I ordered in the US through JLCPCB and with shipping it was only a little over $5 with generic shipping. Took about two weeks. Just got them though and they did a good job.
I am about to build mine. Is there anything additional needed in regards to power with this? I got your board in the mail yesterday and just wanted to make sure I didnt need anything else. I know the pi can also run on 3.3V but wasnt sure if I needed any type of converter or not. I don’t wanna damage my unit.
How is the battery life on it?
It runs without a converter. But i would be careful with power hungry usb devices. Battery life I have not tested by now,
Good to know. I am probably foregoing the USB add on at the moment and just getting it to work. May just use the terminal like a chunky Beepy and code games on the go with Pico-8. Nothing too taxing.
Thanks for designing the boards! Appreciate you taking the time for that.
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with the fancy zero adaptor board is it possible to have it so that the pi pico can be installed simulataneously with the pi pico? and just switch between the two?
How did you get pico8 full screen? Been trying to figure it out with no luck. Guessing the pico8 config.txt file?
Hi,
root@ZeroCalcBW:/# cat /sys/firmware/picocalc/battery_percent
94
It seems to work. Sadly you have to update the Keyboard Firmware.
Flashing the firmware is descriped under:
PicoCalc_BIOS_v1.2.bin is ok.
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Thank you for explaining how to get the battery percentage.
Since adding that information to the taskbar seems cumbersome, I tried using conky as an alternative. (Is it a waste to use conky solely for this purpose?)
Method:
- Shorten the taskbar to leave space on the right side.
- Install and configure conky. (/etc/conky/conky.conf)
A sample configuration is below.
However, it may contain unnecessary settings.
Also, the optimal settings for font and window size will vary depending on your environment.
conky.config = {
alignment = 'top_right',
background = true,
border_width = 1,
cpu_avg_samples = 2,
default_color = 'white',
default_outline_color = 'white',
default_shade_color = 'white',
double_buffer = false,
draw_borders = false,
draw_graph_borders = true,
draw_outline = false,
draw_shades = false,
extra_newline = false,
font = 'DejaVu Sans Mono:size=17',
gap_x = 1,
gap_y = 1,
minimum_height = 30,
minimum_width = 40,
net_avg_samples = 2,
no_buffers = true,
out_to_console = false,
out_to_ncurses = false,
out_to_stderr = false,
out_to_x = true,
own_window = true,
own_window_class = 'Conky',
own_window_type = 'normal',
own_window_transparent = true,
own_window_hints = 'undecorated,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager,below',
own_window_argb_visual = true,
own_window_argb_value = 0,
own_window_colour = 'grey',
show_graph_range = false,
show_graph_scale = false,
stippled_borders = 0,
update_interval = 30.0,
uppercase = false,
use_spacer = 'none',
use_xft = true,
}
conky.text = [[
${color black} ${exec cat /sys/firmware/picocalc/battery_percent}%
]]
This is probably the simplest method, but there might be better ways.
1 Like
Wow - you are awesome. Not only is this a super helpful add-on, but you are taking the time to explain it all so thoroughly. Thank you! This is the type of community I enjoy.
thanks for the kind words!
Anyone fiddling with pico-8 on this figure out how to enlarge the screen from stock? I have gone into the config.txt file for pico-8 and none of the settings seem to make it fit.
Whats your setup? Raspian version? Desktop?
If I start it on the terminal with the desktop it is automatic fullscreen.
What resolution you have set in /boot/config.txt ?
Do you have changed the locale? On my side is not swapped.
I use en_GB.UTF-8 which is default.
the hdmi_cvt is set to 320 320 60 1. It boots into fullscreen for me too but there is a black border around it. Someone shared photos of theirs and it looks like it fills the screen.
My locale is US.
Pico-8 has a resolution of 128x128 and it will try to fill the screen with up to the largest integer scale it can, at 320x320 this is 2x at 256x256 and leaves you with borders. If your resolution is 640x640, that is a perfect 5x integer scale and you’ll have no borders. You need to be running your desktop at the 640x640 resolution downscaled to the LCD for Pico-8 to fill the screen.
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That seems to have worked. Though now my CLI is really small as well as my desktop but I can fiddle around with that to fix it.
Thanks for the info!
Change it to the following and overwrite “config.txt.”
hdmi_cvt=640 640 60 1 0 0 0
That’s what I ended up doing. Thanks for the reply though. 