Can the BBQ20 keyboard be powered over qwiick or pmod connectors?

[eviscerat]

I want to use the keyboard over i2c power and connection. Do you have a guide as to how to use pmod or qwiick connectors to achive this?

[arturo182]

Don't really have a guide for it, but if you provide 3.3V into the Qwiic or PMOD connectors, the keyboard will work normally. You can use the Arduino (https://github.com/solderparty/arduino_bbq10kbd) or the CircuitPython (https://github.com/solderparty/arturo182_CircuitPython_BBQ10Keyboard) libraries to interface the keyboard.

[eviscerat]

@arturo182 I just powered the keyboard over pmod, but communication does not happpen between the keyboard and board as it would over usb. (I used just 4 pins, gnd, 3v, sda, scl on pmod)

[eviscerat]

Same story with qwiick connector. Keyboard is powered, no info is transmitted over i2c

[wallComputer]

Can you see the keyboard on the i2c address 0x1F ?

[eviscerat]

@wallComputer Hi, I cannot see the keyboard on that address or any address. I tried using the qwiick connector as well as the PMOD pins. I also tried other i2c pins on the board. Nothing showed up when running i2cdetect.

Do note that the i2c pins are all enabled and working, I tested the i2c with a DS3231 module, that works fine, it shows up just fine on any i2c pins, only the keyboard doesn t work.

Do you have a detailed guide of interacting with i2c?

[eviscerat]

@arturo182 Is there a guide to use the keyboard with i2c?

[arturo182]

It should be as simple as connecting the I2C pins from the PMOD or Qwiic connector to the i2c bus. If that is not working then something isn't right. I can see the keyboard backlight is on, so the board has power and the firmware is running. I know you said an RTC worked on the i2c bus, but could you by any chance test the keyboard with another board, an RPI Pico, or any other MCU? Just want to confirm if it's something RPi Zero-specific. I know other people have used the keyboard over I2C with the Pi 3 and 4, so it should work 🤔

[eviscerat]

@arturo182 I just tested the i2c with an ESP32, same story, no address shows up when scanning over i2c either qwiick or pmod. I double checked the ESP32 too, it works fine with the RTC module, the addresses show up, so there is something off with i2c of the keyboard.

What can I do to troubleshoot this?
I run the improvements from this fork btw: https://github.com/grymoire/i2c_puppet-Linux but I doubt it has any bearing with i2c.