PC and game console. It has gaming controls (d-pad, two analog nubs, ABXY and shoulder buttons) and a 43-button QWERTY keyboard.

It is fast enough run a full desktop, access the internet and play games. However, it is much smaller than a netbook -- it will fit in your pocket! It's a bit bigger than the original Nintendo DS.

Features

Outside

140 x 83.4 x 27.5mm, 335g (including battery)
"Clamshell" design
43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
Gaming controls:
- Two analog controllers (nubs)
- 8-way D-pad
- A/B/X/Y and shoulder buttons for gaming.
800x480 resolution LTPS lcd with resistive touch screen, 4.3" widescreen, 16.7 million colors, 300 cd/m2 brightness, 450:1 contrast ratio
Two SDHC slots
Headphone output up to 150mW/channel into 16 ohms, 99dB SNR (up to 24 bit/48KHz)
Internal microphone plus ability to connect external microphone through headset
TV Output (composite and S-Video)
USB 2.0 OTG port (1.5/12/480Mbps) with capability to charge device
USB 2.0 HOST port (480Mbps) capable of providing the full 500mA to attached devices (examples include USB memory, keyboard, mouse, 3G modem, GPS)
Two externally accessible UARTs and four PMW signals (for hardware hacking, robot control, debugging, etc.)

Inside

4200mAh battery.
- 10+ hours of battery life, depending on usage. For example, turning Wi-Fi or the screen off would give better battery life.
600MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3530 processor.
- Can be clocked higher or lower by software designed for the device.
256MB DDR-333 SDRAM (Pre-2012-units), 512MB DDR-333 SDRAM (units made in Germany, 2012)
512MB NAND FLASH memory
IVA2+ audio and video processor using TI's DaVinci™ technology (430MHz C64x DSP)
ARM® Cortex™-A8 superscalar microprocessor core
PowerVR SGX530 110MHz OpenGL ES 2.0 compliant 3D hardware
Wifi 802.11b/g (up to 18dBm output)
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (3Mbps) (Class 2, + 4dBm)

More

Stereo line level inputs and outputs
Unbrickable design with integrated boot loader for safe code experimentation.
Power and hold switch useful for "instant on" and key lockout to aid in media player applications on the go.
Runs on the Linux operating system (currently 3.2.x and 2.6.x)
See the Applications section of this manual to see what applications your Pandora will come with.

Box Contents

When you first open Pandora's box, a slew of demons and raging emotions may forcibly leave the box. This is normal. After that, you should find the following items:

The Pandora console
Stylus (located in stylus slot on the side of the Pandora)
Battery
Mains power adapter
Battery Case

Available separately:

TV-Out Cable
- As of 3rd November 2010 these are not yet included in the box and will ship separately as available.
Carrying Case
Extra Battery

Safety Information

The OpenPandora should not be used by Children under the age of 3 due to potential choking hazards.
The OpenPandora's Battery should only be charged with supplied charger / Via USB or a suitable third party charger.
The OpenPandora should only be used in temperatures above -10°C (14°F) and below 40°C (104°F).

Warranty Information

Standard one year warranty applies to the OpenPandora.

User Neglect / Modifications are generally not covered by warranty.

First Time Use

Place the battery inside the battery compartment underneath the OpenPandora taking care to ensure the battery contacts and battery touch. Please the battery cover on and your OpenPandora will power up.

Charging

As this is your first time using the Battery it is recommended you fully charge your OpenPandora to 100% using the AC Adapter as this will calibrate and improve the lifetime of your battery. This process may take up to 4 hours. If you're not planning on using the OpenPandora whilst it is charging you should flip the power switch to the left (Low Power Mode) as it should decrease the charging time dramatically.

Once the OpenPandora has completed charging it will stop charging and begin discharging to protect the battery from damage.

You can find more useful information about charging on the Power Modes page.

First Boot

While you are charging your OpenPandora completing the first boot wizard is essential.

