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Getting Started with the PineNote#

Welcome to your new PineNote, we hope you enjoy the experience of using the PineNote. The PineNote comes loaded with a community maintained Debian based distribution that has been pre-configured for a reasonable starting point. Of course, you are welcome to customize your device to suit you.

In general, if things are unclear, please take the following actions:

  • Read through this handbook (including the other sections)
  • Refer to the PineNote wiki page
  • Try the PineNote chat (see this wiki page for more information on how to connect).

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Please read this document completely, as it will provide you with lots of relevant information pertaining to the proper use of your PineNote!

Introduction#

The PineNote Debian system is a lightly-modified Debian Trixie installation, using GNOME as the graphical user interface. Usage should be fairly self explanatory, but there is a new menu in the top bar of GNOME that controls the ePaper (eink) display. The display can render high quality greyscale, but due to the technology this makes screen updates slower, as the screen does more refreshes which can result in flickering. This menu allows rapidly changing mode to suit what you are doing on the device.

The screen features a Wacom digitizer for the pen input, and this is supported out of the box.

Help, my PineNote is not responding!#

  • The usual first step is to reboot the device. If the whole system itself is not responding anymore, try turning the PineNote off. This is accomplished by holding the PWR Button 10-12 seconds. After that, you can normally start your device using a short press of the button (1-2 seconds).

IMPORTANT ! Store your individual VCOM voltage now!#

Each eink (EBC) panel must be operated with a specific biasing voltage, the so-called VCOM voltage. At this point, we do not have the capabilities to measure this voltage on a given PineNote. Therefore, it is important to read out the factory-set VCOM voltage once and write it down. Hopefully you won't need it in the future, but this could become relevant in case the provided U-Boot boot loader gets overwritten by flashing a boot loader that overwrites the VCOM voltage.

You can read out the VCOM voltage by executing the following command in a shell (either in GNOME, using the UART console, or via ssh):

cat /sys/module/tps65185_regulator/drivers/i2c\:tps65185/3-0068/regulator/regulator.29/microvolts

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The community is still gaining experience with actually-observed VCOM values. We would appreciate it very much if you would be willing to share your VCOM values in the PineNote chat!

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Efforts are ongoing to create linux drivers that allow (re-)measurement of the VCOM voltage. Ask the chat for more information.

Wi-Fi & Bluetooth#

The PineNote can connect to a Wi-Fi network by using the menu in the top right corner, and then tapping on the Wi-Fi symbol. Bluetooth connections can be made in a similar way via the same menu, but then via the Bluetooth symbol. This will allow you to pair keyboards and other peripherals to the device.

Please keep in mind that the PineNote uses the same Wi-Fi+Bluetooth combo as found in various Raspberry Pi devices and shares some of the peculiarities of these devices. The most important thing to remember is that Wi-Fi and BT share one antenna. Moving Wi-Fi over to a 5 Ghz network can not only improve Wi-Fi experience in congested areas for the PineNote, but can also drastically improve Bluetooth quality.

Updates#

As the current Operating System is Debian, the command line update tool is apt but also the GUI program "Software" can be used to pull updates. Where possible the OS is kept as close to upstream Debian, so everything should feel about the same.

Please note that the PineNote comes with a custom package repository pre-configured. This repository provides PineNote-specific packages, as well as a few patched Debian packages that are useful/required for a smooth user experience. The system is configured to prioritise this custom repository and will not upgrade packages found in this repository with stock packages from the main repository (this is called 'pinning'). This setup ensures improved reliability of your PineNote, as the custom repository is purely community maintained. While waiting for PN-specific patches, we would not want stock packages to break the PN experience!

ePaper Modes#

ePaper displays work differently than traditional LCDs. Summarizing, these displays change their content by applying different voltage waveforms to individual pixels, resulting in different shades of gray. Problematic is that these waveforms differ depending on current temperature and current state (color) of a given pixel. In general, updating these displays is slow (complete screen updates can take seconds!).

However, different waveforms have been developed by the panel manufacturers to improve response times. However, speed is bought at the expensive of quality, and fast waveforms exhibit artifacts (remnants of previous images), or can only operate on a limited color subspace (i.e., only for black and white pixels).

In daily operation of the PineNote, you will most probably only encounter three waveforms:

  • GC16: This is the default, high-quality waveform that enables 16 grayscale colors. It's also the slowest refresh type.
  • DU4: This is a somewhat faster waveform, good for reading. It supports only 4 colors.
  • A2: This is a very fast black & white waveform, useful for fast changes of screen content (i.e., drawing, writing).

