carl9170fw VS EmbeddedController

The carl firmware at https://github.com/chunkeey/carl9170fw should put that argument to rest. That is Wifi firmware source code for the Wifi I currently use.

Easily changed likely means there's a physical knob somewhere that you could accidentially poke as a layperson.

Not that you get a three year CS education, figure out how your distribution packages dependencies, install the correct embedded toolchain (good luck), find out exactly which chip is in your device, fetch the proper firmware source code in the right version, build the thing, figure out how to flash the result onto the chip / read the Linux kernel sources to figure out the filename inside /lib/firmware. That's not easy.

Even if this entire process was packaged (it is--see <https://packages.debian.org/sid/firmware-linux-free>), it probably still doesn't count (or at least shouldn't count) as "easily" changed.

There are some cards with open source firmware, you might be able to modify it to do something like that.

https://github.com/chunkeey/carl9170fw/

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController cd EmbeddedController make utils sudo ./build/bds/util/ectool #USE AT YOUR OWN RISK - YOU CAN BRICK YOUR LAPTOP

When I was getting ready to flash again, I noticed an issue about the compiler version used to build the firmware binary. I followed the advice, but more importantly I noticed that the issue has been recently fixed, and in the resolution, the maintainer says "Next release (hx20 3.19, hx30 3.07) will include them". It reminded me of something crucial: the Framework EC firmware source code repo doesn't have any particular indication of its level of stability at any given commit. Which commits could be considered fully tested releases? What if the head of the branch introduces a bug that they're working on fixing?

The EC code on the normal Framework devices is already based on the Chrome EC code anyway. https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController

EC firmware is open sourced by framework: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController

There the keyboard input is handled by the embedded controller: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController/blob...

On the 16 the keyboard is a USB keyboard that could even be used standalone, without the laptop.

I tried the pre-compiled `ectool` from the TamtamHero's repository as we and comiled the EmeddedController from Framework (from this repository). Both give the same error message.

Great reminder that (as of right now) we're far removed from hardware that is 100% free (as in freedom). The closest we've got is probably provided by Raptor Computing Systems. However not everyone in the world is privileged enough to own such devices unfortunately. And I haven't dabbled into other possible mishaps that come with using such devices. The lack of "free-hardware" is a major concern though. I'd argue that there aren't enough reasons to be optimistic about this as of right now. Therefore our best bet is to not let good be the enemy of perfect; light at the end of the tunnel...

As far as I'm aware the only way to manually change the fan speed is using `ectool` from https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/EmbeddedController/

We open sourced our Embedded Controller (EC) firmware and made it available on GitHub for you to modify if you wish.