HOW-TO: Hardy on Motion Computing M1300

[priegog]

So, I finally solved this thing (had been at it for at least a couple of months) so I'll just post here exactly how to do it. Most of the steps are similar to the ones on this thread, so much of this guide will be a copy-paste of that.

1. Go to the terminal and install all of these

sudo apt-get install setserial wacom-tools xserver-xorg-input-wacom

2. Map the hardware port to a virtual serial port

sudo setserial /dev/ttyS0 port 0x0238 irq 4 autoconfigure

3. Check that all is working; first type

wacdump -f tpc /dev/ttyS0

and move your pen around the screen. If the numbers move, keep going. If they don't you're out of luck.

4. Put the appropriate entries in the xorg file. type

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

, and paste these lines in there somewhere (I put them at the beginning)

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "stylus"
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
Option    "Button2"    "3"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "eraser"
Option "Type" "eraser"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "cursor"
Option "Type" "cursor"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

and then add these lines to the Section "ServerLayout":

InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"

4.1. (Optional for screen rotatiOn in step 8 ). Add these lines to the "Device" section:

	Option		"RandRRotation"	"on"
	Option		"NvAGP" 	"1"
	Option		"DRI"		"false"

WARNING:This last line will disable3D acceleration but i'ts neccesary.
Click the save button and close gedit.

5. Make these changes permanent by typing

sudo dpkg-reconfigure setserial

and selecting the option "autosave once"

6. Restart and it should all be working!

After this my tablet worked just fine, but the other guides included this last step so I'll post it here as a "last resor" measure.

7. Type

sudo xsetpointer stylus

I actually don't know what this command is for, so if someone were to illuminate me...

I know there aren't a lot of M1300 users out there but still I wish when I bought mine there was a guide just like this one to set it up.
This is working for hardy but presumably it would work with future versions as well.

UPDATED INSTRUCTIONS FOR INTREPID

All right, so Intrepid is here, so here is what needs to be done differently in order to setup the wacom tablet.

• Replace step 4 in these instructions for the ones in this post

• For screen rotation, just follow the usual steps (in the next post)

• For screen brightness, the steps described 2 posts from this one are no longer necessary. Just add the screen brightness applet to the gnome panel and it should Just Work

Got the battery problem solved. Follow these instructions

trainerjonathan located the thread where there are instructions to get an onscreen keyboard at login

By the way the instructions to add the on-screen keyboard to the login screen in this post worked perfectly for me.

__________________________________________________ ______
List of Tablet PC's working with Linux and links to the how-to's

[priegog]

8. SCREEN ROTATION. After step 4.1, you now only need to make sure the package xserver-xgl is NOT installed. After that,take the 2 scripts I made (attached) and place them in /usr/local/bin/ (you'll need to be root. if you don't know how to, type in the terminal

sudo nautilus /usr/local/bin/

and move the script files to the window that opens. Then you can create a panel launcher for each one (right-click on panel > add to panel > custom application launcher) and pasting in the "command" field

sh /usr/local/bin/portrait.sh

. Do the same for the other launcher, but changing "portrait" with "landscape" And that's it, it should work.

[priegog]

9 SCREEN BRIGHTNESS
This one took me a while to figure out. It's not as easy as, say, the rotation scripts since to do this it is necesary to have root acces. So
this will be divided into 2 parts: One to help us make our scripts run without giving them a password and another one to make the scripts themselves.
9.1 sudoers file.
So this is a weird little file that tells the system which parts of the system can be run without requiring a password, so we're gonna modify it to let us run the brightness scripts from a desktop or panel launcher.
So since this file is weird and won't let itself be modified we have to change the permissions. I do it all graphically, so type

sudo nautilus /etc

There you can find the sudoers file, so right-click on it and select properties. Go to the permissions tab and change both access properties to Read and Write. Then close and we're ready to modify it.

sudo gedit /etc/sudoers

and at the end (the position is important), paste this

jerry ALL=NOPASSWD: /home/jerry/myscripts/

substituting of course jerry with your username and the path to a folder where you will keep the scripts we'll make next.
Now, click on save, close gedit and do the same thing we did to change the permissions and change them back to Read-only.
If you're paranoid (or careful) enough I'm sure you backed up the sudoers file before modifying it, so now comes the moment to check if your modification is valid or not.

