Pi-Top 1 with raspberry pi 5

[bigpil]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone managed to get the pi-top 1 (laptop) to work with raspberry pi 5. I managed to get the raspberry pi board to boot with a fresh (non pi-top) system but I have no control whatsoever on some keyboard keys ( ex : change the brightness ) and there is no battery level visible.

I did try to install the lastest pi-top os (bookworm) but I get a full screen browser page displaying an error message that it wasn’t able to connect to the localhost and it keeps refreshing - I am getting the same on raspberry pi 4 as well.

Are there any packages I can install on a fresh raspbian os that will bring up functionality for brightness and battery level ?

Anyone managed to get the pi top 1 working with rpi4 or rpi5 and have the battery level and brightness working ?

[M0YGH]

Yes with RPi4. I will try and get Pi5 working on the Pi Top[1] laptop and a CEED

To get the buttons to work I had to revert to an old image of the Pi TOP OS (Buster, aka Sirius) BUT now I know what I’m doing I may try the latest Pi-Top OS… I couldn’t get the pi-top software install to work (https://knowledgebase.pi-top.com/knowledge/pi-top-and-raspberry-pi-os)

It looks like the step down voltage converter operates upto 28V, and will in theory supply 5V @ 3.5A according to the TPS54332 3.5-A, 28-V, 1-MHz, Step-Down DC/DC Converter datasheet. You may need to make sure that the cable from the USB on the hub is capable of taking that current. Cheap ones aren’t thick enough, too much resistance, and the Pi 4 may complain about the voltage.

Picture of a Pi Top[1], has a Pi4 in it. Used to allow people to input their name using a Morse key, 2nd picture same application but Raspberry 3+ and a Pi Top CEED. Will be installed at the NRC in Bletchley park.

Hope that helps
Chris
M0YGH

[VERAULT]

I have a pi-top 1 with a raspberry pi 5 (16gb) in it. I found pi-top OS pretty slow so I loaded Raspberry Pi OS, the most current release (bookworm). Some things dont work. I have no idea how to get my pi-top pulse speaker working now.

[M0YGH]

Look here https://knowledgebase.pi-top.com/knowledge/pi-top-and-raspberry-pi-os

But the problem is that the software doesn’t really support the old Hubs, I suspect they never will unfortunately. On/Off switch doesn’t work fully, no idea about brightness… I haven’t used the Pulse speaker but that needs a few things enabling in the OS to work…see here https://github.com/Helenous/Pi-top-Pulse but no idea if software works on bookworm.

[VERAULT]

Thank you. I figured about the power button. Didnt know about the brightness. Shame someone cant port the code over (outside my skillset).

I did try the pulse github ( I really want sound!!) . The repository is very, very old. It did not work on bookworm.

[M0YGH]

agree about porting, or just get the new pt-device to work with the old Hub. doubt its actually that much work, no interest tho, since the pi-Top seems to have moved to the USA and they are concentrating their work on the American schools…The boards et al are commercial, so no way we will get access to schematics etc. One the the support guys still based in the UK came back to me and said “Let me know what you find about the power button function, though I can’t promise we’ll have time to fix it in the newer OSes” Maybe we should set-up a thread to ask that these older Hubs are supported. The pt-devices package certainly identifies the Hubs so it shouldn’t be too much work for them…

[VERAULT]

One of the great things of the whole Raspberry Pi line was maintaining support for gpio devices across the PI’s. If they start dropping support now that is ridiculous. So YES we should setup a thread to ask for older HUB support. Absolutely and count me in.

[M0YGH]

To be clear, the people doing the Pi-Top stuff have nothing to do with the Rasberry Pi Foundation, they are a seperate “commercial” company. Hence GPIO support on Pi nothing to do with the lack of support for the old Pi Top Hubs.

[VERAULT]

Im quite aware of that.

[VERAULT]

Maybe I should have prefaced that with I guess It was my wishful thinking that it would be included.

[Dani]

Hey! I’m new to both this forum & the Pi-Top scene, having only recently picked up a new Pi-Top v1 laptop a month or so ago. Am tempted to buy a Pi-Top v3 laptop too someday.

Like others on here, I’ve been trying to get the Pi-Top to accept the Pi5 and found a little ‘hack’ that I’m exploring currently.

