Hi PineTime Community: Here's my new article to get us hacking the PineTime faster... I'm happy to take any questions since this is very familiar ground to me... nRF52 on Visual Studio Code 

Sneak Peek of PineTime Smart Watch… And why it’s perfect for teaching IoT

UPDATE: Pine64 has just sent me the Hynitron Touch Controller Reference Code. Very useful for coding the touch controller!

Other relevant articles:

My port of Mynewt OS and Rust to PineTime is based on an earlier nRF52 article...
Coding nRF52 with Rust and Apache Mynewt on Visual Studio Code

You can run Bluetooth Mesh on PineTime. The code should be similar to this article...
Bluetooth Mesh with nRF52 and Apache Mynewt

Is Visual Rust useful for PineTime? If you think so, I'll port it to PineTime...
Visual Embedded Rust Programming with Visual Studio Code

Check the rest of my articles on IoT, Embedded Rust, STM32 Blue Pill, Visual Studio Code, GD32 VF103 on RISC-V, ...
https://medium.com/@ly.lee

If the Medium paywall blocks you, use the free access links from my resume...
https://lupyuen.github.io/

No pinephone for us?
as I expected, a lot of people want what you produced.
I hope I can order one.

Hi Everyone.

I'm one of those insane people who dared compiling everything on PBP. It actually hasn't been too bad. I've built the Manjaro kernel and everything I need. The problems were pretty much the same as those other people experienced here. However, I'm not sure about these:

1. Linux kernel load time is pretty long. dmesg indicates a 1 minute delay prior to executing
"cryptd: max_cpu_qlen set to 1000".
2. WiFi issue is present, although I wasn't able to associate it with high CPU load. For now I'm using a USB Ethernet adapter.
3. Sound issue - present, but I haven't tried the recent DTS fix yet. What I tried was using a USB sound interface (a 10 years old iMic). It worked fine. No noises or anything.
4. The main issue: flickering widgets in XFCE (checkboxes, especially). I thought it was only relevant to GTK applications, but Firefox appears to be ok. I'll continue playing with it. Another thing: upon launching Libreoffice, xorg begins using 100% CPU (single core) and the app becomes very slow and pretty much unusable.
5. Another one: the clock gets reset on every reboot.
6. Not sure if hardware video acceleration works. Does anyone know how it works? Does Panfrost have it implemented?

My software is:
Kernel 5.4.0-rc6-MANJARO-ARM
Mesa-19.2.4 (I did specify VIDEO_CARDS="panfrost" in make.conf)
Xorg-server-1.20.5
xfce-4.14-r1
Libreoffice-6.3.3.2.

If anyone tried to do what I did, please share your experiences

Hi all,

We just received the trackpad / keyboard firmware. If it checks-out and we're happy with it I'll try to push it by end of the day on Monday.
I'll update this post in the event that something isn't right with the firmware.

[update Nov 15] Testing the firmware today. The compiling and flashing processes are rather involved, especially the latter, so this will need to be automated as much as possible.

[update Nov 16] We're still working on getting everything functional. As we're going though this process we're also figuring out how much this can be automated for end users. Its taking some time because the source code + documentation we're working with aren't exactly great.
Huge shout-out to @xalius for doing much of the leg-work on this; fixing and making stuff work.

Once we've got it all figured out on our end, I'll make sure to write up proper documentation for the process before pushing it to end-users, including steps to take if you mess something up.  

For end users the process will likely consist of running 3 scripts in a sequence. Out of the 3 stages the only really tricky one is number 2 as it requires you to identify the trackpad bus and device.

Here are the stages:

• Stage 1) puts the keyboard in a state that allows you to bypass it for trackpad flashing
  
• Stage 2) flashes new firmware to the trackpad
  
• Stage 3) flashes keyboard firmware so it is usable again
  

Would Pine64 ever consider making a desktop board in mini atx format with a couple of PCIe slots and maybe even expandable RAM? It would be awesome to be able to just chuck it into an old case and have a functioning modern ARM system that you can expand with off the shelf components. Would be great for development, home servers, media centeres etc.

