Thank you! What confused me was the RTC installation guide, specifically step 2, which says:
Restart uConsole and use the
sudo hwclock -rcommand to check if it’s working. If successful, you should see the output like this:pi@clockworkpi:~ $ sudo hwclock -r 2025-01-04 17:21:37.491776+08:00If you don’t see any output, please check if the battery is installed or if it’s inserted backwards.
I saw a time output like this and assumed everything was working - later turns out it was coming from the CM5’s fake RTC when I realized that the actual RTC chip wasn’t detected at all.
Unfortunately, there’s very little documentation, and most guides just say “use this image” or “use that one”, but I’m running Arch Linux ARM thanks to help from @PeterCxy. I don’t want to switch to Debian, so I had to dig deeper and experiment a bit.
Now I’ve got almost everything up and running! I can’t test Meshtastic yet since I don’t have a second device nearby to send or receive messages but that’ll come soon.
For that it was also important to enable only dtoverlay=spi1-1cs and NOT dtparam=spi=on, because otherwise the display won’t work.
Overall, the uConsole with CM5 and the extension board is fantastic. I’m very happy with it and really grateful for all the help I’ve received here in the forum.