Hey, for funding, what about kickstarter? : http://www.kickstarter.com/

Essentially, it's a way to raise money.  You set a goal (Which you at least have to meat, or no money changes hands.), and try and make money.  Usually, it's stuff like "Donate $25 and you get..." Type thing.  The more you donate, the better it is.  For example, $25 might be a cheaper calc or something.  Maybe a discount on the standard.  Or pre-orders or something.  Just ideas like that that can make money this way.

so, you get a bonus since you were an early supporter through kickstart, and if enough money isn't raised you get your cash back? interesting. seems much less risky than I first thought!

Also, a suggestion that would make this project a LOT cheaper, faster and easier, but would be difficult to pull off (but soooo worth it) find a case that fits your needs and is already heavily produced.

I disagree with that.  Yes, it's cheeper, but a calc is distinguished by it's case and looks.

Anyway, it's not really a bonus per-se, but whoever the kickstarter project owner is can give you rewards.  For example, you could make only contributions that give $150 or more actually get the calc. ($200 gets your name put into the bootcode so it can't be erased)

I would say it might be best to write our own IDE (or modify an open source one like scite). That way we could also include Axe and such.

I am thinking we should have at least a partially different GUI for the developers and standard. standard needs more of a math/school focused. You would want the developers to have a more easy to create and power programs interface though. I do not think it should be too hard for us to create a good GUI for each version. If we had to choose which one to do first I would suggest the standard because it is the one schools might order. And schools are major business for all calculators.

Scintilla and SciTE seem like very good candidates. They would seem very good in writing software that needs syntax highlighting. Also, you can run gedit on the calculator if you want:

I think with all the plugins for gedit, you could get the same functionality as Notepad++.

About the GUI, yeah we should change it as I suppose it does look pretty boring, though it does have a serious look to it (all the demos I've been showing have been GNOME with GTK):


@DJ: I'll make sure the cases will be different and they'll be easy to identify, both by the color of the casing and markings on them.

@graphmastur: I'll take a look at Kickstarter. My first impression of the site however is that it seems like it's for art or film projects. They also seem to have some strict guidelines on what projects they accept: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq#WhoCanFundTheiProjOnKick. But, I guess it wouldn't hurt though to try submitting this project. Also, the problem is I need pre-orders for a batch of at least 100 units to match the pricing you guys want. For developers edition, I would need 180*100 = $18,000. For standard, 150*100 = $15,000. I could probably do a mix in the first batch of standard and developers, so I would need $15,000 minimum, but more realistically maybe around $16,500. This is a lot of money and this needs to be dealt with seriously. So this is my proposal plan for Kickstarter:

Target for fundraising is $15,000 in 75 days, just in time before summer. During this time, I'll just be finalizing the case and motherboard designs. The rewards I can probably offer:

* $1 - One buck can help buy a dozen capacitors for prototyping. As a thank you, your name will be place on our site as a contributor.
* $5 - One buck can buy some caps, but what about resistors and diodes? As a thank you, your name will be placed on our site as a contributor.
* $40 - This helps with prototyping costs. As a thank you we will give you a T-Shirt and your name will be placed on our site as a contributor.
* $150 - Pre-order the Standard Edition of the Linux mathematical PDA suitable for school testing.
* $180 - Pre-order the Professional Edition of the Linux mathematical PDA. Comes with WiFi, audio jack, touchscreen and completely open to community development.
* $200 - Pre-order the Professional Edition and have a 120 byte message encoded into the bootup process. Every time you boot up the device, a message will be selected at random and displayed while the device boots up.
* $310 - Need one calculator for school, but want another to hack around with? Save $20 right now and get both the Standard and Professional.
* $4500 - You're the coolest teacher and you want to pre-order a classroom set of Standard Editions, because you're that cool.
* $5400 - You're cooler than the coolest teacher and you want to pre-order a classroom set of Professional Editions, because you're the coolest of the cool.

Nah, just kidding about the last two. On a serious note, again since a lot of money needs to be raised to start manufacturing, preferably, I'd like to get some funds to help build a few more prototypes , just to be safe and make sure the manufacturing process is top notch by the time your pre-orders get made. So how does this sound? Would anyone here submit a pledge? Or perhaps know someone who  might be interested in doing this? If people are willing to make pledges, I'll submit in my proposal and we'll see if it gets accepted.

I will actually fund this project, probably $200 one Once I get paid that is which is prolly at the end of March