While Pine64 is working on a great clamshell design keyboard, an alternative idea that's interested me for a while is the concept of a (vertical) thumb keyboard for Pinephone. That's really the ideal form-factor IMO for mobile use. Well lucky me (and us) - it turns out this is doable today.

Enter Arturo182's awesome Blackberry PMOD:
https://www.tindie.com/products/arturo18...oard-pmod/
It comes from Sweden and took about 2 weeks to arrive.

Combine that with the I2C breakout from SMR404:
https://github.com/SMR404/PinephonePogoBreakout

And you have a workable keyboard on the Pinehone today. Also the other thing to note, the BB Keyboard is the *perfect* size horizontally / fits perfectly on the Pinephone. My idea is have the software block out the LCD portion where the keyboard will sit and accept that as dead space / for stability or counterbalance. Below is my PP w/ BB keyboard prototype and a small video of where I'm at so far:


Demo video:
http://media.lrdu.org/experiments/pinephone_bbkb.webm

Obviously its not the prettiest thing what with being held together with a rubberband   but it is surprisingly stable and it is already quite usable. With a 3D-printed case and the kernel module refined a bit more, this is will be perfect.

---

So I'm opening this thread as an open discussion for anyone else who also is interested in hacking on the BB keyboard in combination with the Pinephone.

My WIP kernel module for this keyboard is available at:
https://git.sr.ht/~mil/ppbbq10

Some ideas & notes / musings on progress:
- DONE: Modified arturo182's RPI kernel module to not require DTC changes and work with Pinephone's I2C
- DONE: Temporarily modified kernel module to use polling rather then interrupt for events (probably not smart.. but works)
- DONE: Implement tap-modifiers so that Ctrl/Alt/Shift can be used one-handed by tapping modifier
- DONE: Implement symbols layer that also works with tap-modifier logic
- TODO: Rework kernel module to support 3rd layer for programming symbols
- TODO: Figure out how / if interrupt via GPIO IRQ mapping is possible (without DTC updates..)
- TODO: Either figure out how to get custom underscan resolution to block out bottom 300 pixels or implement padding into Sxmo
  - Trials so far with custom underscan resolution produces burn-in which lasts several days
- TODO: Find 3D printer or person with 3D printer to print a case
- TODO: PCB design a cable to go from Pogo I2C to keyboard so thing looks better put together / hidden (flex cable?)

Happy hacking,
Miles

I would like to use an ultra-quiet low-power 12V 4-pin PWM fan and am trying to figure out how to best interface with the PWM signal and RPM Speed signals wires of such a fan. The specific fan I'm looking to use is the Noctua NF-A8 PWM fan which has the following electrical interface:

Blue: PWM Signal (+5V)
Green: RPM Speed Signal (open collector output)
Yellow: +12V
Black: Ground

I would need to ensure (somehow) that the FAN+ is always at 12V, I'm not sure how this pin gets controlled in startup via u-boot / Linux but in my application I would want to ensure it goes high and stays high sometime during boot.

I'm looking for options on how to interface to the Blue and Green cables. I think my options are either somehow directly to some of the 5V pins on the Pi-2 header, or alternatively, perhaps some sort of separate fan control breakout.

One idea I had was to use the Adafruit EMC2101 I2C PC Fan Controller and Temperature Sensor breakout. This would use the i2c interface on the pi-2 header.

I would then need to interface that with a temperature diode somewhere -- ideally one that already exists on the RK3399, the board near the SoC, or I guess on the CPU heatsink. From what I can tell, one of the 3904 BJT type diodes mentioned in Table 4 would work.

Does anybody have any experience using a 4-pin fan on the RK3399 in a NAS application?

Details on the Noctua fan interface.

Details on the EMC2101.

How can this be done from the command line? The UI does not yet provide the capability to edit the APN, thus no mobile data.

Hello everyone.
My name is ShyanJMC.

