The pengstore is back online, sorry for any trouble.  It took more work than we expected but everything is fixed.  If you have any trouble at this point, please contact us right away.

We are having an SSL problem from the server move.  If you try to buy right now, you will get an SSL error.  Please just give it a few hours, it should be fixed soon.   Sorry about any inconvenience, please enjoy our much faster hosting to peruse the forum or wiki.

Small news bit today.  We have upgraded our hosting for pengpod.com to a dedicated server.  We are already seeing a huge difference in responsiveness, especially on the shopping cart.  So if you tried to buy at www.pengpod.com/pengstore before and left because of the lag, please come back and give it another try.

Also we had a write up in a local business journal if anyone is interested.  Unfortunately its got a pay wall so I haven't read the whole thing http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/print-edition/2013/05/17/pengpod-offers-tablet-with-a-twist.html.

http://pengpod.com/dl/android/android-pp1000-sd-8188-2013-05-13.img.tar.gz

Turns out the wifi issue is just because each Android image is specifically for its wifi chipset.  I'll convert the rest of the images over soon to those of you with 700s, dont worry, you are next.  If you have Linux and want to check which image you need just run 'lsusb' from a terminal.  8176 is a 8192CU chip set (coming soon) and 8179 is a 8188EU chip set, which the link is for.  If you try it please come comment in the forum about your experience, www.pengpod.com/forum

Enjoy

I know a lot of people have been looking for this. This image allows an SD boot to Android so Linux can be left on the internal flash without giving up the option of using Android.  This should also allow a lot more Android hacking as the image will be so easy to modify from the SD.

We have just managed to get the first boot up.  It is still a little rough, some dbus error is causing wifi not to work.  Otherwise the image seems fine but we haven't tested it completely.  I am preparing an image for upload now.  It will probably be very big as we don't yet have a framework for creating minimally sized images like we do for Linaro.  I'll post again once its online, should be either late tonight or tomorrow.

Andrew Robertson is the winner of the Free PengPod1000 and case! Thank you everyone that has Liked our Facebook page last month. 

With no further ado, the opensuse image is posted here http://pengpod.com/dl/images/pengpod1000-opensuse-xfce-2013.04.25-os.img.tar.gz   .  We haven't quite worked out all the kinks.  Basically some display driver change seems to prevent the LCD from working with recent kernels so this uses one from October.  Basically we had to stop and think "why did opensuse used to work in our original demos" and sure enough an older kernel was the key.  Wifi might not work, especially if you have the 8188eu wifi chip, so a USB ethernet adapter will probably be required.  The 700 image is coming tomorrow and also there will be more updates as we work on it.

A lot of users have asked about adobe flash for web browsing.  Unfortunately given the closed source nature of flash, we don't have a lot of options to bring support to our Linux Arm platform.  However a user in the forums managed to find a solution that enables it for many sites.  Those requiring the newest flash player version might not work.  Here is the forum post http://pengpod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=539

Also some have you might have noticed a support and shipping slow down last week.  We are back on our normal schedule and will be catching up the shipping today.  I'll have an announcement about the good news later.

I have had a few request for an armel rootfs as opposed to an armhf rootfs.  I am know uploading ubuntu-armel images in the image directory http://www.pengpod.com/dl/images  .  The login is root with no password.  Right now it only boots to a prompt, a window manager will have to be installed through apt-get. 

When I get a chance, I'll try and post a set with a window manager preinstalled.

We now have a Re-seller selling to Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, and Germany this means lower Shipping cost for everyone ordering in this area. If your order is over $150 it's free shipping to those countries. If you are buying a PengPod in one of those countries please order from Boxtec. Direct Store Link http://shop.boxtec.ch/pengpod-m-52.html

If you have been waiting to add to the wiki, now is your chance.  We have installed some account verification software.  So just make you account request and make sure to put something human like in the bio so we know to approve you.  Please let me know if you have any problems registering.

http://pengpod.com/pengwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

I've added this http://pengpod.com/pengwiki/index.php?title=Porting_a_new_distro as I get a lot of email request about it.  Feedback welcome, I especially want to hear results and this is one of the things I especially like to help with if people are trying new distros.  Also I have restored the ability to post links in the forums.  It seemed to help with spam for a bit but now its making no difference so my hamper everyone.

An article about that printer control module made it onto slashdot.  So you might experience some slow down as our host is throttling our usage today, sorry about that.  If you have trouble ordering because of it please come back and try again later!

