Ouya Android game console gets VC-funded, torn down | Hacker News Reader

Ouya Android game console gets VC-funded, torn down

linuxgizmos.com

53 pointsnikai10 comments

This is slightly offtopic but i really like the funding road theyve taken, after going through a Startup Accelerator and ultimately failing with the original product after 2 years (a game) myself.

If i was to try again sometime in the future, id certainly do it like this.

1. Build a good prototype and evaluate if the product works and if there is demand on a really small scale

2. Try to raise money through crowdfounding.

3. If it works, you have proven to everybody (including yourself and potential later investors) that there indeed is a market for your product(s). You dont have to step in front of investors and try to sell an unproven idea. Try to make a hit product and get VCs on board after this stage (if you need to)

4. If it doesnt you can quit or try it out on your own in bootstrapped fashion.

Never ever again would i take outside money for equity in a very early stage, but this is just my personal view and the lesson i learned in the last years.

This approach can work great for games/products, it wont really for your next social web startup/app project mind you. In that case i would go the bootstrapped route directly and try to prove my product before going for the stars.

The teardown iFixit link, hidden in the last paragraph:

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Ouya+Teardown/14224/1

Thanks, that explains a lot. I was expecting some Ouya bashing, but was puzzled when I found none.

I'm surprised to see a fan inside the console. This is the only NVIDIA Tegra 3 device running Android I know of to use active cooling. Why did they choose to have it, is Ouya's CPU/GPU running at a higher clock rate than similar devices'?

A tiny fan like that reminds of the one inside my PS2 Slim, which is loud enough that when I have the inclination to game on it again I'll seriously consider doing a hardware mod to replace it (with a non-stock fan -- just to be safe). I have to wonder by how much this defect (which is apparently not very common with the model) has made me play my PS2 Slim less over the time I have owned it. If the Ouya itself is not sold at a profit this may be a problem. I'm not a hardware professional, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd be wary of including a small fan in a consumer product if it were at all possible to avoid it.

For what it's worth, I haven't been able to get the fan to spin up at all, even when running a GPU benchmark for 10 minutes or so. It might just be there for some worst case scenario when something could reach dangerous temperatures.

Maybe they are trying to avoid the fate of the first generation xbox360?

There is no official info on the technical cause (some people say wrong type of solder that would get too hot and develop hairline cracks, some say the graphics chip dissipated more heat than expected, etc) but it was definitely related to heat.

People often put these devices inside mildly enclosed spaces (media cabinets, etc) with poor natural airflow, etc.

This tends to work okay if you have active cooling (since it's not totally enclosed), but gets amazingly hot otherwise.

This is not normally how tablets are used, and maybe after testing it (or thinking about it) they realized the safest bet was active cooling?

I'm using an i.MX6 development system that uses a similar processor (Quad CortexA9 w/GPU) and has a aluminum cap/heatsink on it:

http://imgur.com/1bJEqLU

The thermal cutout in the Anatop driver defaults to 100C, which seems to be driven by the ratings of the on-board voltage regulators. Perhaps the Tegra has the same requirements.

Yes, they overclocked it.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/13/ouya-nvidia-lovefest/

The heatsink is mounted in an odd, sub-optimal way.

Chimney effect means you mount the heatsink horizontally so that hot air flows up, drawing cooler air through the heatsink.

I have no idea how to use words to describe what I'm trying to say, so here's a really bad diagram.

(http://imgur.com/QQ2UByr)

EDIT: Not criticising, just curious!!

Since they have a fan, they don't have to care about hot air rising. It's often enough to get the hot pockets out of the fins and average out the temperature within the case. The case itself can transfer heat to the outside via its larger surface.

Finally, there needs to be some profit made, so this is slapped together as cheaply as possible. Bleh.

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