I'll admit that I don't write code or develop for a living. But I don't think that's the major point of the Pine Time. It seems like a hobby/community participation device.
So, as an amateur (very amateur) coder, I'd like to make this point:
It's really hard to get code onto the Pine Time.
You have to take it apart and stick wires on the motherboard. That's... a tiny bit ridiculous for a device whose entire purpose is for hacking code. Why couldn't you just put a little port on the side that you could plug a serial adapter into?
Also, the device is flash protected to start. Why? That doesn't make any sense. That's like selling someone a kit car with the hood bolted shut so you have to get bolt cutters and wrench it open before you can put the kit together.
These problems add a dozen steps to the initial development process.
Back case developing crack. My BraveHeart back has developed a crack on the button side about halfway between the buttons and the bottom. I've got some pictures but they are too big. Hopefully these did not lose too much detail.
Hello people,
I have some sort of defective screen (I guess). It has covered up with stripes after few seconds of work. It seems like full pixel rows across the screen died. There is other artifacts some times (like vertical "ghost" lines of the bright picture elements or vertical jitter). Take a look at the video and photos. I try to get help from support for 21 days. And all I got is two replies. The last one was 16 days ago. They asked me for video and disappeared. It seems they just ignore me. What should I do to get a replacement (or a bug fix if this is some how software problem)?
Hello pinetime devs,
this is post is about a project that was taking shape on the Discord/Telegram group, but the need for a static reference
pushed me to write here in Pine64 forum.
After earlier contacts with Lup Yuen on Twitter, I started to ruminate and then to draw a possible UI for the Pinetime,
something suitable for its 240x320px pixel and the hardware feature.
There are some pictures of sketches in early February, but the place to see the UI take shape are the interactive prototypes:
Fonts
The UI use 2 fonts carefully selected across the one with open license:
- the Free Sans, a redesigned version of Helvetica, used mostly for content text
- the Share font, a narrow font used in label and system titles.
Other candidates were the
- Free Mono (monospace)
- Lato
- Source Sans
- Oswald Heavy
UI structure
The UI is based on a dark background with a HomeWatch screen,
and Springboard with all the apps and settings.
Gestures:
- (on HomeWatch), any click or swipe go to the Springboard
- (on Springboard), swipe from top to get to HomeWatch
- swiping from top exit the active app
- pushing the physical button exit the app
Stacks
Every app can be a
- Single page, with vertical scrolling to see more content (there is a "HW acceleration" on this) or a
- Multi-page app, in this case it's composed by a stack of screens on the right:
[EXAMPLE] If I have to setup a calendar, I may set Hour/minutes on page 1, date on page 2, and details on page 3.
An undo and a next/Set button helps me to move on the procedure. Swipe right and swipe left as a extra method to move in stacks of pages.
Comment
The OS UI actually inherit some useful tool from the Meego Harmattan experience, without being too gesture reliant. Most of navigation is still based on simple tap, and coloured buttons. (We need to verify how the detection of swipe will be on the hardware).
Finally, the UI is modular, made by blocks with spacers, and designed to lend itself to a replacement of the 2 fonts by the developers, with similar-sized characters.
I will post more detail and some guideline at the next stage of works.
Giovanni
Minodesign
[url=https://twitter.com/MisterTechBlog][/url]
After purchasing a Pinebook Pro recently I was faced with the fact that there was no out-of-the-box Slackware (or derivative of thereof) installer available.
After spending some time interacting with forum user mara/sndwvs at LinuxQuestions ( https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions...?p=6093972 )
I managed to cross-compile (on x86_64) an installer file system image with his script that's available at https://gitlab.com/sndwvs/slackware_arm_build_kit
Unfortunately the installer image doesn't seem to work: it doesn't boot on Pinebook Pro for some reason.
What I see is that when the micro SD card is inserted, and the system powered on, the screen stays blank, and seemingly nothing happens.
How could I debug this boot-related problem? Do I need the serial cable to do that, or can it be debugged some other way too?
Anybody do a clean install of Manjaro 20.02 KDE to EMMC yet (Manjaro-ARM-kde-plasma-pbpro-20.02-emmc-installer)? I have tried it now a couple times (each with fresh download and SD re-image) to my PBpro (ISO verison) w/128GB EMMC and it installs fine, but trying to launch certain apps like the updater from the tool bar or right click to configure desktop causes a plasma crash or kicks me back to the login. I have also had the screen lock up on me if sitting unattended for awhile at the login...mouse works but does not wake up (not blank screen, just frozen login screen (clock frozen at time locked up)). Ran an update from the command line but I think it only updated one package (did not pay attention) and that did not resolve the issue.
Version 19.xx was working perfectly, going back to it tonight if I cannot get it sorted. Just wondering if anybody else is experiencing this...or if I am lucky ? Might try XFCE for giggles....
I've been running the "stock" Debian/MATE Linux and it has been improving but it still randomly crashes and has odd problems with video, audio and printers.
Another issue is that many of the packages in this distro are out of date and many versions behind current releases.
(Most recently Kdenlive, Firefox)
Can anyone recommend a more functional and up to date distro?
