Finally... The touchpad works great!

[KC9UDX]

The only real updatable firmware in the PBP is for the keyboard/touchpad, so this forum, especially this thread will be the place to look.

[bigCamel]

Hello,

I'm feeling happy, excited, and a bit privileged to announce the availability of the new vendor-provided touchpad firmware that fixes the issues we've all been experiencing with the Pinebook Pro touchpad.  One of the biggest issues was the initial lag upon finger movement, about which you can read more in this forum thread; it has been confirmed multiple times to be a touchpad issue and not a Linux issue.

Based on the testing already performed by a few community members, myself included, this firmware update makes the touchpad very responsive and there are no traces of the dreaded initial delay.  I've also performed tests using the evtest utility, to eliminate any subjectivity, and the measured latency stays around or below 10 ms...  The numbers don't lie.   You can read more about the evtest results with the old firmware in the above-linked forum thread.

I've prepared an updated version of the keyboard and touchpad firmware update utility, which is available on GitHub.  Beside the updated touchpad firmware, my fork of the firmware updater brings other improvements, including improved feedback/status messages, improved handling of command-line arguments, added ability to cancel each update step, and improved documentation.

To update the firmware, just follow the instructions that are available on the GitHub page.  If you're a Manjaro ARM user, an updated package containing the new firmware updater utility will be available shortly (package pinebook-pro-keyboard-updater, version 0.0.3-1).  However, please note that updating the firmware carries a small risk of permanently disabling the trackpad and keyboard, effectively bricking them. Proceed at your own risk.

We already know that some Pinebook Pros came with the "lite" version of the keyboard controller IC, SH61F83, which is limited to a total of eight writes, according to the datasheet.  However, Pine64 has already contacted the keyboard manufacturer and they've assured Pine64 that SH61F83 is actually the same IC as the "full-fat" version, SH68F83, and that it supports many write cycles.  However, if your Pinebook Pro came with a SH61F83, I'd recommed that you wait until I verify those claims; my first-batch ISO Pinebook Pro came with the "lite" IC and I'll test it out by performing about 50 to 100 write cycles.

In addition to the updated firmware updater utility, I'm working on getting the firmware update available through fwupd, which is the industry standard for distributing firmware updates in Linux.  In the end, updating the keyboard and touchpad firmware through fwupd will be as easy as running a few commands, as described here, all that with no shutting down and powering up of your Pinebook Pro!  The fwupd process will leverage the ability to restart the keyboard controller IC by suspending the Pinebook Pro into the s2idle state and resuming it automatically a few seconds later.  Unfortunately, s2idle suspend currently doesn't work on the Pinebook Pro, at least not if an NVMe SSD is installed, so the suspend issue needs to be resolved first.

If you decide not to wait for fwupd to become available and instead you take the "old" way to update the touchpad firmware, please cast your vote in the posted poll, so we end up with some kind of a summary feedback.  Also, please feel free to ask questions or provide your detailed feedback.  Of course, I'll provide further updates as replies to this thread.

I just successfully updated the firmware with the updater. The new firmware makes a huge difference. Responsiveness of the touchpad is really nice now. Thank you!

[BrianY]

I checked, and my Pinebook has the SH61F83 keyboard controller

I've already updated it before (maybe a few times as I remember having some trouble), so I'm not going to risk it again until we have confirmation that the SH61F83 and  SH68F83 controllers have the same support for write cycles. Has anyone actually encountered an issue with writing  to SH61F83 too many times? I'm itching to give this a go as it sounds like it makes a really nice change.

Many thanks to all involved in this!

Can anyone confirm success with the SH61F83 controller chip?  I also have this in my PBP and am very much hesitant to update the firmware.

[account3122]

This worked great on my Pinebook Pro ISO model, thank you VERY much It's actually usable now!!

[stozi]

I just ran this for ISO with the manjaro updater package, following the instructions on the github, i.e., three steps. Step three is:
sudo pbp-fwupdate flash-kb firmware/default_iso.hex
The problem is that, using the manjaro package, there is no such .hex path anywhere, so I downloaded it from github and ran with Downloads/default_iso.hex

Then I had no functionality, so I ran steps 1 and 2 again and it functions, but I'm not entirely sure I successfully updated it. Readout looked fine...

[KC9UDX]

If it stopped working, but it works now, it almost must be successfully updated.

[vajak]

Successfully upgraded the touchpad firmware, but still can't get used to deal with any kind of touchpad.

My major "gripe" with the Pinebook is the keyboard since i am missing the trackpoint of the Thinkpads i'm used to since more than 20 years and on which the touchpad is usually turned off in the BIOS because it always gets in the way while typing.

[GingerDave]

I checked, and my Pinebook has the SH61F83 keyboard controller

I've already updated it before (maybe a few times as I remember having some trouble), so I'm not going to risk it again until we have confirmation that the SH61F83 and  SH68F83 controllers have the same support for write cycles. Has anyone actually encountered an issue with writing  to SH61F83 too many times? I'm itching to give this a go as it sounds like it makes a really nice change.

Many thanks to all involved in this!

Can anyone confirm success with the SH61F83 controller chip?  I also have this in my PBP and am very much hesitant to update the firmware.

I did update mine with the SH61F83 controller in the end and it worked fine. Turned out I had made a note of the number of reflashes I'd done previously, to document my previous attempts for a potential forum post asking for help - and those notes showed it was no where close to 8 times we have a concern about for this chip. I therefore figured I'd give it one more go as the trackpad was pretty much the only thing preventing me from using the PBP as my main laptop. All went well on the first attempt with this new firmware and using the trackpad is now sweet as a nut.

I could't recommend anyone else with this specific chip in their PBP risking this, as we still don't have confirmation about whether the SH61F83 controller has a limit and whether this is really a risk or not. I wanted to give it one go, as if it worked it would mean I'm unlikely to ever need to re-flash this again for my specific use case.

[dealie]

I ran the updater from the updater app in the Manjaro (XFCE) GUI.

I can't tell immediately whether or not the touchpad is working better. So I'm wondering if I did it right.

Did that simply install a program that I now have to run? If so, how do I do it?

There was no feedback beyond letting me know that the install was complete. I wasn't prompted to reboot.

Sorry for the newbie questions, I'm brand new to Arch-based systems, and don't know the CLI well enough to know how to determine what a device's firmware version is, when it was updated, etc. But, maybe it's useful that to someone like me, the process is rather opaque.

[KC9UDX]

I ran the updater from the updater app in the Manjaro (XFCE) GUI.

I can't tell immediately whether or not the touchpad is working better. So I'm wondering if I did it right.

Did that simply install a program that I now have to run? If so, how do I do it?

There was no feedback beyond letting me know that the install was complete. I wasn't prompted to reboot.

Sorry for the newbie questions, I'm brand new to Arch-based systems, and don't know the CLI well enough to know how to determine what a device's firmware version is, when it was updated, etc. But, maybe it's useful that to someone like me, the process is rather opaque.

I suspect that did nothing at all.  Please see the instructions on GitHub, mentioned in the first post.