Comment by 4ggr0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 4ggr0 | Hacker News Reader

> That said, the accessories seem to be plagued by hardware bugs

I received the Pinephone Keyboard a little more than a week ago. Ordered it because I thought it would revive my motivation to use the Pinephone, because it would turn it into a cool mini linux laptop.

However, since receiving it, I wasn't able to get it working. According to the community the pins don't always make a connection to the phone and you have to shim it, while risking to break something. The keyboard charges the phone and all the required drivers are installed, but typing just wont work.

Overall I still really like the idea of the Pinephone. But since receiving it in 2020 and recently receiving the keyboard I had to spend 90% of the time using it for debugging, fixing, reinstalling OS after breaking upgrades etc. and am now at a point where I just don't care about this device anymore. Because during the 10% when I can actually use it, it is just way to slow.

I of course knew what I was getting into and know that it's still in a dev phase.

My favourite OS to use is DanctNIX with SXMO, btw.

I bought a PinePhone along with the keyboard case to muck around on as well.

Initially, I got no response from the keyboard so I started reading up about it. The first think I found is that when you've got the phone attached to the keyboard, you mustn't use the phone socket for charging as it can fry the electronics (something about the charger chip in the keyboard, I believe) - only use the keyboard socket for charging when connected.

Then, after worrying about whether I'd fried a brand new device, I discovered that after a software update, the keyboard suddenly started working. However, the top row of keys weren't working well and required a stern press for them to activate, so I hit the forums again looking for a solution. Some people were making shims for the top row of keys, but then I found a post going into detail as to why the keys had trouble activating. Apparently, the rubber doesn't have enough room to squish down, so an easy solution (if you have a dremel) is to remove the top row keycaps and remove a mm of material from the top edge of each keys (the side nearest the hinge). Took me about ten minutes and now they work perfectly.

Still haven't found a good use case for it though as the screen is short and wide so not great for terminal hacking.

I had this problem, it would charge and detect the keyboard was there (on screen keyboard wouldn't appear, but keyboard didn't input anything), It was down to the clip around the pins not being clipped in, so it was effectively pushing the case away from the pins. I had to give it quite a squeeze for it to pop in.

Although to be honest, after using mine for a month I gave up for various reasons such as upgrades breaking things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com