An adapter or a tiny bridge board (with a driver that works on FreeBSD that can convert the I2C lines of the Cirque touchpad into an USB-HID adapter.

ZioMario

ZioMario

Hello.

I'm looking for a small touchpad to add to the FreeBSD based phone that I'm trying to build,that will use the radxa zero 3W as an arm64 board.

I found one nice touchpad that has a size of 1.6 x 1.6 cm :

https://www.cirque.com/news-and-events-blog/2023/11/13/cirque-creates-the-worlds-smallest-trackpad

The problem iis that currently it supports only I2C. So,what I need is an adapter or a tiny bridge board that converts I2C lines (on the Cirque touchpad) into an USB-HID adapter because I don't want to solder the wires to the board,but I want to connect the touchpad to the radxa board via USB. The electronic layout that I have in mind is the one below :

sample.png


I'm looking one adapter and a driver that works on FreeBSD. Better if it is already exists for sure than that I should ask to someone to write it from scratch.

I tried to look for the right combination between adapter and driver and I found this old thread :

Phishfry

Thread 'I2C on amd64'

I want to use some 2x16 or 4x20 LCD displays on my servers starting with my firewall.
What is the best approach? There are USB interface LCD but I pefer i2c.
Mainly because I plan to use sysutils/lcdproc and linux libusb can be troublesome.
So I bought some i2c LCD to test with.
What is the best way to get i2c from an amd64 machine? There is no i2c visible.
I bought a usb dongle to test with as my X9SRL as it has an internal USB-A jack on the board.
www.ebay.com

1PCS FT232H Multifunction High-Speed USB to JTAG UART/ FIFO SPI/ I2C | eBay

The FT200XD is a USB to I2C interface with the following advanced features Single chip USB to I2C interface. Up to 3.4 MHz, high speed mode, I2C compliant. 1 x 200 FT200XD USB to I2C module. All USB protocol is handled on the chip, no USB specific firmware programming required.
www.ebay.com
FT200XD is a USB to I2C interface with the following advanced features:

What do you use to...

He talked about the adapter below,that can be bought even today :


I'm not sure if I can use it in my specific scenario and what about the driver ?

Does it already exist for FreeBSD ? should it be written from scratch ?

Please give me some ideas and suggestions.
 
FT232H should work. I bought some but never needed them.
No soldering required.
www.adafruit.com

Adafruit FT232H Breakout - General Purpose USB to GPIO, SPI, I2C

Wouldn't it be cool to drive a tiny OLED display, read a color sensor, or even just flash some LEDs directly from your computer? Sure you can program an Arduino or ...
www.adafruit.com www.adafruit.com

I believe there is a Windows Utility you must use to set the FTDI device between various modes of GPIO or SPI or I2C.
 
Phishfry said:
FT232H should work. I bought some but never needed them.
No soldering required.
www.adafruit.com

Adafruit FT232H Breakout - General Purpose USB to GPIO, SPI, I2C

Wouldn't it be cool to drive a tiny OLED display, read a color sensor, or even just flash some LEDs directly from your computer? Sure you can program an Arduino or ...
www.adafruit.com www.adafruit.com

I believe there is a Windows Utility you must use to set the FTDI device between various modes of GPIO or SPI or I2C.
Click to expand...

Thanks. What about the driver from usb to i2c on FreeBSD ? Should it be written from scratch or I can use it one that already exist. This one :

github.com

GitHub - wulf7/iichid: Generic HID layer for FreeBSD. Including I2C and USB backends.

Generic HID layer for FreeBSD. Including I2C and USB backends. - wulf7/iichid
github.com github.com

may work ?
 
I do believe Mister Wulf's work is already committed. I am using it on my laptop.

Code: 
# dmesg | grep iic
ig4iic0: <Intel Cannon Lake-H I2C Controller-0> at device 21.0 on pci0
ig4iic0: Using MSI
iicbus0: <Philips I2C bus (ACPI-hinted)> on ig4iic0
ig4iic1: <Intel Cannon Lake-H I2C Controller-1> at device 21.1 on pci0
ig4iic1: Using MSI
iicbus1: <Philips I2C bus (ACPI-hinted)> on ig4iic1
iicbus1: <unknown card> at addr 0x2c
iichid0: <DELL0831:00 044E:1220 I2C HID device> at addr 0x2c irq 51 on iicbus1
hidbus0: <HID bus> on iichid0

I don't know how the FTDI extras work that you are asking about. GPIO and I2C functions.

uftdi(4)

man.freebsd.org man.freebsd.org

EEPROM Programmer Utility for FreeBSD

Utilities - FTDI

ftdichip.com ftdichip.com
 
Can I ask why you are not using Raxda Zero's I2C pins?
You can daisy chain devices on i2c as long as they have different addresses.
 
Mister Wulfs contribution works so well on X86 because of AHCI and Intel BIOS routines.
You would have to fire up the drivers manually on Arm64 with u-boot.
 
