Just unboxed GrovePi: connects OK via VNC: can't type Underscore in Terminal

Archives GrovePi
14

Mike I am home and I can verify you are correct. I used a new copy of Dex for robots and I also can not get into parts of localisation (Spelling). I did manage through “sudo raspi-config” and it also gave me a hard time but after trying over and over I managed to change the keyboard. Going back to the gui version I tried localization again with a fresh copy of dex and after Dexter_Software_update it wouldn’t let me change keyboard. after clicking and right clicking on it a number of times and pausing I noticed in the upper right the cpu usage was 100% so I waited and it finally opened and let me change the region to the US. I also am from the US… Midwest. I have to tell you this is a pain and needs to be addressed in a future update of Dex for robots. Can’t believe no one else has caught this. Good catch Mike but am sure that’s not what you wanted to hear. Anyway. It can be changed but it’s hit or miss on the clicking on it. It did work for me but rebooting and trying again but after trying again if did not let me change it. Mike… you just have to try slowly since you are using vnc as there is a slight pause between your pc and raspi.

Andy

15

P.S. I don’t thing two gig chip will work as 4 gig is minimum for regular raspi and guessing Dex’s version needs 8 gig minimum. There’s a lot of good stuff on there…

Andy

16

Andy,
Well, thanks for verifying that it’s not just a Newbie mistake on my part. I am disappointed that I couldn’t even get past the Getting Started part of this without a hiccup.

I did a little looking on the raspberrypi.org page and agree that my 2GB card is insufficient. I’ll have a couple more memory cards delivered here on the 24th (isn’t Amazon great?) and continue from there.

Have a Merry Christmas Andy!
Mike

17

Back at cha. MERRY CHRISTMAS & A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

18

Merry Christmas and Happy New year to you too!

This underscore thing is weird… I never had to set the keyboard on the Pi before. (well not true, I have done it, I just don’t do it anymore). But never did I have an issue with the underscore. This is really puzzling.

@puomike your Windows machine, is it set to another language than either UK English or American English by any chance?

19

Hi cleoqc!

No, the keyboard is set to US English. I’m in California. I had to hunt around to find it but, while there, I looked to see if there were any other US English keyboard choices that might be worth a try. I couldn’t find anything that looked worth trying. And, don’t forget, my Underscore key (--) works fine in Microsoft Word, Notepad, Firefox, etc. It’s just that when I type an underscore while in VNC or Terminal, nothing happens and the cursor does not move ahead (such as with a Space Bar).

I tend to agree with Andy (that it’s a bug) and I’m kind of hoping that JohnC will jump back in (maybe after the Holidays) with a solution. I am assuming that he works for/at Dexter. Maybe they’d send me another card loaded with the Dexter software (after testing it in-house).

So, in the meantime, I ordered an 8gb card from Amazon with NOOBS on it, plugged it into the Pi, hooked the Pi up to the router and power, and used Fing to find it on the network. I found it and tried to log onto the Pi with it’s address (192.168.1.13) and also with dex.local. Maybe the dex.local is a waste of time since it’s not Dexter’s NOOBS card? No luck logging onto the Pi.

As I said, I’m a complete newbie. While all this has been going on, I received the book I ordered (Raspberry Pi User Guide by Upton and Halfacree). So I’m reading it as I get the chance. The book seems to assume that you will have a separate keyboard, mouse and monitor hooked up to the Pi. This is not my case as I was hoping to access the Pi via the WiFi network (which I was able to do with the Dexter 8gb card). I really don’t care to own more monitors or keyboards, I’m trying to ‘downsize’, not ‘collect’.

Cheers, Mike

20

thanks for the extra details. Really really weird (but of course once we figure out what the issue is we will all go 'doh, but of course". In the meantime I’m stumped.
I asked about your keyboard setup even though it works on Windows because it might just be sending a different key code, which VNC wouldn’t know how to interpret. But yeah, US English should work.

As for NOOBS, it will install Raspbian but not Raspbian for Robots. The difference between the two is that Raspbian for Robots comes loaded with settings that allow you to NOT have a dedicated keyboard/screen for the Pi. The NOOBS/Raspbian does not allow for dex.local or logging through the browser. On top of that, a recent security update makes it even harder to start a SSH session without a full configuration.

That said, I have many Raspbian for Robots around me, and I use three different types of keyboard (US, UK and French Canadian, even Spanish once in a while). Never had an issue with the underscore. Mind doing a little test for me? Mostly for my curiosity.

Log into dex.local (with Raspbian for Robots).
Start a terminal
Type the following:
hold down the left ALT key (not the right one, just the left)
make sure the numerical keypad is on and type in the following numbers - keep the alt key down : 095 Don’t use the top number keys, it has to be the numbers on the numeric keypad
release the alt key.
What I see in the terminal window:
each number gets shown (095) and upon releasing the alt key, I see the _

This is not going to provide a workaround unfortunately, but is should help in seeing where the issue is. If you’re not seeing the _ then the problem is with the Pi. If you are seeing it, then the problem is the communication between the Pi and Windows (most likely related to the browser and the VNC software being used).

