ive recently acquired a used devterm a04 for the purposes of simple pico 8 game development and i have to say this device is an incredible disappointment. jumping through a lot of hurdles to update to the latest firmware without being blocked by the “no pubkey” error, upgrading both fan daemon and gearbox, setting every core to be enabled and in performance mode this thing is a hunk of trash. opening a terminal window takes 5+ seconds, the build quality is absolutely subpar, the keyboard is an ergonomic nightmare and of course the trackball is unresponsive.
yes its marketed as “hackable” and im sure most of you will bend over backwards to justify this piece of garbage but i think its pretty amazing clockwork pi got away with this.
i had initially considered upgrading it to a cm5 using the adapter from the store but im gonna cancel my order and cut my losses. never again.
The a06 is not better, and currently the CM3 is not better. If you go up to a CM4 it might be decent again, Rex has some nice images for CM4 and CM5.
For now I don’t want to spend the money on it, the uConsole is doing what I need and as soon as my ethernet card arrives, it will be all I need.
Eventually I may upgrade my Devterm to a CM4, but I’m not in a hurry at all!
And in their defense, Clockwork did a good job with it, they just have no follow through with the OS. If the Armbian updates worked, I probably wouldn’t have bought my uConsole. But Armbian like the Bookworm and Parrot that Rex provides just doesn’t seem to like the display panel. Anything above kernel 5.17 and no more display.
And all that said, My DevTerm has been in a drawer for 2 years, cracked it back out when I ordered the uConsole and I did by the CM4 adapter for it. I also stuck a CM3 in there to see if the images that Rex makes would work. But he doesn’t have a Devterm to fool with, so he’s guessing at the display problem and I’m not enough of a linux user to help fix it.
I think the DevTerm is the weakest product from Clockwork Pi. That said, I have two of them an A06 that I hacked in a CM3 module and one I upgraded to a CM4 module.
I like the keyboard, but I used to code on an Psion Revo / Diamond Mako and an EeePC 701, so funky half size keyboards are something I accept as part of the form factor. The trackball that the DevTerm ships with is absolutely a nightmare. Just endless frustration to the point that not having a trackball might have been the better choice. Configuring the gamepad controls for mouse movement is a decent compromise. Getting a new trackball is an easy fix that isn’t terribly expensive, but shipping was more than the component for me.
Your best bet is to sell your DevTerm and cancel your orders. You are clearly not happy with it. There’s nothing that can likely be done to change your mind. Your use cases or requirements are simply different than other people here. And that’s OK!
I got an A04 when they first came out, and yes it is disappointing… especially at the price I paid. There’s a lot wrong, and none of the issues have been addressed except by the community. It actually put me off CPI for a long time, though my disappointment has been allayed by the PicoCalc, which is a far better product.
The DevTerm is an orphaned device now, unavailable to buy and with no support from CPI, and key issues like the display being vertically offset have never been resolved. The build quality isn’t that bad, but the PicoCalc is far better.
If they took the lessons they’ve clearly learned and applied in the PicoCalc (and afaik the uConsole) and did a DevTerm 2 with a properly screwed-shut case and a display that wasn’t crap, I’d probably buy it. It’s got some good features about - I love the keyboard, for instance - but some things are certainly lacking. The shape of the back, for instance; if it was wedge shaped, it would sit nicely on a desk. If they did that, had the SD slot internally mounted, and used a setup that could just use the standard Debian repos rather than the travesty we had (not to mention one that allows us to create user accounts without having to crack the damn’ thing), that be awesome. But I suspect they’re going to edge away from the DevTerm and not use that form factor again, and just concentrate on the uConsole.
I can’t really speak to the quality or quirks of the DevTerm because I never bought one. I was considering it as a distraction-free typewriter, but then I discovered it’s so small you can thumb-type on it. I ended up getting a uConsole but for a different use case.
I’d love to see a larger version of the DevTerm, perhaps with an angle screen, although maybe I’m missing the point of it. The digital typewriter market is a scam (looking at you, Freewrite) and I feel like there would be room for something like it.
you’ll probably will need to modify config.txt as this image primarily built for uconsole, but it still should work as they both have almost identical hardware
Hmm. If what Greg_E said is also in response to this, I’m out of luck - my unit’s an A04.
Eugh. Maybe I should just pull my finger out and try to port Debian myself after all. I just borked my machine after reflashing a new SD card with the latest image and trying to change the username, it froze on reboot and I had to just cut the power. Pain in the arse, now I’ll have to reflash. I don’t know where those idiots got off making it so damned unstable.
I have an a06 sitting in a drawer, currently CM3 is installed because it was cheap and I wanted to try it. The only real ways to make this good:
#1 install a CM4 with adapter
#2 make your own OS that you understand and can reproduce, but see #1 to make this easier.
Note that there seems to be an odd kernel issue with the display panel, anything above 5.17 seems to get the blank display (with backlight) and maybe sideways HDMI. So you will need to sort that out in making something newer. If it wasn’t for the display issue, Armbian might be a decent place to start, it worked fairly well on the a06 until the kernel changed enough to stop it from working.
If there is a next time to taking the cover off me uConsole, I’ll have to put the CM4 into my Devterm and see if it works, hard to justify the $80 to upgrade the Devterm right now.
It’s interesting how different the experiences with the DevTerm are. I started with an DevTerm R01 back at the beginning of 2024 mostly for tinkering purposes and to get a look at the Risc-V ecosystem and ended up with it as a somewhat daily driver. I used the OS image that was supplied by CPI, pruned everything but the pure base system from it and started building up my on userspace using mostly suckless tools (https://suckless.org), which resulted in a quiet snappy experience (considered the hardware specifications).
Now, recently i have upgraded to a CM4 (because i wanted a functioning port for an external display), followed the same procedure as mentioned above and i am pretty happy so far and use it currently as my full daily driver. Its a good little system for the things i need to do, which are mostly console based tasks, but also the quick game of luanti now and then.
One thing though is absolutely clear: The trackball is a crime against humanity.
there is community keyboard firmware that improves the keyboard and trackball a bit, and buying a few of the trackballs from aliexpress to try out can also help with getting one that works better
For terminal work either SSH or serial through Minicom, the Pi CM3 is perfectly fine, I just wish I could get the kernel updated to something current.
I was happy with the a06 too, but again the kernel changes made it so I couldn’t update to current.
I guess I should find a 4GB CM4 and just swap it, then I could run Rex’s Parrot OS which I really like. I have Parrot on several other computers now, I just like the way it looks and operates compared to other things. XFCE is the only other desktop that I really can work with. Theming being a big deal with Parrot, they did a good job (in my opinion).