System Controller Firmware

[joe-albanese]

Hey, does anyone know what the latest stable system Controller Firmware is? Building off the latest tag in the repo (20250117) doesn’t seem to work well My PD chargers that used to work, no longer work.

I was going to go back to the version that was posted in a thread here a while back, but figured I should ask first.

Thanks

[2disbetter]

The most current official Sysctrl firmware is this one:

MNT Pocket Reform System Controller Firmware Update 2024-08-26

Here’s the first official firmware update for Pocket Reform’s system controller: makes USB-C PD system compatible with more chargers (decreased initial delay from 5sec to 1sec) (contributed by Alex Maestas) keep power on during warm boot, so that next time firmware flashing won’t hard reset the Pocket Reform improved idle power consumption also, it fixes battery percentage in newer versions of waybar (before this update, it is stuck at 100%)

Let me know if you have any problems getting it on there, as I just went through the process myself today.

[joe-albanese]

Thanks for the help!

I shouldn’t need any help. I accidentally bricked it yesterday when I was trying to flash my keyboard but had no problem recovering it. I just happened to build the latest tagged commit when I did, but I guess tagged commit != stable commit haha. I’ll flash it back to that one, then maybe I’ll take a look at what bugs are in master. I’ve done a good bit of rp2040 dev work

[joe-albanese]

AND I spoke too soon. I swear I thought that was the firmware I was on. I can’t get this poor laptop to charge anymore. it looks like the system controller is requesting 20v from my charger, but it’s pulling 0 amps

[josch]

@joe-albanese

Hey, does anyone know what the latest stable system Controller Firmware is? Building off the latest tag in the repo (20250117) doesn’t seem to work well My PD chargers that used to work, no longer work.

There should be a new release soon: 2025-03-28.log

[joe-albanese]

I’ve solved this. Just in case anyone else ever sees something similar; I took the batteries off of the charge board, waited a little bit, then reconnected them. I tried a bunch of other things before that but was unsuccessful

[minute]

Aha, this is a bug I need to file now. I’ve run into this before. Something on the charger board can hog the I2C lines which makes the rp2040 sysctrl freeze. I don’t know what exactly leads to this (restart of sysctl at the wrong time?) but one has to reconnect the batteries to get out of this, yes.

[2disbetter]

@minute

I don’t know what exactly leads to this (restart of sysctl at the wrong time?) but one has to reconnect the batteries to get out of this, yes.

Maybe this is the issue I was having as well? Of course I didn’t need to remove the battery connection. I kind of thought this was done using the power switch on the side of the pocket? (IE: this severs the battery connection to the sysctrl and kb controller?)

[minute]

The standby switch doesn’t fix this issue, as the chips on the charger board are still powered by the batteries when they’re connected.

[2disbetter]

Ahh ok. This does point to the KB controller then in my case. Interesting.

[joe-albanese]

Can confirm. I did try flipping the little switch unsuccessfully. Once I get the pocket reform X void Linux project in a good place, I’ll start orienting myself of the sys controller FW. I’m a firmware dev at heart haha

[deianara]

For the benefit of future readers: I had no problems with building from source from the Jan 11 2025 commit, a98e2bd3, and installing it, and did not experience the issue mentioned above. (I have not yet tried the latest commit).