Modifier + trackball scrolling and power management questions for a06 users

Hi,

I got my DevTerm assembled - very straightforward, but for folks who are about to embark on the journey I would highly recommend watching the livestream @Godzil posted on YouTube. It was extremely informative as the issues he flagged, you’ll likely see as well.

As far as initial observations, they are positive. I was able to do some basic things like install i3wm and disable xfce, enabled sshd, ufw, VNC, etc.

I have three issues I was wondering if the community has encountered or has thoughts:

  1. I think there’s a way of using a modifier key + trackball movement to emulate scrolling. That would greatly enhance the usability of the trackball. I can’t figure out how to do this despite intense Google’ing.
  2. Suspend as far as I can tell, does not quite seem to work. The screen goes off, but it never comes back on no matter what I do unless I perform a hard reset. Are folks able to suspend their a06 devices?
  3. Similarly, if I change power management settings so that the display turns off after a certain time, despite anything I might do, the screen never turns back on again. I was hoping to leave the device plugged in headless for major tweaking and ssh/vnc into the device but I was also uncomfortable leaving the screen on with no screensaver/display management.

I don’t think these are hardware issues, so I suspect other folks may have noticed and solved some of these problems. Any help/advice would be much appreciated!

I too am curious about the modifier key with trackball for scrolling. I had assumed it would be the middle mouse button below the space bar, but that seems to act as left click, which is redundant.

Godzil made a modification of the keyboard firmware for scrolling

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Thank you! (and @Godzil )

I’m curious, which one?

The video you made on YouTube when you first got your DevTerm CM3 - for example, at some point you need to take off the tape for the two small round parts off studs before mounting the core module. You catch it quickly, remove the tape and move on but I see folks on the forum re-learning that lesson.

There are also other moments in the video where you either slow down because the parts are a tight fit, or things are tricky to assemble. Knowing that you’re running into some difficulty was useful to anticipate those issues. You also go out out of your way to emphasize the polarity of the battery among other helpful moments. :slight_smile:

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Glad that helped some people :slight_smile:

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Modifying what the 1st dip switch does would be interesting too.
For example, I’m currently using it with dip switch 2 switched on, so that the D pad is doubling up as the arrow keys. But an alternative setting could see the Dpad perform as an emulated mouse with a much faster tracking speed. Or even as a proper scrolll wheel; both up/down and left/right.
Forward and backwards keys in browsers could also be useful; along with other shortcuts for ABXY keys. They’re handy for games, but for times when you’re not gaming l serve little purpose.

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I fear the first one is linked with the boot loader in the uC*, I would not recommend to change the firmware to use it…

*If you change the position the keyboard will not boot to normal, not 100% sure what it is doing haven’t investigated further.

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