Also, the Windows Surface is a touchscreen, what about your other computer? The software that is used to connect the Pi to the PC browser is known to have weird behaviours with touchscreens - although the underscore would be a first.

Cleo

PS. did you try with another browser, like Chrome? And is your Firefox the latest version?

21

Oh and one last thing, what version of Firefox are you running?
Follow these steps to get the Firefox version number and potentially update it.
The current version is 50.1.0 I just upgraded mine and I still have an _ However my trick from the previous post (with the ALT 095) no longer works.

22

Ah ah!!! Wouldn’t you know it, I can duplicate the issue now!!!

So here’s somewhat of a workaround for now. When you go to dex.local, choose VNC instead of Terminal
Login with the same password robots1234
Now in VNC, click on the terminal icon in the top toolbar. You can make that terminal window full screen. In my case, the underscore works here.

23

Hi Cleo,

I bought the Dexter Grove Pi package with Raspberry Pi 3, many LEDs, a Switch, their software on a micro SD card, etc. I thought I’d try to learn something new and I’ve never done any programming.

My desktop computer is running Windows 7 Home Premium SP-1, 64 bit and is up to date. It is not a touchscreen. Firefox is V.50.1.0 and up to date also.

Using Firefox, your Alt-095 causes a string (about 5) underscore characters to appear in the Terminal window. I can Backspace and delete 4 of them to end up with just 1.

I ran Chrome version 55.0.2883.87 m and it types an underscore just fine, using the underscore key. Interestingly though, in Chrome the cursor appears 2 lines below the Command Prompt pi@dex:~ $ When I type, the typing appears on the same line as the Command Prompt with the cursor blinking about 2 lines down and one space to the right.

Back to Firefox: You said you saw the numbers (095) in the Terminal window as you typed them, I do not although I did see the Command Prompt replaced momentarily with other characters:
Keyboard Input Shows in Terminal window
Alt-0 pi@dex:~ disappears and is replaced with (arg: 0) Alt-9 pi@dex:~ is back and the (arg: 0) disappears
Alt-5 pi@dex:~ disappears and is replaced with (arg= 5) Release ALT key pi@dex:~ is back, followed by a string of 5 Underscores

I have not gone back to the Surface laptop lately but may try that tomorrow.

Using Terminal within the VNC program I am able to type an Underscore with Shift-Hyphen/Underscore.

In order to not have to do any workarounds, I want to have the Pi understand the keyboard attached to the desktop. In VNC, I have gone into Menu\ Preferences\Raspberry Pi Configuration, clicked on Localisation and am able to set the Locale (and use character set UTF-8; set the Timezone to Los Angeles; set Country to USA; but clicking on the button for Keyboard does nothing. The button goes gray, then back to white and nothing happens. I have also tried to change the Keyboard within Terminal and nothing happens. So, I think maybe that command is somehow corrupt in the Dexter version of Rasbian?

I’ll fiddle with it some more tomorrow as it’s bedtime now. But, through your assistance I feel like some good progress is being made. Many thanks!

Mike

1 Like
24

I somewhat found a work around since no one else jumped in. Not sure it’s the correct one but doesn’t seem to break anything that I could find. Here’s what I did in a terminal window. The icon that looks like “>_” for those that don’t know what a terminal window is.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo reboot

after the PI reboots should have access to all the setup and regional options. some may need more than one mouse clicks.

As I said may not be the correct solution but it worked for me and nothing seems broke. What I did see was the kernel and a few other packages being updated that DEX’s doesn’t. not sure that was intentional on there part or not.

Try at your own risk as usual.

Andy

25

I forgot to mention that some parts "up-grade and dist-upgrade will take some time. almost an hour on a machine that hasn’t been run before and slow wifi. Ethernet cable seems to run much quicker of course.

26

The Raspberrry Pi Foundation has been doing updates to Raspbian that are not yet in the default Dexter image. When you do a DI Software Update, those are pulled in for you and all changes to Dexter Industries software too.
Lately, the Foundation made a security update that does take a long time to install. Eventually it will be in the Dexter image by default

27

@puomike
If you’re only interested in using a terminal window, and not the desktop, may I suggest installing Putty? I’m fairly certain you will not have any keyboard issues with Putty.
From what I can see, the keyboard issues are related to Shell In A Box, the software used to provide a terminal in the browser. If you circumvent Shell in a Box, you will be all right.

28

Well it does seem intentional. if you open a terminal window you get warning “access control disabled, clients can connect from any host” So VNC or putty both should work. You also get the warning when you try to use the raspi configuration utility. I’m still waiting on JohnC or one of the other hosts of this site to chime in on this issue. It does seem serious enough to be addressed or at least let us know they are aware of this issue. As I said above I did fix it using the method above and so far haven’t seen anything broken yet but I only use the GrovePi modules and all my sensors still work just fine. I had to do it that way as I also have a none standard wifi hat “HubPiWi Blue - Pi Zero Add On Wifi + Bluetooth + 3 USB” that didn’t work except for the USB. I have both a Raspi 3 and a Pi zero and same issue with both. Well not anymore. I did run the DI Software after I configured keyboard to my country… US and set up my wifi and Bluetooth and all is fine and working ok.