I got manjaro arm booting to a full DE (mate).  For the moment no sound and no wifi but everything else seems to work.  Didn't test if the usb3 port is working as usb2 or usb3.

The v2.1 SSD adapter that is shipped with the initial (first three?) Pinebook Pro batches has a couple of problems. In particular the back of the adapter board interferes with the operation of the trackpad once the case is reassembled and the ribbon cable doesn't quite match the layout of the mother- and adapter- boards.

I'm told there is a plan to offer replacement adapter boards that overcome these issues... but if you have a Pinebook Pro and a new SSD in your paws right now then there are hacks that allow you to install the SSD. Note that this is an unofficial guide and, whilst I have put warnings on the tricky bits, the decision to proceed is yours and yours alone! Please do not undertake these changes if you cannot afford to fix any damage that results.

The instructions do not include a guide for correct removal and replacement of the bottom panel (look on the wiki) and these instructions also assume you will take appropriate precautions to prevent damage from static electricity.

1. Firstly we must remove the section of the adapter board that interferes with the track pad. Score a line between the Pine logo and the text. The line should be a right angles to the adapter board itself. Cut the board along this line. I used a Dremel with a cutting disc but a hacksaw would probably also work. If using a hacksaw cut with the saw blade at a shallow angle from the flat side of the board (e.g. don't try to cut the edge side directly) and expect to replace the blade because circuit boards are made of pretty tough material. In all cases make sure you cut the board a long way from anything electronic, the filings will include plenty of copper. Clean up the end with sandpaper as needed.

2. Remove the sticky tape that holds down the cabling the is routed in the bottom corner of the machine (middle of the diagram below).

3. Re-route the trackpad ribbon cable to ensure it is fully clear of the SSD adapter. This means adding three new folds to replace the single fold using for the factory routing. The new folds can be fairly light since the fold only needs to be enough to allow the cable to hold its shape. Any more than that risks breaking the wires in the cable.

4. Replace the sticky tape and use it to hold the newly routed trackpad cable in place.

5. Add the SSD to the adapter board and secure in place. I used a small cable tie to avoid leaving a residue on the SSD but I suspect tape would be more secure! If using tape ensure the screw hole are still accesible.

6. Screw the adapter in place (3 black screws from the SSD kit).

7. Attach the ribbon cable to the motherboard. The connector has a tiny plastic locking bar: gently lift the bar, push fit the cable and lower the bar again.

8. Attach the cable to the SSD adapter. The fit is very tight and will require a couple of small folds to get it to reach. Ensure the cable is squarely fitted into the socket before lowering the locking bar.

For reference, below is a picture of the installation in my machine.

I love swaywm and Im happy to report it runs great on the pinebook pro. Here are some things you can throw in your config for sway in order to get started quickly on the pinebook pro.

Please note: I am using the default Manjaro Preview Build 2

Using ayufan's buster minimal image, I noticed uboot seems to ignore the boot partition and instead looks at the boot folder in the root partition.  So if I update extlinux to load additional modules and look at sata for the root partition, it will ignore the changes because the system writes them to the boot partition instead of where uboot actually looks for it.

I have my root moved to an hard drive on sata side and want to use the SD card only for boot, but I seem to be missunderstanding something about how the boot process works.

Since a large percentage of Pinebook Pro owners will be opening up their laptops   and most of us multiple times.

 There is one Little part we cannot do without.


 The little heat transfer pad for the cpu  ! !


I am certain we cannot go without that,  BUT    I do not see it for sale at the store  ?

The first time I opened my PBP it was stuck to the case, the second time it was stuck to the cpu,

   That shows me it is not permanently attached to ether.

I would really like to buy a few of those before something happens to the original or I lose it.

   PLEASE