rgbkeypad is not actually working

[rlhyde]

I wish vendors would stop pretending to support their crap with 1/4 complete examples. I wasted several hours trying to get the rgbkeypad working only to find that it was never even close to working. Unless you are going to really support your own distro, I can't get any of the .uf2 that are supposed to work for the board to even start on mine. And the what should be simple circuit_python is a prayer that it might work, but none of the code for that board actually exists. Only the KeyBow was made to work.

Such amazingly poor examples. Sigh. Can you just post a simple working Circuit python example for the RGBKeypad? Not that hard to do, if you would bother. Yes I find lots of broken *.uf2 releases, and yes I could waste a day or two doing your work for you, but when I buy I board I don't expect to find it this poorly partly done, but in a state that will not work. I am not interested in figuring out why your builds don't work. Nor do I want to really learn where you forked off from the mainstream. Yes, I should just demand a refund for the POS you sold, but that is more bother than it is worth.

The keypad is different, it is controlled differently, but this code assumes it is like the keybow which it is not. the LEDs are equally not like the KeyBow. For someone with all the data sheets, this would not be hard, but I don't expect to have to backward's engineer your designs because you are too lazy to do the work.

[xnopasaranx]

wow... what a blatant display of misunderstanding the open source and hardware hacker scene. If you expect the vendor to do "the work" for you, maybe buy a finished product from logitech or the likes next time? Also, if you try a little bit of human decency (use words like please and thank you, be polite, assume the best intentions first) maybe someone would be willing to help, but with this tone, I just want to crawl out of my basement and take you down a few notches, eventhough I am not responsible for anything to do with this project. Opensource usually goes the other way: if you ask friendly, someone might even share their code with you (that they invested hours of their free time to get working, while you sit in you chair demanding free stuff and complaining like a baboon). Also: This is an issue tracker, you would have to be a little more specific thant "it doesn't work". Why are you not able to flash the .uf2 releases? how are they broken and why can you not compile your own? If you are not interested to figure out how the builds work, than why bother to ask anything here? use the hardware as a doorstop, if you don't want to use it to learn how to code and work with hardware at all. Have you tried asking on the forums? Have you tried contacting anyone over the usual channels before ranting here (usually communities are on discord, matrix or IRC and ready to help)?

[xnopasaranx]

here, I'll even help you out with a link: https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/pimoroni-rgb-base-not-working/21874

[helgibbons]

@rlhyde There's a tutorial showing how to install CircuitPython and relevant libraries on a Keybow 2040 here: https://learn.pimoroni.com/article/circuitpython-and-keybow-2040.

If you scroll down to the bottom, there's a section that shows you what you need to do differently if you have a Pico RGB Keypad (there's a line you'll need to change in your code, and you'll need to download the correct CircuitPython .uf2 for the board you're running - Pico or Pico W).

If it's not working as you expect, connecting to the board with Mu or Thonny so you can view the serial console and view any errors is usually a good place to start - there's instructions on how to do that (plus lots of other good info about getting to grips with CircuitPython) here: https://learn.adafruit.com/welcome-to-circuitpython

[rlhyde]

I don't expect anyone to do the work for me, but I do expect a vendors examples to work. I tried their precompiled UF2, they don't work. I tried 3 different python examples and the are not even complete in the basics. Frankly the don't support the product they claim to support. The code to interface with the basics of the RGBKeypad could not work, someone assumed it worked like the keybow, but it is very different.

It is hard to be polite when you have just wasted 3 hours trying to get the different supposedly working examples to load; Particularly when each one I took the.time to explore had clearly never been. tested, and would not load because the code had never been tested.

On Thu, May 25, 2023 at 1:01 AM xnopasaranx @.***> wrote:

wow... what a blatant display of misunderstanding the open source and hardware hacker scene. If you expect the vendor to do "the work" for you, maybe buy a finished product from logitech or the likes next time? Also, if you try a little bit of human decency (use words like please and thank you, be polite, assume the best intentions first) maybe someone would be willing to help, but with this tone, I just want to crawl out of my basement and take you down a few notches, eventhough I am not responsible for anything to do with project. Opensource usually goes the other way: if you ask friendly, someone might even share their code with you (that they invested hours of their free time to get working, while you sit in you chair demanding free stuff and complaining like a baboon). Also: This is an issue tracker, you would have to be a little more specific thant "it doesn't work". Why are you not able to flash the .uf2 releases? how are they broken and why can you not compile your own? If you are not interested to figure out how the builds work, than why bother to ask anything here? use the hardware as a doorstop, if you don't want to use it to learn how to code and work with hardware at all. Have you tried asking on the forums? Have you tried contacting anyone over the usual channels before ranting here (usually communities are on discord, matrix or IRC and ready to help)?

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/pimoroni/pmk-circuitpython/issues/12#issuecomment-1562458671, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ARIQSSKLQRNFZXEJJTCCVGDXH4GUFANCNFSM6AAAAAAYNZUWHI . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>

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[ttr]

I'm gonna add my 2c here. Took me 30 minutes and yes, there is missing information on github, about loading libraries (adafruit_is31fl3731) from bundle. Perhaps linking above doc on github would save some trouble.

On examples, just tried few and all of them do work for me - keep in mind that they do have this two lines:

from pmk.platform.keybow2040 import Keybow2040 as Hardware          # for Keybow 2040
# from pmk.platform.rgbkeypadbase import RGBKeypadBase as Hardware  # for Pico RGB Keypad Base

you need to choose one to load proper baseboard lib - default one is not for Pico - here I did loose 20 mins. This again ius documented on above site but not on github (or at least I missed it)