Hopefully it’s not too gauche to stick a simple “success!” post here, but months back I had posted about routing the bpi-cm4 serial port externally via 3.5mm TRS jack for debugging (debugging a problem that has since been solved by newer kernels). My FTDI serial adapter wouldn’t fit on the S2 pins with the case closed, so this seemed like a thing that might work, and josch mentioned that others had done this very thing.
I started collecting parts then, but only got as far as drilling a hole, sticking the 3.5mm jack on, and (poorly) soldering some wires to a connector that would fit on the S2 pins with enough clearance for the case to be installed over it.
For various external reasons, I still haven’t done any additional soldering, but today I finally did crimp the wires onto the TRS jack and I got pin connectors onto a 3.5mm plug and hooked my USB FTDI adapter to that. And then I reassembled it all, connected it all up to another computer, and it all worked.
This is by no means a professional job (the wire lengths are terrible, and there’s messy poorly adhering electrical tape around my bad soldering job) but I feel inordinately pleased that I didn’t break anything and it actually does what I wanted.
I figured it out and made it work in the hardware world, which I have very little practical experience with doing.
Thank you for these machines. They make me very happy.