sudo visudo -c

If it passes the test, it will give you a one line output saying so. If not, restore from backup and try again.
9.2 The scripts
So now it's time to make the scripts that will change the brightness themselves. Just download the one I uploaded and copy/modify it to make for the rest of brightnesses. This one is already an executable, so if you want to make your own make sure to make them so. The first script is called br1 because it will set the brightness to 1 (on a scale from 1 to 10). So when copying/modifying them (right click > open with > text editor) change the 1 in

echo 1 > /proc/acpi/video/GFX0/LCD/brightness

to the number you want it to set it to. Make sure to change the filename to reflect the brightness it will set the backlight to, and also make sure to move all of the scripts to that folder you specified in the sudoers file.
Now it's time to create the launchers that will execute the scripts. Create a new launcher in a folder, the Desktop or the Panel, name it and in the command field put

sudo /home/jerry/myscripts/br1.sh

(again substituting with your own path).
And that is all, it should work when you activate the launchers.

[sarah.fauzia]

I had been reluctant to take another stab at fixing my screen brightness after experiencing a chmod error because I edited the permissions on sudoers. However, recent troubles with my tablet´s battery life prompted me to try again, and using visudo (without changing the file permissions) worked perfectly! (I followed the instructions for editing sudoers from this site; in short, I typed o to put it into editing mode, and :wq to save my changes). Now I´m going to add brightness launchers for 1-10--Xubuntu has a neat option of putting launchers in menus, which conserves space and makes this more convenient to do. Thanks for posting this how-to!

[priegog]

yeah, I reckon visudo is the best way to do it but since I can't use vi to save my life I had to work around that. I'm glad it worked out for you in the end.

[SpazTheCat]

Hi,

Great post, thanks for doing this. Today I installed Ubuntu on a Motion LS800 we had laying around at work. With a few pointers from your How-To, the digitizer is working great.

If you don't mind, I do have a couple of questions.

1. How do you deal with not having an on-screen keyboard at the Ubuntu login window? The pen works great, but with no keyboard, I can't input my username and password.

2. Do you use any kind of handwriting recognition software? If so, what? Or do you just use OnBoard for text input?

Thanks,

Andy

[trainerjonathan]

Hi priegog!

First I'd like to thank you for this wonderful how-to! I wanted a slate with linux on it and this how-to strongly influenced my purchasing decision.

I have Linux installed under Wubi right now and every thing works great except for screen rotation. I followed the instructions and the Protrait script works fine. Unfortunately when I click the button I set up for the Landscape script, the screen goes blank and when it clears I have to login again. (though it is landscape!)

I would be thankful for any advice you have?

By the way the instructions to add the on-screen keyboard to the login screen in this post worked perfectly for me.

Thanks again for this awesome How-To!

Jonathan

[priegog]

Huh... No idea, my scripts work just great. My best guess is that it has something to do with wubi... but I don't really know how that works so I can't say. But a suggestion I can make is to enable the proposed updates (and probably backports too) in software sources. That way you'll have the absolute latest. In any case, Jaunty is coming and I guess it'd probably fix any bugs that are left with the interaction between xrandr and compiz, which was a cause for problems back in hardy, and probably has something to do with this.
Id' DEFINITELY suggest you installed a "full version" and at least double-boot, not for this problem, but because ubuntu is really mature and ready for daily use, as oposed to some neat experiment. And if it fixes this issue, all the better.
Anyways... you're very much welcome. One tip I think I already gave in this thread was to get some TINY USB bluetooth adapter (for it to remain connected at all times) and a bluetooth foldable keyboard.
Thanks for the tip on the login-time OSK, I'll add it to the main post!

[trainerjonathan]

bugs that are left with the interaction between xrandr and compiz, which was a cause for problems back in hardy, and probably has something to do with this.

Thanks Priegog! I disabled visual effects and now screen rotation works both ways.

[priegog]

Glad it worked out for you