It is an ALPHA. Expect problems, dissatisfaction, and delays. Provide support and hope the don’t give up. They owe you nothing and many are volunteers.
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Did you try putting it into bootloader mode? Power off, hold trackball button down, power on, release trackball. Then try esptool.
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Many times. I also noted a different serial com port depending on whether I was in download mode or not. That’s irrelevant, really, but I thought it was interesting. I’ll have to try esptool. I have it, but as I am a follower of instructions at this point, I hadn’t yet ventured off that path.
I’m definitely down for problems, but I had suspected that feedback was a primary purpose for this topic on alpha firmware on a barely supported hardware. I had also figured that if some feedback was good, more was better.
I am starting to believe the issue is with the connection on the tdeck, seems to be the common failure across all methods of flashing. The bummer is that it’s maintained outside this project, I just boot loop locked my t-deck trying to wipe and reflash so now I will wait until the tool chain is repaired to support.
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I have the same concerns, once I got the right version of esptool I got the command line to finally flash successfully but when I try to chip_id after it gives a connection time out. I’m wondering if I will have to factory wipe and reinstall every time or hopefully the esptool support finds a fix.
One fix for issues with flashing firmware on the t-deck is to remove a diode D2.
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@GUVWAF previously mentioned how to get the T Deck’s keyboard working via CLI, you can also get it working using one of the following methods below.
Android:
Within the Meshtastic app
- Radio configuration
- Scroll down and find the Module configuration section, select Canned Message
- Slide Canned message enabled to the on position
- Allow input source: _any
- Messages: test1 | test2 | test3
- Tap send and wait for Meshtastic device to reboot
iPhone:
Within the Meshtastic app
- Settings
- Under the Module Configuration section select Canned Messages
- Options, slide Enabled to ON position
- Messages: test1 | test2 | test3
- Tap Save
- Wait for Meshtastic device to reboot
Web Client:
- Config Sections
- Module Config
- Canned
- Module Enable: Move slider to Enabled position
- Allow Input Source: ‘_any’
- I don’t see a way to add any actual canned messages from within the web client so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
- Save, wait for Meshtastic device to reboot
Once the device is configured, you can start typing on the T Decks keyboard to start composing a message. Scroll left/right to select the recipient. Scroll up/down for canned messages. The primary channel shows up as Broadcast. I haven’t tried adding any other channels yet so I don’t know what they will show up as. Hope this helps.
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I’ve opened an issue for this, the page is missing the field for it. Good catch!
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are there some 3d printes housings for t-deck already ??
mine should arrive soon 
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Only the very basic one that’s in LilyGo’s GitHub. I think it’s on Thingiverse too.
thanx do you have a link to the prrintable?
, mine arrived yesterday,
installing by webinstaller on chrome worked in first try:
holding trackball when connecting usb, relase and start installing. the display stayed black during the process. disconnect, repower,booting meshtastic 2.2.0
activate canned messages as described above, everything working.
just the trackball is very sensitiv, so it is hard to select the desired action.
small minus for me: it would be great to have an option to select and read the last 10+ messages on the device, not only showing the very last one… but i am sure that is on the way?
thanx for the good work.
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2,000 views of this post, blows any other (recent) post by very large numbers.
Thank you @Rokland for the information that helped me out, T-deck from Lilygo - #50 by Rokland
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Just writing from China - mine is in the post right from Lilygo TaoBao shop & hope to get my hands on it on Monday.
Since I also got two - might be able to perform some test if I manage to download the bins (cmp. GFirewall)
Are there defined test cases to run or just testing?
Cheers
Support is pretty much all there in terms of Meshtastic. If you come across any issues, feel free to open a bug report on Github.
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Good news! canned_message should be enabled by default for the T-Deck now. 
i soldered some gps-module to the t-deck, connected to rx-pin 44 . this is working without any problems.
i measured around 0,9W power draw from USB.
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the t-deck in working fine.
added some gps, everything functional.
except the battery/voltage reading.
it always shows around 6,5V 0% and is charging the connected lipo (taken out of t-echo when battery replacement, same connectors) at 500mA. (700mA going into device)
i probably should not let it charge unsupervised…
is there going to be / is it possible to have this functional? correct reading and charging?
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