I'm late to the party on the PinePhone keyboard's top row (number row) actuation issue, but I found 2 solutions to this problem that are simpler than making tiny washer-shaped spacers.
For anyone who has been living under a rock, here are the symptoms:
When pressing a key on the top row of the PinePhone keyboard, the key stroke does not register at the tactile bump. One has to keep pressing the key beyond the tactile bump for the key to register. That last bit of travel is very squishy, and this is the observation that eventually allowed me to understand the root cause of the issue.
The solutions:
Add a tiny strip or 2 of tape on the inner face of the key cap on the hinge side.
(no need for a shim going all the way around).
With a pair of good scissors and some tweezers, this is a very easy and fast solution. On my keyboard, a single strip of masking tape made a huge difference, and adding a second one seemed to make it feel a little better.
In my mind, the cons are durability and adhesive compatibility. I imagine the strips eventually shifting around or falling out of place.
--- or ---
Remove some material from the hinge-side rim of the keycap.
This solution was the most effective and resolves the root cause of the problem with no compromises.
But why tho?
Here's how I found these solutions.
I started by validating the original solution of shimming the inside depth of the keycap (vertical distance between inner face and outer rim). I measured a keycap from the top row with high precision vernier calipers and compared this measurement with the the lower row keycaps.
I found no difference.
To rule out the membrane switches on the top row, I moved a number row keycap to one of the letter rows and the problem followed the keycap. I also noticed that all of the membrane switches registered key presses perfectly without a keycap present. After doing a lot more measuring and playing with the membrane key behavior, I realized that when pressing a keyswitch down, the surrounding membrane is displaced and needs somewhere to go.
The top row keycap doesn't have enough space under the hinge side of the cap. The displaced membrane binds against the rim, preventing it from traveling all the way down. Because of this, the conductive ring under the membrane can't make it all the way down to the contacts unless you press harder to flatten the displaced rubber.
To illustrate how it's supposed to work, here's what a lower row keycap looks like when depressed.
Here is how my solutions work.
Adding a shim so the hinge side of the keycap makes that side not travel as far, creating room for the displaced membrane under the rim. It has a slightly squishy feel, but the key actuates reliably at the tactile bump.
Removing the portion of keycap that interferes with the displaced membrane allows the keycap to travel all the way down as intended.
I say this solution is no compromises because the modification is completely hidden from view, it solves the root cause of the problem, and they key does not feel squishy at all. It feels absolutely great.
(Pictured is the proof of concept test. The final modification removed a bit more material than you see here.)
Hello
I received my pinephone pro in February 2022.
I installed postmarket os and it works pretty well, except for one thing:
I can't connect to the internet without wifi. In other words, as soon as I leave my house, I no longer have access to the Internet.
I looked in the settings and there, I checked "Mobile Data" and "Data Roaming".
In the advanced settings > Access Point Names, I chose the one that seems to me to be the one that corresponds to my provider… nothing helps.
I have started the process of getting OpenWRT working on the Rock64.
I have a working image alongside a custom repo for packages which can be found here, download links for the SD Card images are front and centre: https://openwrt.cdnbcn.net/
When installing the SD Card image, you will have to manually configure /etc/opkg/distfeeds.conf with my custom repo, however I'll fix this in a later build.
The main issues currently are as follows:
- USB3 port isn't working
- Onboard Ethernet doesn't reset correctly 100% of the time
There is a thread with some fixes for the aforementioned issues below, however I have been short on time recently and haven't been able to get around to implementing them yet. https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11012
Any help would be greatly appreciated in pulling these in, I'll continue to host the package repo for free until this is pulled into upstream.
As of about two weeks ago, my SMS messages have stopped coming in on my PPP. MMS messages, including multimedia and plaintext multiperson messages work fine, as do outgoing SMS messages, but incoming messages seem to go into a void. mmcli shows no pending messages, so it is not just the front end GUI application. Has anyone else seen this?
For the record, I am using a PPP loaded with the latest Danctnix/Arch, running Phosh, and am on a Verizon contract.
I've recieved a new Pinephone Pro explorer edition and am about to fire it up. I've been following pinephone development closely over the past couple of years and excited to try it out.
I have a fair amount of linux experience with multiple different distros over the years. That being said, I'm not a hard core programmer but more of a tinkerer.
I had two main questions before getting started.
#1 Tow-boot vs u-boot?
Seems like the big show-stopper bug for now with the PPP is power managment. It seems like many people have installed Tow-boot to help deal with this, but there are others that seem to be making progress using the u-boot that came by default. Should I just switch over to Tow Boot right off the bat? Are there disadvantages to doing this?
#2 Best distro to get started with at the moment
I know that people are asking this all the time, but this seems pretty fluid and changes frequently. I know that any of them will have problems and need work in development. I just was trying to get started on a reasonably good footing.
I have read that Manjaro Plasma unstable branch has made some real progress with power managment. However, it seems like people have had some significant trouble trying to update the pre-installed image of manjaro plasma on the explorer edition. Should I just flash a new image to an SD and try out that? Or has anybody sucessfully updated from the Manjaro Plasma using the unstable branch from the preflashed image.
Thanks so much for the help! Looking forward to trying this out and contributing back what I can.
Now, it won't boot at all (as far as I can tell) with a full battery or plugged into a PC. I thought I was following instructions to the letter but this one's clearly my fault. Hoping I didn't just brick my just-bought phone but thought I'd, at least, ask if there was any kind of hope for recovery, at this point.
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