Steps Involved

Calibrate Touchscreen - This will ensure that the TouchScreen works perfectly.
Enter Full Name - This personalises your OpenPandora
Enter Short name - can be a fancy nickname or just your fullname in all lowercase
Enter Password - anything you like and you'll need to verify it
Choose a name for your OpenPandora - Give it a fancy name as this will be the network visible name.
Automatic Login - Entirely up to you. Preferable off if you don't want others to use your OpenPandora without your permission
GUI choice - Slimmed down basic GUI - Minimenu or full Linux OS - xFCE
TimeZone / Date and Time - Recommended you do set this correctly as it may cause problems down the track with certain applications.
CPU Clock Speed - Recommended that you set to Default unless a game / application is running slowly.
Advanced settings - Do not change until you are comfortable with the device.

Analog Nubs [1]

The OpenPandora nubs are designed to automatically calibrate when you turn your Pandora & Calibration is lost once the OpenPandora is switched off.

Calibrating the Touchscreen

The touchscreen in the OpenPandora may / may not be calibrated when you first get it. It is recommended you do run the Calibration Wizard in the first boot wizard alternatively if you clicked too fast you can run the calibration wizard by going to the Settings / Calibrate Touch Screen section in either GUIs

Mouse (stylus/pointer) settings

When done with the calibration and you are back in the Pandora Xfce desktop environment you might also want to change some other touch screen settings to make navigation with the stylus work according to your preferences. Two recommended settings to experiment with for easier navigation are:

The double-click Time setting
The double-click Distance (valid touch-screen double-click area)

In the first setting, i.e. Time, you will be setting the interval between double-clicks where such clicks will be accepted as valid. Ex. if you set the time to 250ms, the second click (or screen-tap in our case) must occur within 250ms of the first to be valid.

In the second setting, Distance, you will be setting the radius of screen area where the second click (tap) must fall into to be considered as a valid second tap. This means that if, for example, you set the distance to 5, your second tap must fall within a circle radius of 5 pixels from the point where the first tap occurred.

These two settings can be found under: Desktop ---> Xfce menu ---> Settings ---> Desktop ---> Mouse ---> Behaviour tab.

Basic Use

See the GUI page for more details on the user interfaces which can be used with the Pandora.

Mini Menu

Mini Menu is a quick and easy to use launcher created by OpenPandora's great friend Skeezix. Mini Menu is designed to be capable of fully customised skins.

Basic Navigation

The main grid of Mini Menu displays the available applications, category tabs, Date / Time, Battery life and a detail pane on the right.

When you copy a PND to SDCARDNAME/pandora/apps it will appear in its preset category.

Controls for Mini Menu:

D-Pad or touch screen can be used to select PNDs
Launch a PND by pressing 'Start', 'B' or touching the icon with the stylus or finger.
Press 'Y' for documentation if there is any available.
Left and Right shoulder triggers switch categories

Skinning

Skinning guide in gp32x forum: http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/53990-skinning-minimenu/

A mmskin.conf from February 2011: http://git.openpandora.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=pandora-libraries.git;a=blob;f=minimenu/skin/default/mmskin.conf;h=695888b3ae310d7ea04b4e682baed0c0c6fc4349;hb=98c1d081629ac9cbb3056b39097a3db968ce4055 (Skinning will not work without it)

Desktop style environment (Xfce)

On the Desktop

The desktop contains icons which have been found on SD Cards / in Firmware.

Pandora Menu & Task Bar

On the bottom left the Applications menu contains all your applications sorted into the appropriate categories.

The task bar by default contains settings for Brightness, Sound, various enablers such as Wifi / Bluetooth, Network Connectivity, Battery life, Date / Time and various workspaces you can select.

Navigation

If a window for an application is too big for the screen you can drag the window around by holding the left trigger and dragging with the stylus.
Changing your workspace is as easy as holding 'Start' & "Select' then using the D-Pad to switch

Pandora Button

When in the desktop style environment (Xfce), the Pandora button will bring up the applications menu, letting you quickly view the available applications. If held, it allows you to kill an unresponsive application. If that doesn't work, you can do a hard-reset of the Pandora by pressing and holding the Pandora button, then flicking the power switch to the right.