One additional feature of the hardware is partial refresh capability: The display can only be updated in a certain, rectangular region. This can greatly improve response times, but requires adapted software.

The default GNOME environment comes with a simple extension installed that lets you change the current panel waveform (as well as enable dithering for the black and white mode).

gnome_extension

  • Use the "Grayscale" mode for high-quality, slow-changing content
  • Use the "BW+Dither" mode for fast-changing, dithered black and white, content. Dithering refers to the representation of colors by using certain black & white pixel patterns. See the corresponding Wikipedia page for more information.
  • Use the DU4 mode for a four-color representation. This is a good choice for reading books, or slow internet browsing.

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Please take note of the "screen refresh" button right next to the system clock (the circling arrow). Pressing this button will trigger a screen refresh with the G16 waveform.

Performance and Quality modes#

Apart from the selected waveform, another factor controls the speed of screen refreshes: How fast a given waveform is applied to the panel. A waveform basically consists of a sequence of excitation states (i.e., excitation voltages, plus, neutral, minus) that need to be applied to each pixel of the panel in order to achieve a certain grayscale color of that pixel.

The speed of waveform application is controlled by one of the system clocks. The current configuration allows us to switch between two clock speeds for this specific clock, resulting in slower or faster application of the waveform. The downside of the fast waveform is that, under non-specified conditions, visual artifacts were observed.

In order to alleviate these visual issues, switching between those frequencies was implemented, denoted as Quality mode and as Performance mode. Additionally, the quality mode reconfigures GNOME to send screen updates at a slower rate, further reducing the stress on the system, and therefore the possibility for visual glitches.

You can switch between both modes by tapping the P (or Q) character in the top panel of GNOME.

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It is advised to cycle to Q mode and back to P mode before drawing, as the GNOME extension is not (yet) optimized with regard to making sure a given performance state is really in effect!

Please refer to the user-guide section for further, detailed, information on the EBC panel and driver.

Touch Gestures#

GNOME comes with some touch gestures built-in. Please refer to the linked help page from GNOME for detailed information. However, the most important gesture is bringing up the On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) by swiping two fingers from the button screen border upwards.

GNOME Online Help

Thank you#

The PineNote, among with its current software ecosystem, is the result of multiple years of work from quite a lot of people. Notable mentions:

  • A lot of driver development work was done by Samuel Holland (smaeul) and Peter Geis (pgwipeout), as well as CrystalGamma
  • Special note should be taken of the reverse engineering and development work of the EBC driver: Samuel Holland (smaeul) and Ralimtek
  • Early installation guides from Dorian and Martyn immensely helped to get people running Linux!
  • early contributors include veapon, DorianRudolph, 0cc4m / occam_razor, UniversalSuperBox, CounterPillow, caleb, iMartyn and danct12
  • doc/wiki contributions by funeral, aarondabomb
  • talkpadk provided us with a nice, curated, repo of the upstream U-Boot (https://github.com/talpadk/u-boot-pinenote), upon which the currently used U-Boot version is built upon (https://github.com/talpadk/u-boot-pinenote).
  • Eugen Răhăian created the first, initial version of the Debian image using debos (https://salsa.debian.org/eugenrh/pinenote-debian-recipes). This version was then extended to include the GNOME interface by Maximilian Weigand (https://github.com/PNDeb/pinenote-debian-image).
  • Eugen Răhăian also did a lot of (destructive) testing of the screen components with regard to UV exposure.
  • MichiMolle created a beautiful GNOME and GTK theme for the PineNote (https://github.com/MichiMolle/PNEink)
  • Cover designs by Funeral (https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineNote_Press)
  • Dragan Simic contributions include help with designing the PineNote's UART debug hardware
  • User hrdl contributed on the drawing/input side:
    • optimised xournal++ for drawing performance
    • some fixes related to stylus input and touch in libinput / gtk / sway
    • 10 finger support and configurability for anyone who dares to replace their touch screen controller's firmware (non-mainlined) (https://gitlab.com/hrdl/pinenote-cyttsp5)
  • Petr Hodina (@phodina) contributed, among other things, to the Postmarket OS port (https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/PINE64_PineNote_(pine64-pinenote)), as well as mutter and mesa patches
  • hmpthcs brought us the WinkShell (https://github.com/hmpthcs/WinkShell)