2011 Macbook Pro – A1278 keyboard replacement

Around 2015 we bought a used Macbook Pro for home use. It was replacing an iMac all in one that had a bad power supply. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a real powerhouse of a machine if you look at the specs.

Over time it was clear that older mac wasn’t keeping up. I had done a few upgrades that helped extend it’s life. I’d put in 16GB of RAM – very worth the money. I also later swapped in an inexpensive 480GB SSD. The USB ports got wiggly over time and the keyboard slowly started to fail.

By 2020 it was well past time to replace it, which I did with a Macbook Air M1 (base). Of course I still hung onto the old machine which still worked, but was paired with a bluetooth keyboard. I finally got around to ordering a replacement keyboard from Amazon – a Padarsey.

Of course one of the first places I go for help is iFixit. Unfortunately the repair section for this laptop doesn’t seem to include a keyboard replacment. I used the upper case disassembly instructions and they were close enough and helpful. The keyboard is hidden underneath everything, so you have to take almost everything apart to replace it.

Annoyingly there are three different types of screwdrivers you’ll need: phillips, torx, and tri-wing. I’m really happy with the Kingsdun 60-in-1 set I got recently. It’s got lots of sizes and it’s bailed me out a few times. The bits are not the highest quality, but having the right shape and size makes things possible.

I ended up re-using the existing keyboard screws (there were so many of them!) instead of the ones that came with the new keyboard. I was also grateful for my magnetic mat which helped keep all of the screws organized. Re-using the back-light wasn’t difficult at all.

It was with relief that I saw the system boot up right way after I’d re-assembled it. There are a lot of little bits to get right. It was an epic repair and I’m not sure I’d rush to do it again. Now with a fully working keyboard it’ll continue to get some light use as a secondary machine.

Goodreads – 2021

I’m still tracking my reading with Goodreads, which continues to be primarily eBooks sourced from my local library. I missed doing a summary post in last year, in brief I read 35 books (11,714 pages) in 2020. This was fewer than in 2019.

2021 was a lot like 2020, but somehow I read a lot more books. 64 books (20,858 pages). My goal was 35, and I’ll probably use that as my goal for 2022.

It seems the image dump of the titles is roughly the order I read them in. You can see I read a fair number of series. For the most part to find new material I searched what was available to borrow in random order. I got a few nice surprises.

I really enjoyed the Sandman Slim series. The Diabolic series also stands out as a fun read. I generally rate most books 3 stars, but this year I was more critical and gave out more 2 star reviews than I had in the past. Only The Terminal Experiment and Sandman Slim got 4 stars from me.

With so many rich media experiences, I still think it’s important to disconnect and read. Better still to pick up a paper book and give your eyes something different to stare at. The local library is a great resource not only for books, I discovered that the magazine selection and software presentation was pretty good on my tablet.

LIRC vs ir-keytool

Related to my recent IoT hacking, what started me down this path is the long term annoyance of my X10 lighting being unreliable. X10 has always been problematic due to it’s use of power line communication, this has gotten worse as we add more and more noisy electronic devices that cause additional feedback onto the house wiring.

With the X10 light switch I had an IR-543 which mapped IR (infra red) and the rest of my home theater gear is all IR controlled, so a single remote could control everything including the lights. Another nice feature of the X10 light switch I had was soft on / soft off – meaning that when you turned the lights off they would dim down to off, and the same for on. At the start of a movie this is pretty nice.

Of course with a wifi enabled light switch, how do I get IR control? This seemed like a good reason to DIY a solution and build an IR controller / repeater based on a Raspberry Pi. I found that it’s relatively easy to control Tasmota devices with curl, so I was able to easily turn the lights on or off using a simple program. I was pleased to discover that the new light switch also had the soft on / soft off behaviour.

To build an IR device on Linux, I first thought of LIRC as I’ve used this in the past. As I dug deeper, it seems the LIRC project is quite dormant and I was fighting with a lot of stale tooling. I was succeeding in getting something working with the various remotes I wanted to use but it felt like it was a lot of work. Then a friend mentioned ir-keytable to me which led me to the more modern IR control in Linux solution.

The short version of the story is that the ir-keytable support is in a similar state as the LIRC work. I believe this boils down to the fact that IR control is still very niche, and there are lots of hardware variables due to many different remote controls. If you want to do something simple: receive IR input to control a linux machine, then ir-keytable is the way to go. More complex situations may require LIRC. Both approaches have their challenges but ir-keytable is the more modern solution.

The rest of this article will be about getting ir-keytable going on Raspberry Pi OS with a TSOP4838 IR receiver. For my application I have a more complex set of requirements so I’ll be continuing with an LIRC based solution, but more on that another time.

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