By connecting the GPIO header from the Pi-Top hub to a Pico connected to a Pico to Pi adapter, this ‘tricks’ the hub in turning on the screen when pressing the power button; I then just have this Pico connected to the Pi4 or Pi5 for power:

(Haven’t mounted anything in this pic as was testing at time)

The Pico was formatted with CircuitPython (as that’s what I had on it at the time) but since switched to MicroPython, which too works fine.

I’ve also been able to get the Pico to read the battery levels over I2C with the help of ChatGpt (same as the Pi would had); the plan here would to then connect a I2C OLED display to the Pico to display this info. Where I’m kind of stuck on (or yet to find time to research this further) is to control the Screen Brightness.

I know this is controlled by SPI (from what I’ve read) but finding any examples from the original Pi-Top to how this is done problematic. The plan again once cracked, would to have the brightness controlled by the Pico using some buttons wired directly into it’s GP pins (or could be another I2C device; got a 4 button device from adafruit that may work better here).

I know this sounds silly, but having all the Pi-Top hub functions controlled by the Pico over the Pi allows me to leave the Pi’s GPIO pins free for any Pi hat/device I wish, and allows me to run any OS version on the Pi without having to worry about trying to control the Pi-Top hub; could even use a different SBC if I fancied as it would only need to interface with HDMI and USB power.

If anyone could shed any light or codes on controlling the Pi-Top v1 screen brightness would be very grateful!

Thanks!

Dani

[M0YGH]

I think the hub in some of the 1st distributions was controlled by Python scripts, I found a version on the “internet archive”. TBH life was becoming too short, so I can’t remember if I even opened the scripts. Zip of the the deb with the extracted python https://www.m0ygh.co.uk/media/chris%20M0YGH/PiTop%20Hub%20Fix.zip scripts attached. Look in “PiTop Hub Fix\PiTop Hub Fix\python3-pt-hub-v1_1.0.8-1_armhf\data\usr\lib\python3” Good Luck

[PhiPi]

It might be safer to simply point to the WebArchive page

[VERAULT]

Is there a github for this pi pico board project?

[M0YGH]

at the end of the day they are only text files. Good luck searching for the files in the internet archive, took me ages, and I hadn’t saved a link…

[Dani]

Hey all, thank you so much for this info; M0YGH especially as that link really helps work out how the Pi communicates with the hub.

The Pico to Pi adapter I’m currently using is the ‘Red Robotic Pico 2 Pi Adapter’ that I purchased some time ago from Tindie:

Pico 2 Pi Adapter Board by RedRobotics on Tindie

It’s a fairly common adaptor; I have ordered another version off of ThePiHub (HardStuff Pico to Pi adaptor), but this time opting to include GP headers for the Pico so I can swap out boards if I need to (the Pimoroni Lipo Pico may be a good candidate as it has a Qw/ST port). Looks similar but will need to check the GPIO pins, otherwise should be a good alternative.

VERAULT - if you were referring to me having a GitHub page for this project, I don’t have one presently but that’s a good idea so shall get around to that soon; don’t get too much time to work on this due to having a full time job and other commitments but will try.

What I can share is despite what Google AI found regarding the pins used by the Pi is incorrect - the Pi is using SPI0 and not SPI1 as stated. Found this out both by the code found in the link provided by M0YGH but also by adding a GPIO LED monitor between the Pi & Pi-Top Hub:

It’s hard to see in this photo but GPIO pins but LEDs 10, 9 & 11 are all flashing in series which was helpful to find out.

Otherwise, from what I can gather (with help from ChatGPT) is the Pi and Hub communicate back and forth something like this when a brightness command is issued by the OS:

Pi is listening to the Hub screen brightness value > Pi gets a command to turn up or down the brightness > Pi sends a command to the Hub > Hub response:

Before: 0xd4
Command sent: 0x94
Hub replied : 0xea
After : 0x6a

I’ll keep plugging away once I find some time this week, otherwise it’s a little passion project so may be a little slow on my end.

[VERAULT]

Thanks. As a Pi-top 1 owner with a PI 5 installed I would be interested in following and reproducing your project to gain back some functionality. Please post if you decide to make a github repositiory.