I wanted to share this cool application.  Francesco Santini was looking into the possibilities of stand-alone printing with the Solidoodle. He choose the PengPod 700, a tablet that runs a full linux distribution and turned it into a standalone interface for the SD2.  You can read more of his write up here http://www.soliforum.com/topic/1954/fullfledged-lcd-touchscreen/

And see his post in forum here http://pengpod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2505&p=4067#p4067

"So, in summary, I now have a fully-functional touchscreen pronterface installation that can drive the Solidoodle, for a total cost of 110$. No assembly, soldering, firmware modding required. Just a little bit of fiddling with Linux (if required, I can post a step-by-step guide, or prepare an ad-hoc linux image)."

This is the type of application I envisioned for the PengPods commercially, as low cost touch control systems.  Kudos to Francesco for putting it together. 
We are spreading this story around and if you want to swing by slashdot and vote it up, we appreciate it! http://slashdot.org/submission/2584201/pengpod-linux-tablet-as-the-touch-screen-controller-for-an-sd2-3d-printer

I am in the process of uploading some new images at http://pengpod.com/dl/images .  These are labeled linaro-flashcard and with you can create an SD that is 100% ready to flash Linux over an Android install on the internal flash.  They will probably fix a corrupted Linux on flash system as well, depending on the actual problem.

To use them just download, unzip and dd copy onto an SD card.  You don't need to expand the partition before booting up.  It will boot into a normal PengPod Linux desktop like a regular card but you can open a terminal and run "sudo pengflash" to start copying over the internal memory, it should report the results as it works.  I got a lot of request for this one so I wanted to get it posted before the weekend, if you have any trouble with it please let me know in the forums, enjoy!

The back orders are all caught up, except about 20 orders that required a manual import because of the product mix.  All of those should have just gotten an order created email and we will be shipping them tomorrow.  Otherwise there are a few remaining perks that need shipping paid but all the rest should be sent.

If you place an order now it should ship by the next business day and it should stay this way going forward, no more long wait times.  I want to thank everyone who had a back order or a perk for your patience and understanding. 

The other good news about this is that we can start dedicating a lot more time to development again.  So make sure to check back, we should have a lot more development news this week.

If you got a shipment voided message today dont worry. 

We setup our software for international, made a test shipment then when everything seemed fine printed lots of labels on Friday.  Right before the carrier picked them up we were warned they didn't have commercial invoices electronically filed like we thought.  So today we had to void them all and recreate them, now with paperless invoicing.  Everyone we voided should have gotten an email right away with the new shipment information and all of these orders have been given to the carrier so you should see details tonight on the UPS tracking website.

First off a notice, if you get your shipping email please keep in mind the tracking information wont work until the end of the business day when it is uploaded to the carrier.  This is not a bug or unique to our shipping software. 

We shipped a lot of back orders this week, we hope to have the rest of the back orders on the way Monday and Tuesday.  If you have an international order that was marked a shipped today it actually isn't moving until Monday.  The system wasn't creating the electronic invoices it claimed to so we might have to reissue those labels.  If so you will see another email with a new tracking number.

I know a lot of you have been waiting for the opensuse image to work so you can try out plasma.  I had been really perplexed why I couldn't get the image working again but I've finally got it to load the display again.  It requires that we use an older kernel, from October last year, other than that things seem fine though.  Its far enough back I have to copy in the touch screen fixes but that should be it for basic use until we can run a git bisect and find out what killed the display driver.  

I'll have the image posted tonight and blog more about it then. 

Update: It boots but its fairly useless as sudo isn't installed and su doesn't work.  I'll post it tomorrow.

Update2: Its pretty bugged, it crashed every time I try to start an X session.  I've been very busy trying to get the back orders shipped and haven't had time to mess around with it.  It probably just needs a newer kernel that has the fix but not so new that the screen stays black.  Hopefully I'll have some news soon.

We imported a number of pengstick orders with the wrong SKU and had to cancel them until we can reimport them.  If you have paid and we cancelled your order with a PengStick, dont worry it will be reentered soon.

If you didn't pay you might get a cancelled message because we accidentally imported your order and noticed it afterward.

Ok, so in an update from my last post we have changed the login so at pengpod.com/pengstore the logins will now be independent of the pengpod.com logins.  People were getting stuck in a loop if you tried to checkout as guest or register on the pengstore instead of pengpod.com.  Also some people said they couldn't login in to the pengstore even after registering. 

This issues should all be fixed and It should allow you to purchase 100% of the time now.  If you were trying to order and had one of these problems please come back and give it a try.  Anything done with your pengpod.com login on the pengstore should still be there and your password should still work.

Please let us know right away if you have any problems ordering.