Tutorial

Set up a Slowboard 1085

With the parts in hand: print the case, assemble the panel and keys, flash the card and get the board on your Wi-Fi.

You will print the case, wire the panel and keys, flash the software and join your Wi-Fi. At the end the board’s screen shows a QR code that opens its hub’s web page. The hardware is listed on Supported screens and profiles. The software comes as one image with slowd, slowhub and slownet installed.

Everything you download comes from the releases page: the Slowboard image and the print files.

What you need

Electronics

• Luckfox Lyra Zero W, with its 40-pin header fitted (male pins)
• Waveshare 10.85” e-Paper HAT+ (G): the panel, its ribbon and the HAT
• A microSD card
• A USB-C cable and power supply
• Four Alps-mount switches
• Four resistors, about 1 kΩ, one per key
• A 5-way Dupont ribbon

Prints (the print files from the release)

• Pedestal
• Bezel
• Back plate
• Bottom cover
• Grille backing
• Four key caps (2u)
• Badge and inlays
• Header tap shim

Print the parts

• Bed size. The bezel and back plate print full width in one piece on a Bambu H2D. The model has a split option for smaller beds.
• Key caps print flat, top face down on the bed. The wells in the pedestal guide them, so they need no stabiliser wire.
• Inlays are separate bodies: the key symbols in the panel’s inks and the badge. Print them as a second colour (multi-material) or as separate pieces.
• Key cap colours match the keys as the panel draws them: a red cap with a white ▲, a yellow cap with a black ◆, a black cap with a white ■, and a white cap with a black ●.

Assemble the panel and HAT

Never connect or disconnect the ribbon, the HAT or the key wiring with power applied.

1. Check the HAT’s Interface Config jumper (J1) is on 0 (4-line SPI). This is how it ships.
2. Put the panel face down on something soft and clean, ribbon tail toward you.
3. On the HAT’s 24-pin connector, lift the flip-lock bar about 90°, using a fingernail at both ends.
4. Slide the ribbon in with the gold contacts facing down toward the HAT’s board, straight and fully home. Close the flip-lock flat and pull gently: the ribbon shouldn’t move. A skewed ribbon shifts every signal by one pin.

The ribbon is the fragile part. Don’t bend it perpendicular to the panel, don’t bend it repeatedly, and never fold it toward the panel’s front.

Fit the header tap shim and keys

The four keys tap the Lyra’s header through the header tap shim, a printed plate that sits over the header between the Lyra and the HAT. Each key line runs through a resistor held in the shim, and all five leads leave one short end of the shim as a single 5-way Dupont ribbon.

Each switch sits between the common 3V3 lead and its own resistor, and the resistor’s lead is held against the key’s header pin by the shim.

1. Seat a resistor in each of the shim’s four cradles and lay its lead in the groove for its pin.
2. Lay the 3V3 lead in the pin 17 groove.
3. Press the shim straight down over the Lyra’s header. Each lead slides down beside its pin and is held against it.
4. Connect the 5-way Dupont ribbon to the row of leads at the end of the shim.
5. Wire each switch between its key line and 3V3. The keys are active high: the pins pull down by default, and a press connects the line to 3.3 V.

Stack and close the case

1. Line up pin 1 and press the HAT’s socket straight down onto the header, over the shim, until it is fully seated. Check that no pins are exposed at either end: a one-column offset puts 5 V on the wrong pins.
2. Press the four switches into the pedestal’s key row, left to right red, yellow, black, white, and fit the key caps.
3. Fit the panel behind the bezel, with the ribbon in a gentle curve and no sharp fold.
4. Close the case with the back plate, the grille backing and the bottom cover, and fit the badge.

Flash the card and boot

1. Download the Slowboard image from the releases page.

2. Write it to the microSD card with any image writer.

3. If your Lyra has never booted from SD, erase its onboard SPI NAND first. The factory bootloader on the NAND runs before the card, so the board never reaches the SD card otherwise:

   1. Hold BOOT while you plug in USB. The board appears in Loader mode (Rockchip 2207:350f).
   2. Run rkdeveloptool ef. Build rkdeveloptool from rockchip-linux/rkdeveloptool if you don’t have it.

   You only do this once.

4. Put the card in the Lyra and plug in USB-C.

The board boots and slowd starts. With no Wi-Fi configured, it goes straight into setup.

TODO(owner): slownet, which runs the Wi-Fi setup below, isn’t built yet. Confirm how a new board joins Wi-Fi today, or that this section describes the planned flow.

Join Wi-Fi

The Lyra’s Wi-Fi is 2.4 GHz only. slownet runs the setup:

1. The panel shows the hotspot screen with two QR codes. Scan the first to join the board’s network (epaper-setup-<mac4>).
2. Your phone shows a captive sheet with the setup page. If it doesn’t, scan the second QR code.
3. Pick your network and enter its password.
4. The board joins. The panel shows the “connected” screen, with a QR code for the hub’s web page (http://<ip>:8080/).

If the password is wrong, the board comes back to the hotspot and shows the error. To change networks later, ask for setup again with slowhub want wifi_setup.

TODO(owner): the hub’s web page will need a passcode on your network (slowhub passcode, planned). Say what to do here once it exists.

Where the config lives

• /etc/slowd/slowd.toml: slowd, with the screen’s profile, the hub address and Wi-Fi setup
• /etc/slowhub/slowhub.toml: slowhub, with its listeners, host_allow, web_url and the installed slowapps
• /etc/netplan/90-epaper-wifi.yaml: the Wi-Fi networks slownet saved
• /var/lib/slowhub/: the hub’s database, card blobs and slowapp data
• /var/lib/slowd/: slowd’s state
• /opt/slowboard/bin/: the slowd and slowhub binaries

slowd and slowhub have every key. After editing slowhub.toml, restart slowhub.

Next steps

The slots fill once the hub has a slowapp. Install a slowapp puts a published one on your hub and into a slot. To write your own, start with the quickstart.