29

Hi All!

Andy: I removed my micro-SD card from Dexter and set it aside. I downloaded a new copy of the Dexter image and saved it to the desktop hard drive, then used Win32 Disk Imager and placed that image onto a new card. Using that new card in the RasPi, the underscore character works. But, I am not able to get anything to happen when I try to do anything with Keyboards, either in the VNC menus or in the Terminal program: can’t see a list, can’t make changes, no visible choices to make.

Then I did as you suggested: sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade; sudo reboot (all this on that new SD card with the new Dexter image).

Same thing regarding both the underscore character (works still) and the Keyboards (still doesn’t work).

Interestingly, as I was watching all the info scroll by (in the Terminal window) as I was doing sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, I saw the same error message that I referenced in post 11` of this thread: update-rc-d: warning: start and stop actions are no longer supported. I don’t know if this is a clue or not.

Cleoqc: I really want to keep the VNC and be able to use what Dexter provided in order to learn about the Grove board and the Grove ‘gadgets’: LEDs, switch, etc. The Terminal window accessed from within the VNC, and the Terminal window accessed from the Dexter splash screen (which offers either VNC or Terminal) both allow the Underscore character now.

Conclusion: The bottom line is that I"'m now able to type the Underscore character whoppie and get back to following Dexter’s instructions in getting the Raspberry Pi/Grove board ready to start using the ‘gadgets’ that came in the package. Since there is still a problem (which doesn’t currently affect me) of the Keyboard command not being available to look at or change, I do think somebody needs to do something. I don’t know if it’s a Raspberry Pi thing or a Dexter thing though. And, it’s a shame that it’s taken 7 days to get back to where I started.

Thanks to everybody that’s offered help and support, this seems like a great community and I’m sure I’ll be back for some more hints as I go forward. Let’s call this one SOLVED!

1 Like
30

@puomike

Hello Mike. I gave up on the problems with this software and loaded up a fresh copy of raspbian jesse from the raspberry.org website. Fired it up and did all my usual updates including sudo rpi-update. I then just installed the GrovePi+ part from Dex’s GitHub as that is the only part of DI’s that I currently need. Took a over a miserable hour again to get it up an running. Ran all the paths and dependencies so it could find all the packages, scripts and modules I write from any path and everything tested and works just. VNC, putty and telnet all work just fine. all my sensors I use… a lot of them… work just fine except the DHT22 pro I got from Dexter. Haven’t been able to get that sensor to stop throwing an errant 194 degrees to 32 degrees at a predictable hour and 15 min. That has me stumped as it’s not in my code time.sleep(60) and even tried with a wakeup of from (.2) to (3) sec. between and is frustrating me tracking down the issue. BME280 sensor has no issues. Hey John… your out of them…:slight_smile: I know it’s a known issue but I still want to find the reason. Other than that everything for me works as advertised.

I have a question for JohnC if your looking at theses forums. Am considering trying up to an Up Board or even the new Kickstarter UP2 or some other X86 based prototyping board. Will the GrovePi+ board still work on one of these still using a Debian variant or is it just ARM based?

31

Oh I again forgot to mention @puomike. I to noticed what you did and also that the kernel modules where not loading correctly. Just a though Mike, Did you look through your Dexter_Software_Update_log_xx.xx.xxxx.txt to see what loaded and if any errors loading packages. I don’t have it installed anymore and curious if you see and errors. Am guessing you are using a standard wireless US based Keyboard. I am using a Logitech MK700/MK710 Keyboard/mouse combo and I did not have that issue after my backdoor update? I just remembered that while using the Untouched Dexter version my VNC was disabled and didn’t even have the option to enable it in Preferences.I did not get it back till did my updates. Mike what DEXTER PRODUCT are you working with. Since I have my GrovePi working with the original Raspbian theres no reason you can’t and just install the part of Dex’s from GitHub you need working.

32

Hey Andy,

I just did a Find in VNC\File Manager for *.txt and there is only one txt file from today which is not an error log.

The keyboard is an HP model and is wired via USB to the HP desktop computer.

The Dexter Product is the Grove Pi+ Starter Kit (https://www.dexterindustries.com/shop/grovepi-starter-kit-2/)

At this point, I think things are working OK Andy.

Cheers, Mike

33

Oh Ok. Just a thought Mike. Most of HP’s hardware and software is proprietary and not sure if they install drivers for HP into Debian or Raspi’s version of Jesse by default I don’t just know. That may be something to look at. But if you now have it working maybe just the Dex version didn’t have HP keyboard drivers installed. Yes I am also just using the GrovePi module imported from GitHub by itself as I don’t need (ForRobots or the GoPiGo) portions installed. Cheers and Enjoy.