Finally... The touchpad works great!

[gabeeg]

Ok, Have spent an adequate amount of time with it now. For me the trackpad works great, no real complaints other than (unrelated to what this firmware provides) the poor palm detection. If I could have adequate palm detection or the ability to adjust the sensitivity it would remove my very last trackpad gripe.

[elof]

Thanks a lot for this! I've just successfully updated my 2021 PBP with a SH61F83 chip successfully.
I had never flashed firmware before so I don't know anything about how many write cycles my chip has been through.
I can't say it's safe to do it but I am now happy that I've tried it and it worked.

The improvement of the touchpad is very clear. The cursor won't drag on anymore when I try to accurately move it into a small area like a button, which was a major disturbance.

[UltraBlack_]

How did the 50-100 Write check go? I'd like to update my firmware, but I am kinda scared to mess up my firmware. I've already flashed my chip once when I changed the keyboard as the pine64 support told me to.

~ UB

[hacker]

How did the 50-100 Write check go? I'd like to update my firmware, but I am kinda scared to mess up my firmware. I've already flashed my chip once when I changed the keyboard as the pine64 support told me to.

~ UB

I was waiting for the check for a while, but then just went on and updated (and yes, I have this "bad" chip). Everything went fine (I updated two or three times a couple of years back). Not sure if there was a significant improvement, because by the time I updated I had touchpad turned off and used external mouse, because it was pretty unbearable. I have very vague recollections of how bad it was. At any rate, I have trackpad turned on now and it seems usable, so probably things got better.

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If I could have adequate palm detection or the ability to adjust the sensitivity it would remove my very last trackpad gripe.

Very last would be then its awfully loud clicking

[User 11436]

Has anyone else been having issues with their trackpad since the update?

It took several attempts for me to finally see the correct output when applying the updates to the trackpad firmware.

For the most part, it works. However, it seems to go out of whack every once in a while, i.e. phantom mouse clicks, movement all over the place, etc.

[slyecho]

For the most part, it works. However, it seems to go out of whack every once in a while, i.e. phantom mouse clicks, movement all over the place, etc.

Sounds like bad palm rejection, no? I just have learned to keep my hands clear of the trackpad when typing but sometimes it doesn't help.

[User 11436]

For the most part, it works. However, it seems to go out of whack every once in a while, i.e. phantom mouse clicks, movement all over the place, etc.

Sounds like bad palm rejection, no? I just have learned to keep my hands clear of the trackpad when typing but sometimes it doesn't help.

Not sure it's that. Required a reboot to sort it.

[jpalus]

For the most part, it works. However, it seems to go out of whack every once in a while, i.e. phantom mouse clicks, movement all over the place, etc.

Sounds like bad palm rejection, no? I just have learned to keep my hands clear of the trackpad when typing but sometimes it doesn't help.

Not sure it's that. Required a reboot to sort it.

It was already mentioned in previous comment but no solution so far. Except that I was able to confirm it's undoubtedly a firmware issue: if active hub is attached to USB port, power is delivered also to USB keyboard and therefore to trackpad so reboot/poweroff doesn't reset the trackpad state even though whole software stack is completely reloaded (self generated events continue to happen even after restart when external USB power is attached).

[User 11436]

For the most part, it works. However, it seems to go out of whack every once in a while, i.e. phantom mouse clicks, movement all over the place, etc.

Sounds like bad palm rejection, no? I just have learned to keep my hands clear of the trackpad when typing but sometimes it doesn't help.

Not sure it's that. Required a reboot to sort it.

It was already mentioned in previous comment but no solution so far. Except that I was able to confirm it's undoubtedly a firmware issue: if active hub is attached to USB port, power is delivered also to USB keyboard and therefore to trackpad so reboot/poweroff doesn't reset the trackpad state even though whole software stack is completely reloaded (self generated events continue to happen even after restart when external USB power is attached).

Yup. That does sound like the same issue.

[vajak]

For people using vanilla Debian on the PBP, in addtion to the touchpad's firmware upgrade, it makes quite a difference to install and properly configure the package 'xserver-xorg-input-synaptics'. 

There is a nice configuration interface for it added to the xfce4 mouse and touchpad settings once it has been installed.

Before: i.imgur.com/rVLvP6v.png
After: i.imgur.com/E3lIq9n.png

While i prefer and am exclusively used to Thinkpad trackpoints (the PBP is my first real exposure to touchpads), this package made me much less dislike the touchpad driven pointing interface.