I am considering using a Pocket Reform as a musical instrument live on stage.
Vibrations
Sometimes there are pretty extreme bass vibrations. Do you think some of the connectors could be in danger of coming loose? As in a cable falling out?
Most laptops today pretty much don’t have any internal cables. This is a problem, but also a solution to this situation.
Do you think adding some hot glue to some of the connectors is a good idea or a bad idea?
Software stability
I get that this is a bit of a hacker device, I dig that. But on stage it just HAS to boot. Would you say that most of the software problems posted on this forum comes from updating and changing things?
In other words, would making an image that never changes fix this? I guess there could be a dedicated partision on the ssd, and even a backup on a micro-sd card?
Any other thoughts? Looks like a seriously cool computer.
The connectors as far as I can tell are as solid as you will find in other laptops or electronics you might use on stage.
I my personal experience the biggest concern about vibration might be screws coming undone - a bit of loctite would solve that problem.
I have had a screw come lose in my DIY reform and it was all good, but it could land in the wrong place and cause a short. This may only be a potential concern for DIY units. But if you open and close the computer, it is something to keep in mind. I think its probably true of any laptop.
if you’re worried about connectors, i’d say just grab some little rubber feet and put them on the bottom, should absorb enough that any concerns are null. that said, glue could be a pretty bad idea, i’d say just grab a tiny square of duct tape and tape the little bracket for the ribbon cable connectors down to the ribbon cable, the tape will keep the plastic lock in place so it can’t shake loose, and be way easier to remove. even electrical tape would work for that, maybe better than duct tape.
for screws, my DIY unit came with some threadlock on the screws for the case, and the internal screws are on aluminium that seems like it should vibrate in a manner that won’t shake the screws loose, even without feet. long as things are snug i wouldn’t be concerned, just double check and be careful not to strip anything
i personally would be concerned about internal vibrations of the SOM, so i’d say just get some thermal pads that are like 2.5mm and put those in to add some pressure so it doesn’t move nearly as much and damage the slot, and adding some on the wifi chipset would only improve thermals inside anyhow, it’s a worthwhile upgrade, and could help your situation
as for the software, i’d say yeah, changes are what causes issues more often than not. i’d also make an SD card backup, and boot it a bit early to give debugging time or swapping to an SD backup, then just plug it in on stage to charge to account for lost battery life.
One you have the configuration locked down, you should not have any issues on the latest hardware/firmware revisions. For stage use, I’d definitely recommend making a “frozen” system configuration that you don’t update or use for daily tasks. Keep a few SD cards on hand flashed with your stable image. (Keep more than one on hand and use “industrial” or high-reliability SD cards to guard against unexpected SD card failure.) When you eventually want to update your image or make significant changes, do thorough testing on it before using it live and keep backups with the old image available, just in case.
This is probably overkill, but it’s better not to have an unexpected regression pop up while you’re performing! This approach should give you confidence that everything is solid, which is what you want in an instrument.
Edit: I second the recommendation for adding rubber dome feet, I have done this on mine to avoid scratching surfaces. You can even buy anti-vibration ones that are designed for turntables. Just make sure they have a good adhesive, the first ones I used eventually detached themselves.
I had my Pocket Reform fall from the overhead compartment of a TGV, so a 2 m drop. The only thing that got dislodged was the RCORE carrier board. In another thread, minute said that it’s possible to fix the RCORE board to the motherboard using some M2 screws. Maybe that’s something you’d like to do as well.
My classic Reform are being vibrated several times daily as they are in my backpack during a 40 minute commute by bike and train. Screws rattle themselves loose regularly. The solution, as others have said, is loctite. I’m only echoing this as another datapoint that yes, this is a real problem and loctite is the solution.
I never had a cable come loose ever.
As the CPU is doing work, hot glue will melt, making the glue pointless.
Yes, most software problems appear because the MNT repositories are using Debian unstable, so when you upgrade to unknown versions, you may be encountering new and interesting bugs.
If your device is offline anyways, then I do not think it is problematic to run outdated software versions for a long time. Once you found an image that works for you, just keep using that. If you want to upgrade, take a backup and then thoroughly test the new package versions. But no, if you do not change anything software-wise, your system will not suddenly stop booting.
There are cases when I run into weird boot issues occasionally and need to power-cycle and try again. It’s rare but it does happen. Earlier this week I had an issue where my SSD didn’t work. I think it was some kind of power problem and I had to boot with a charger connected. After that everything worked fine again.
Sometimes I have an issue where the display just shows noise when I power on. A reboot fixes that though.
And sometimes the keyboard doesn’t work on boot, preventing me from entering the disk encryption password. Again rebooting or power-cycling helps.
None of these are show stoppers as they are all temporary but I can definitely see them adding stress in a stage-performance situation. Something to be aware of.
The “keyboard doesn’t work at boot” sometimes concerns me, it sounds like you’re on an older u-boot version, because this bug should be fixed by u-boot from around May 2025 (it includes some code to properly reset our USB hub) Have you recently tried sudo reform-flash-uboot emmc?
And one more thing: we already added a no-name version of “Nylok” to the screws for Pocket Reform from the beginning, so these don’t have the “coming loose from vibrations” issue of classic Reforms. We’ve also carried this over to classic Reform 1-2 years ago and you can also get these screws from our shop in case you still have old ones:
Thanks for all the input everyone! Thinking of it I have other gear on stage with similar ribbon cables etc.
A few spare sd cards is a cheap and easy backup.
Curious how much fun expressivity I can get out of that trackball.
Also: How hard would it be to program a button combo that would switch the keyboard between normal mode and maybe spit out midi or osc or something non-keyboard messages? Could be cool!
you could edit the keyboard and use the language shift thing (AGR button, forget the proper term), and have that, theoretically, send specially crafted messages using the USB standard’s reserved section. i began doing the same thing with a normal keyboard for my main PC with the same idea. definitely make a forum post on your progress, as i’d be insanely interested.
I also recommend the aluminum backplate mod (search forums) if you plan to push it really hard. This works as a massive heatsink and will keep the device very cool. The only downside is that the backplate blocks wifi, so you need to put your patch antenna on the side by the PCB panel (this gives just OK signal) or route an external antenna through the side or the backplate.
I wish the keyboard LEDs were directly addressable, for performance you could bind them to toggle hotkeys so you would know when different things were active. Maybe in the future (Edit: looks like this might be possible with OpenRGB actually)
Definitely possible with OpenRGB. I had that working at some point, but a software update broke it and I haven’t dug back in to it. I think there’s a forked OpenRGB or module in MNT gitlab but I forget the exact details and didn’t make notes…
(Edit: looks like this might be possible with OpenRGB actually)