Power modes

The Power modes page provides full details of power modes, charging and battery care and lifetime.

Without switching the device entirely off, it may be placed into low power mode or regular power mode; simply sliding the power switch to the right will toggle modes.

Consider low power mode to be akin to turning off a PDA or cellphone -- the screen is off, the CPU is clocked down and so on, but the device is still silently on, allowing for alarms to go off or it to be turned on again instantly. Regular power mode is for normal usage.

Low power mode is probably going to be used as the normal "off" for most people, with true off (device powered down entirely, unable to respond to alarms or wake up quickly) available to conserve battery power. Turning the Pandora off completely is the best option if you don't plan on using it for few hours or longer.

Closing the lid will turn off the display but otherwise leave the device operating - handy for audio playing; turning off the display reduces power consumption.

Shutdown will only occur if you are unplugged from the wall. The device can't be charged while off, to "fast charge" just switch to low power mode. See power modes for more info.

The actual behavior of buttons and events can be customized.

USB Peripherals

You can connect USB2 High Speed peripherals directly, using the large USB connector, or a USB-OTG adaptor lead. Lower-speed USB devices will only work through a hub, the Pandora does not have the support circuitry inside to drive the interface in the correct mode. See the the USB compatibility list for peripherals which have been tested so far.

Killing Applications

Killing (or forcibly closing) an unresponsive application is as simple as holding down the Pandora button (just under start and select) for a few seconds. A dialog will appear which lists the open applications and gives you the option to kill them.

Forcing a Restart

Occasionally something will happen causing your Pandora to become unresponsive (to the point that even killing a program isn't possible). When this happens it is necessary to force your Pandora to restart. The easiest way to do this is by holding the Pandora button and moving the power switch to the right.

Configuration and Customization

This is just an overview of the customization and configuration you can do. Individual sections may link to their own pages.

Setting Up WiFi

If wifi is enabled, and you are in range of an access point, a dialogue should appear offering to connect to it. See the Wifi page for more detail on using wifi.

Setting Up Bluetooth

Connecting to Bluetooth devices is easy using the tool located in the Xfce taskbar.

For help with setting up a Bluetooth GPS, see here.

Adjusting Brightness/Contrast

Brightness can be raised by pressing Fn+I and lowered with Fn+U. A tool is included with the Pandora called "LCD-Settings" (under the "Settings" menu) which can be used to adjust the brightness and the gamma.

Changing Your Theme

Under "Settings" in the menu, you will find "Appearance" which will let you adjust the style, icon set, fonts, and a few other appearance related settings. Also, under "Window Manager" you can adjust the style of each window's title bar.

Minimenu Configuration and Tricks

minimenu has a fairly comprehensive configuration file for its minimalistic design; most options may be enabled or disabled or fiddled with, and the skin can reasonably be altered.

The All category can be removed if undesired.

Expert conf hackers can specify what categories they'd like and in what order, and have multiple app categories dumped into one tab, and other tricks.

pnd-application icons may be all loaded during the menu setup, or deferred until later and loaded in the background.

Preview pics may be loaded up front (not advised, as it can be slow), or deferred until later. (When deferred, they may load when you rest the selection, or load in background.)

You may choose to have auto-discovered applications registered into any of their 6 categories (Main, Sub1, Sub2, Alt, AltSub1, AltSub2).

Etc and so on.

Additional keys are supported: Q to quit the menu (not really useful for most people), and Space to invoke the application.

Minimenu Configuration Documentation

Applications

Many applications will come preinstalled into the internal NAND; these will be regular Linux applications (not packaged into pnd files, since they do not need to be redistributed to anyone.)

Additional applications may be found as pnd-files (a packaged up single file representing an entire application) or as regular Linux files (an application likely being made up of many files and possibly needing installation.)

What Is Included?

Ångström Linux: Lightweight beautiful Linux-based operating system for the Pandora.
Xfce: A full featured window manager for Linux.
Midori: A full featured web browser, designed to be lighter and faster than a full desktop style browser.