I'm working on a CLFS (Cross Linux From Scratch) in which I'm designing and developing a minimal OS.
I called it; BlackOS

Github page;
https://github.com/shyanjmc/blackos

Github Source Code;
https://github.com/ShyanJMC/LinuxFromScratch-Sources

BlackOS is a Linux system from scratch designed for ARMv8 System On a Chip (known as SOC).
It is designed to be minimal as possible, so you will find a very basic and minimal system. The reason for this is you can adapt your applications to your requirements.

Think about this system like a minimal OS for to rebuild the humanity if you are in an apocalypse or in a place without Internet connection and you have only a few SBCs without much power and need digital services. In the future I will provide you with the source code of some projects like Lighttpd, GCC, Clang and others, so you can quickly copy it inside BlackOS and compile them.

In the first steps of this proyect, I built BlackOS for Raspberry Pi and Pine Rock64 but considering that there are so many SBCs in the world(each one with specifics configurations to boot), I chose to make a Linux system without kernel. So, you will have to download the release, then compile the kernel for the ARCH target and finally you will have to integrate the firmware and the bootloader inside "/boot" and modules in "/lib/modules" folders to boot BlackOS, it is easier and makes BlackOS more portable.


Now the true; I love the Pine64's SBCs but is difficult to me get one of those (there are many problems in Argentina). Because of that I would like request your help; if you like this project (or the target of this) please help me testing BlackOS in others SBCs and inform me in Github if you have issues in another of Pine64's SBCs (I'm testing on my Pine Rock64). Also, always is good have choices for operative systems.

Hi folks!

I'm running OpenWrt on a A64+. "Poweroff" in terminal on the device results in a reboot. It's OpenWrt related. That means, whenever I want to power off, I simply pull the plug, which leads to dirty flag set on the SD card (ext4).

So here is my question:

Is there any difference between pull the plug..or..hold down the power button for several seconds until it cuts out? Will the dirty flag also be set with that procedure?

The power button is not yet installed and I would guess there is no routine implemented in OpenWrt to "poweroff" the device safely with just a tap on the button.
I know a router is intended to run 24/7, so it's not a big deal. I'm just interested if there is a difference in the procedures.

Hallo together,
after 3 weeks testing the phone with different OS - today happend a tiny damage with substantial effect.
The left of 4 contacts broke and the phone is sadly unusable.
When I look at the expanded mainboard I think it would be possible to replace the contact-group by soldering. But where to get such part? Or must I buy a new PCB?

Hello,

The switch ASIC used on the Clusterboard is Realtek RTL8370N, which the wiki page declares as an unmanaged switch ASIC.  However, this switch ASIC actually includes all of the necessary logic to work as a managed switch, with a pretty complete feature set.  It also has a built-in Intel 8051, which can be used to implement a management interface.

As a confirmation, the RTL8370N ASIC is used in the D-Link DGS-1100-08, which is a managed Ethernet switch.  This D-Link switch includes no other management-related components, only the RTL8370N ASIC.

I am willing to work on implementing the required management interface and other software support, which would turn the RTL8370N into a managed Ethernet switch.  IMHO, that would be great, but it would require an SDK that can only be provided by Realtek.

@tllim, would you be able to provide the above-described SDK, please?

Hello,

What actually happened recently to the Pine64 wiki?  The watchlist and the list of changes (i.e. edits) to the pages have been changed in a way that makes them unusable, at least to me.  For example, I can no longer compare revisions of pages, which is very important to me.

As far as I can tell, it's either some "user-friendly" variant of the interface, or it's the mobile version that became the only one available.  Maybe some other users find the new interface to be user-friendly, but to me it's no longer usable.

Could we, please, get an option in the preferences to select the previous version of the interface?

I'm wondering if PinePhone has any of the following or is planned to have any of the following:

1) Titan M-like security chip
2) Hardware-backed keystore
3) Verified boot
4) Wifi and Cellular Baseband Isolation IOMMU
5) Device-specific software hardening (like kernel CFI)

Thanks - and feel free to discuss!

Hi,

At the begining Geary was not working good, so I uninstall and reinstall it with the software manager.
Now it work (Geary version 1:3.38.1-1), but it's not the responsive version ?

(Manjaro, Gnome version 3.38.3, I check for update everyday).

Best regards