Lotus 58 Glow - blok

[TweetyDaBird]

Description

Added support for blok controller

Types of Changes

• Core
• Bugfix
• New feature
• Enhancement/optimization
• Keyboard (addition or update)
• Keymap/layout/userspace (addition or update)
• Documentation

Issues Fixed or Closed by This PR

Checklist

• My code follows the code style of this project: C, Python
• I have read the PR Checklist document and have made the appropriate changes.
• My change requires a change to the documentation.
• I have updated the documentation accordingly.
• I have read the CONTRIBUTING document.
• I have added tests to cover my changes.
• I have tested the changes and verified that they work and don't break anything (as well as I can manage).

[sigprof]

These changes are mostly workarounds for some problems in the implementation of the promicro_to_blok converter.

These problems should be fixed in the core instead, not papered over in each keyboard that uses the blok controller. Ideally just using qmk flash ... -e CONVERT_TO=blok should work without any controller-specific adjustments like that.

[TweetyDaBird]

Since it seems we are more fixing blok's silliness, can you help me figure this out?

How does the converter handle the serial link? I think it's a bitbang driver on the pin in the caterina/pro micro implementation. Does that get converted to a PIO/vendor half duplex one by the converter, or is it a bitbang one still?

[sigprof]

Each converter can supply a converter.mk file with the driver configuration; in particular, platforms/chibios/converters/promicro_to_blok/converter.mk contains:

SERIAL_DRIVER ?= vendor
WS2812_DRIVER ?= vendor
BACKLIGHT_DRIVER ?= software

So the PIO-based vendor driver for RP2040 is used for split; this driver uses the half-duplex mode by default, and does not require an external pull-up resistor, so it should not need any hardware modifications. The WS2812 driver is also PIO-based; the only suboptimal part is the backlight driver (using the hardware PWM would need additional configuration which depends on the used pin, and automatic configuration is not implemented for that part).

[TweetyDaBird]

Each converter can supply a converter.mk file with the driver configuration; in particular, platforms/chibios/converters/promicro_to_blok/converter.mk contains:

SERIAL_DRIVER ?= vendor
WS2812_DRIVER ?= vendor
BACKLIGHT_DRIVER ?= software

So the PIO-based vendor driver for RP2040 is used for split; this driver uses the half-duplex mode by default, and does not require an external pull-up resistor, so it should not need any hardware modifications. The WS2812 driver is also PIO-based; the only suboptimal part is the backlight driver (using the hardware PWM would need additional configuration which depends on the used pin, and automatic configuration is not implemented for that part).

Well, I'm not using backlight, so unfortunately that will be left to someone else to figure out then. But that solves the serial.

[TweetyDaBird]

Made redundant by other PR.