Where Can I Get More Apps?

There are many ways to get more applications onto your Pandora.

On this wiki, we maintain up-to-date lists of games, emulators, and other software, with download links. These lists are more comprehensive than the two official sites below, because not every program is submitted to both of them.

On repo.openpandora.org there is a nice PND-Repository, using PNDstore you can also automatically update all your PNDs or install new ones directly on the Pandora.

The easiest way is to browse the Open App Store, where you can download a selection of free or commercial applications. To download, navigate to an app, pay for it if you must, and hit the 'download' button. Select where you want to save it, and you're done!

There is the good ol' Pandora File Archive.

To help with the massive range of applications, a member of the community has started to produce PandaPacks for some pre-packaged games, emulators and distributable ROMs in handy SD card filling torrents.

The Pandora includes the package manager opkg, which is a fork of ipkg. This will install to your Pandoras NAND by default and can cause severe problems because the version of Angstrom which is used on the Pandora is too old - only use it if you know exactly what you're doing! Type "df -h" in the terminal to see how much space you have left - you shouldn't fill it completely, you might not even be able to login when it is completely full (I'm quite sure you can't, although I might be wrong). You can use the OPKG Installer to make things easier.

You could also download .ipk files directly from the Angstrom ARM Repository, but these are actually the same as if you would install them using opkg (see above), have the same problems as if using opkg and the additional annoyance that dependencies aren't resolved automatically. There are different .ipk files for every program, the right ones are the armv7a ones from 2008.

Also, people may upload their apps to weird crevices in the net, so be on the lookout! (or use a search engine)

Installing a PND file (an application)

This is what the folder structure on your SD card should look like. The drive letter and card name will vary; they're not important.

Installation of a PND file is so easy, you can hardly even call it installing. All you need to do is copy the PND file into the appropriate folder on your SD card. The first thing you'll need to do is set up some folders that the Pandora will recognise. It's recommended that you start with a blank, freshly formatted (or freshly purchased) SD card. For the purposes of this guide we'll refer to your SD card as <SD> (Windows might call it something like G:\Removable Disk or Linux /media/something). Create a new folder on the SD card called 'pandora':

<SD>/pandora

Then open the 'pandora' folder, and create four more inside it: apps, appdata (this one isn't really needed, PNDs can save there settings and stuff there, it will automatically be created when a PND wants to save something), desktop, and menu:

<SD>/pandora/apps
<SD>/pandora/appdata/
<SD>/pandora/desktop/
<SD>/pandora/menu/

Now you're ready to install a PND file. Just copy and paste (or drag and drop; or save) the file into your folder of choice:

Putting a PND in the /desktop folder will make it appear on the XFCE desktop
Putting a PND in the /menu folder will make it appear in the XFCE system menu
Putting a PND in the /apps folder will make it appear in both locations
If you're using Minimenu instead of XFCE, it doesn't matter which of these three folders you use. You can also create a <SD>/pandora/mmenu/ folder, and anything saved there will only show up in Minimenu.

Occasionally you'll come across an application which needs additional data (for example, the data files for Quake, or ROMs for an emulator). These files goes into the appdata folder. A PND program will automatically create its own subfolder within /appdata the first time it is run; then you can add files to it. More information on this is available on the introduction to PNDs page.

Firmware

Updating The Firmware

Updating the Firmware can be done via either full Reflash or the Upgrade Pandora OS Application which is found in the System Menu.

Reinstalling the Firmware

Sometimes things don't work out or you've broken something in the OS. You can reflash the firmware to default by getting the latest package from the forum and placing in the root of the SD Card then while booting the Pandora hold down the R Button. Reinstalling the OS can take up to 15 minutes

Futher reading

Basic Linux Guide - For those who don't know very much about Linux and want to learn more.
Minimenu Configuration Documentation - If you want to customize or configure Minimenu.
Games - Take a look at the games that are available.
Software projects - A list of all non-emulator, non-game software for Pandora.