Phishfry said:
Can I ask why you are not using Raxda Zero's I2C pins?
You can daisy chain devices on i2c as long as they have different addresses.
Click to expand...

Because I don't want to make soldering to the Radxa board.

You would have to fire up the drivers manually on Arm64 with u-boot.
Click to expand...

Oh. I don't use u-boot on my radxa board,but the EDK2 UEFI code of Jared McNeill :

github.com

GitHub - jaredmcneill/quartz64_uefi: EDK2 UEFI for Rockchip RK3566 and RK3568 based SBCs.

EDK2 UEFI for Rockchip RK3566 and RK3568 based SBCs. - jaredmcneill/quartz64_uefi
github.com github.com

It seems that it is going to be very complicated and I presume very expensive.
 
Phishfry said:
Mister Wulfs contribution works so well on X86 because of AHCI and Intel BIOS routines.
You would have to fire up the drivers manually on Arm64 with u-boot.
Click to expand...

Can I attach the i2c wires of the touchpad to the radxa board without soldering them ?
 
You are fine on the Zero3 end using GPIO pins Pin 3,5,7 and you have already dupont wires with female ends. Don't be afraid to cut them in half and merge with other wiring, You can twist wire right?

Raspberry Pi GPIO Pinout

The comprehensive add-on boards & GPIO Pinout guide for the Raspberry Pi
pinout.xyz pinout.xyz

But this I2C device you want to use has a connector?

ZioMario said:
It seems that it is going to be very complicated and I presume very expensive.
Click to expand...
Well UEFI EDK2 uses ACPI like X86 so you might avoid some work enabling modules versus u-boot.
I want to mention EDK2 has two methods to boot. (It is a setting in the EDK2 BIOS screens)

FDT
ACPI
+ Combined

So you can dig in there and learn some. FDT is the way u-boot works. (FDT) Flattened Device Tree needs a description of every component in system.
This is the DTB file. A descriptor of hardware to the OS.
But ACPI method uses Plug and Play device detection. No hardware description required. ACPI detects things instead of being described.
Even with ACPI EDK2 still requires a separate build for each board. It has board descriptors just in a different sense.

What "Combined" Method does I dunno. Part device tree and part ACPI....

 
Looking at the actual DTB is a good way to troubleshoot problems. Like seeing what bus is where.

sysctl -b hw.fdt.dtb | dtc -I dtb | more
You can also pipe this to a file and edit the file and re-compile and copy it back to system for permanent changes to DTB.
Decompile/Edit/Recompile
 
---> But this I2C device you want to use has a connector?

yes :

Screenshot_2025-06-08_01-38-53.jpg


I've put in hold the engineer who should connect the touchpad to the bridge board because I was not sure what to do with the driver. I'm not able to do what you suggest,so I should hire another engineer. Too many engineers and quotes for this kind of solution. It's a shame because I really love that kind of touchpad. It's very nice.

If you can tell me that it will work out of the box or with minor software modifications I can go on.
 
Can you tell me why the touchpad that I've chosen until now for the phone,this one :

www.ergonomictouchpad.com

Ergo Touchpad - USB Touchpad, Touchpad Mouse, Laptop Touchpad, Tablet Touchpad - Free Yourself from the Routine - The Latest in Economy in Motion

Ergonomic Touchpad
www.ergonomictouchpad.com www.ergonomictouchpad.com

works out of the box even on FreeBSD without the needing to install a driver ? I've just attached it via USB on my FreeBSD 14.2 system now and sbam,it worked.

What technology it uses to don't requires a driver ? and most of all,its technology can be "translated" for making work the cirque touchpad so that it does not require any driver ?
 
ZioMario said:
What technology it uses to don't requires a driver ?
Click to expand...
USB does lookup (devd) on included VID (VendorID) and PID (ProductID) for USB support. If devd matches a device it assigns a driver.
If VID and PID is not compiled in kernel via usbdevs the device will not work. Some devices require additional driver support like u3g needs VID&PID entries for cell modems.
I am not sure if additional driver support is needed for pointing devices.

ZioMario said:
and most of all,its technology can be "translated" for making work the cirque touchpad so that it does not require any driver ?
Click to expand...
Well it depends. If you go I2C you might need to add an overlay to let the system know 'it is there' to assign a driver. (Maybe moot if you use edk2 you must test this out)
You would also want to have HID stuff loaded whereas x86 loads them automatically upon device detection.
Booting the device on an x86 machine will help you determine what modules you need to manually load on ARM64.
 
Phishfry said:
iicbus0: <Philips I2C bus (ACPI-hinted)> on ig4iic0
Click to expand...
For instance here is my x86 laptops entry. Notice ACPI-Hinted.
On ARM you will not see that with u-boot. Only when booting with EDK2 would you see this on ARM.

For example from my entry you can see you would need to load the ig4 driver manually on ARM via loader to get this working along with other modules cited.
 
