Keyboard/mouse don't work intermittently, lots of USB reset messages

[Claire]

I got a rk3588 pocket reform about 4 months ago, and have been using it since at least a few times per week. Everything worked great up until about a week ago, when the mouse and keyboard started acting erratically. Both will periodically stop sending inputs for a couple seconds, and the keyboard will repeatedly send whatever key is pressed if I’m holding down a key at the moment things cut out. Looking in dmesg I saw a lot of logs like this:

[ 4212.978479] usb 1-1.3: reset full-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-platform
[ 4218.370498] usb 1-1.3: reset full-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-platform
[ 4221.194583] usb 1-1.3: reset full-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-platform

Sometimes the built-in keyboard and mouse will completely cease functioning, which I think is connected to these lines in dmesg:

[ 4303.369218] usb 8-1-port1: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad?
[ 4307.373151] usb 8-1-port1: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad?
[ 4311.365146] usb 8-1-port1: Cannot enable. Maybe the USB cable is bad?

Notably the keyboard can still control the rpi2040 without issue when in this state.

I opened up the device and inspected every cable between the mouse, keyboard, and compute module and didn’t see anything amiss (see attached photos).

The device is still running the original debian install it had on it when shipped from MNT, but I’ve switched it to testing instead of unstable. The gnome firmware tool lists the input firmware as up-to-date at version 20251118

Has anyone else run into this or know what I can do to get input working reliably again?

[kxtells]

Hello.

Yes, you have some threads discussing this same, or similar problem.

Keyboard and trackball unresponsive

I see the same behavior with FW 20251118. Last thing I can see before the hangup are repeats of the last touched key. Then trackball and keyboard become unresponsive. I can attach a mouse to shut down the device. USB and keyboard reset may bring back life, but sometimes it takes several reboots.

Pocket Reform Keyboard disconnects and crashes

I have been working with folks on the MNT IRC channel for a while but I think things will be better managed over here on the forums. @minute has made several improvements to the keyboard firmware that are making strides here, but the biggest issue is that the keyboard will get into a state where the USB hub does not re-enumerate it and it is effectively disconnected from the system. Sometimes, if I wait and keep trying to reset the keyboard via the oled (this is functionality that was added in…

I had this same problem myself. In my case the USB connection was not stable, so I tried a different cable, but the same problem appeared.

I finally requested MNT if they could provide a replacement keyboard, since the change I had no problem at all.

Your cables seem fine, play with re-seating them to ensure proper connections.
Also ensure you’re running the latest keyboard firmware, as I understand latest versions were more tolerant to connection failures (although, I’m not 100% sure of this last statement :-D)