UHK-80 very unstable

I recently received a UHK-80 to replace my older UHK-60. I’m quite pleased with the quality of the hardware. However, the firmware seems quite unstable in comparison.

Periodically, the UHK just locks up and refuses to send any keystrokes. Sometimes it’s only the left half that locks up; sometimes it’s both (potentially this is only the right half locking up and refusing to forward keystrokes from the left?). Usually, this happens while the keyboard is idle, and the problem is simply the inability to type. However, once or twice it’s happened while I’m typing, resulting in a key release not being sent and thus that key being (logically) stuck down and repeating.

I’m connected via USB, and using the bridge cable between the halves. However, I do have batteries in both halves. Simply disconnecting and reconnecting does not usually fix the problem, since the keyboard remains powered by the battery. When the right half is failing, sometimes it shows an exclamation mark icon next to the caps and numlock icons. In any of these cases, I usually have to press the reset button on the back of the keyboard to get it working again.

These issues occurred both with the firmware that was current at ship time (can’t remember which version), and after my recent upgrade to 12.3.3.

I have a key cluster module and trackball module attached, both of UHK-60 vintage (the same ones I previously used on the UHK-60). I don’t know if this is related, but I can’t update the firmware on those modules, and the firmware version for them is still 10.5.0. When I run a firmware upgrade through the keyboard, it upgrades both halves of the UHK-80 but does not apparently affect the key clusters.

As for reliability, please upgrade to 12.3.5. It is still not perfect, but should be a significant improvement over 12.3.3.

As for module version, it is fine. Uhk80 can’t upgrade module firmware yet, but it is not a problem as the module firmware hasn’t changed for ages.

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I’ve now updated to 12.3.5. Will update on whether this is an improvement in stability.

Updates:

The keyboard seems somewhat more stable. Since upgrading, I’ve had two crash incidents that required resetting.

Both times, the LED display showed “Messenger message pool space ran out!” Both times were associated with plugging my USB-C monitor cable, through which the keyboard is connected, back into my laptop after travel. (The UHK-80 is plugged into USB ports on the monitor; the monitor is connected to the laptop via USB-C, and also acting as a dock.)

This is a notable improvement over before, when it would fritz out at random points occasionally even mid-typing. However, it would still be nice to have this fixed.

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Yep, we know about this issue.

The cause is however unknown. I will be refactoring debug features in order to be able to gather more details about it soon.

I’ve also noticed at different times either half will lock up and go into a reset loop (even when disconnected from everything, reset, etc) that lasts indefinitely and is completely unresponsive from that point. I’ve only been able to stop it by plugging in power into either side (even though both are close to fully charged and are definitely not resetting from lack of battery).

Latest firmware, synced between dongle. Is this a known issue that’s lumped in with the general instability?

EDIT: Will try to take a video and get more info next time it happens.

No :slightly_frowning_face:.

Crashing is a “newer” issue for me with the UHK80. Up until around 12.3.x mine would just go to sleep and not wake without a power cycle. Since 12.4 that seems to be gone, but the keyboard fully crashes (gibberish on the lcd/inoperable) at least once a day. It’s a huge improvement for me, but also has a ways to go before it reaches the stability of my UHK60. Looking forward to future FW releases.

Please bear with us and remind me once we release next Agent version - we already have a code that can flush crash logs, but it uses higher UserConfig version :-(.

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Not sure if this is just me, but when I updated to the latest agent, 6.0.0 and firmware 13.0.0, my UHK80 lost the default keymaps for the top row. So, the escape key, all function keys and the right side keys lost their default bindings. No big deal but thought I should report it. I just remapped and moved on.

There is already an issue about it: UHK 80 uses UHK 2 layout · Issue #2572 · UltimateHackingKeyboard/agent · GitHub

To update on this, I haven’t seen this issue for at least some weeks. I’m currently on firmware 13.0.0.

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