For wiring you simply find out what connector that is and buy a pigtail.
Knowing the connector is essential

Pigtails come in different flavors. Number of pins and pitch of pins being the most important. They are simply connector with bare wires.
Just twist together with your dupont wires and boom. You have a connection... Harder is getting software working.

JST PH series is very common connector:
Here is a DIY kit. Shop Around there are many. Figure out your pin number and pitch on connector.
This kit uses 1.25mm pitch connectors to dupont. You need to check your i2c connector for details.
 
Phishfry said:
Booting the device on an x86 machine will help you determine what modules you need to manually load on ARM64.
Click to expand...
If you are wondering how to do that I have a x86 Minnowboard and it has GPIO driver with i2c over pins. APU1/2/3 does not have i2c from what I remember.

I went to the website for the circular touchpad and couldn't find many details. I left feeling queasy about that one. I would look at more than one model pointing device.
Adafruit really has nice modular open gear. Most with programming examples.
 
If I want to skip the FreeBSD driver drama,I should choose a bridge that must look like a plan USB HID mouse so that the ums driver can be used. I went on Upwork and I've explained that I want this. I found only a lot of engineers who asked me a sum of money that started from $400. Since one day I want that the users of my phone will replicate the hardware setup,I can't ask them to spend $400 for producing the touchpad. The whole cost of the phone can't be more than 300 $,the touchpad can't be produced with an amount of money greater than 60$. How can I escape from this trap ?

An idea could be to don't use the bridge,but to attach the cirque touchpad directly to the pins of the radxa board. But where are those pins ? There aren't visible pins on top of my radxa.

Despite this,If I don't want to use a bridge board,how can I let that the touchpad was seen as a plain USB HID mouse ?
 
ZioMario said:
There aren't visible pins on top of my radxa.
Click to expand...
I wish I could find those cheaply. Board without pins. All I could find was Zero3E with 40 pin header attached. None bare. I bought a load from the radxa store direct.

I know Pi Zero comes bare but I had not seen Zero3 bare.

You should get another board with pins. Soldering on the Zero3 would required precision.
 
Phishfry said:
I know Pi Zero comes bare but I had not seen Zero3 bare.
Click to expand...

I found it on Alibaba. I got it because without the pins it has a lower profile,needed for a phone.

You should get another board with pins. Soldering on the Zero3 would required precision.
Click to expand...

The idea of soldering wires can't be applicable,because I can't ask to the people who knows nothing about electronics to solder wires. For sure there will be users who can do it,but a lot of others who cannot. I can't exclude these ones from the equation. For the same reason a lot of engineers (of software and hardware tends to force me to solder wires to the boards : maybe because they are biased,call it "professional deformation". I can't do it. It is against the philosophy of the project and it's not my goal or area of expertise. In this situation I'm forced to play the role of the devil's advocate.

Furthermore you talked about to use a pigtail. Is it useful to attach the wires and not to solder the wires to the board ?
 
You seem to be building a device for finish product. That is not wise. You build prototypes to test concepts. Prototypes can have ugly look they are just for testing.
You work out concepts on prototypes and then move to manufacturing with kicad scematics and contract manufacturers.
 
On something as expensive as a cell phone you would have a limited run of finish design to test usability and durability as well as regulatory acceptance.

Does everyone love the backberry style keyboard? You elicit feedback. Should we proceed forward? It will cost alot.
 
I do not mean to demean your project I just think it is too ambitious. We have a person working on PinePhone who knows what they are doing.
OK it doesn't have the exact features you want. You are going to make some device and you can't solder, machine or code?
I hope you can see my pessimism.
I can solder and machine yet I only finish a handful of projects. And its not because I can't code. I have ADD probably. Always a new project to distract me.

Best of Luck

You really need to figure out how to do Voice over Data or VoLTE. Without that you ain't got a phone but a fancy tablet.
 
I think I have found a cheaper alternative. Let's explore it. It consists to embed together these products :

a) Adafruit Mini I2C Gamepad with seesaw - STEMMA QT / Qwiic : https://www.adafruit.com/product/5743
b) the proper Stemma Cable that can bought here : https://www.adafruit.com/search?q=stemma qt cable
c) HUB board : https://www.adafruit.com/product/5625

They don't talk about an USB connection. It does not seem to be necessary. The driver should be here :

github.com

GitHub - adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_seesaw: seesaw helper IC driver for circuitPython

seesaw helper IC driver for circuitPython. Contribute to adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_seesaw development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

Since it has been written in Python,should work easily on FreeBSD ?
 
Instead of re-inventing the wheel why not modify the PinePhone ? Add the Super Mario Keyboard and Trackpad....

Custom chassis same board saves you tons..
 
I hope you can see my pessimism.
Click to expand...

I see it,yes. But if I focus my attention on it,I will stop working on my project. Is this what should happen ? Maybe it is a nicer idea to ignore it ?
 
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