Keyboard cover

The Librem 11 keyboard cover is a magnetically attached soft cover with a USB keyboard built-in. Phosh switches to laptop mode when the keyboard is attached, or tablet mode when the keyboard is detached.

The keyboard is powered by the tablet. It does not have a separate battery to charge.

Attachment

The keyboard cover attaches magnetically and has flexible joints:

Librem 11 keyboard cover flexible joints

  1. The top portion attaches to the back of the tablet with several internal magnets.

  2. Flexible joints allow the cover to fold and unfold.

  3. Magnets attach the keyboard in the docked position, and alignment posts ensure it remains in place. Electrical connection is made with pogo pins.

Layouts

The Librem 11 keyboard cover is currently available in a US / ANSI layout (wide Left Shift key, wide Enter key).

Other layouts can be selected from GNOME Settings normally, such as French (AZERTY).

  1. Open Settings, select Keyboard

  2. Click “+” to add a keyboard layout; select the layout

  3. If desired, remove other layouts

  4. If multiple layouts are enabled, use Super+Space to switch (Super is the Purism logo key between Fn and Alt)

Layouts normally used with ISO physical layouts can be selected, but the key between Shift and Z is not present. The key normally to the left of the “tall” Enter will be above it instead (US pipe/backslash key).

There may be other key combinations to replace the missing key. For example, < is Alt Gr + Shift + Z, > is Alt Gr + Shift + X. “Alt Gr” is the right Alt key in many layouts.

Fn key

The “Fn” key (between Ctrl and the Purism logo key) is used to access the secondary functions printed in blue on the F1-F12 and arrow keys.

Pressing Fn+F6, Fn+F7, or Fn+F8 produces the key strokes Super+P, Super+K, and Super+I. There are no default global shortcuts for these key strokes in the Librem 11 PureOS Phosh image, so this may just type “p”, “k”, and “i” depending on the program.

You have the option to create global shortcuts for Fn+F6, Fn+F7, and Fn+F8 in the usual way. To do this, add a new keyboard shortcut in gnome-control-center and press the key combination when prompted. It will display Super+P, etc.

Dock connector

The 5-pin dock connector used to connect the keyboard is a USB connection.

Warning

IMPORTANT: The dock connector is only tested with the keyboard cover - full speed USB (12 Mbps), and low +5V current. Devices requiring more power should be powered independently, as the power rating depends on the pogo pins used and the quality of the connection. The SoC supports high speed USB (480 Mbps) on this port, however the signal quality may vary with pogo pins.

Looking at the tablet side, with the right speaker on top:

*right speaker*
1. Ground
2. Sense
3. D+
4. D-
5. +5V (low current)
*left speaker*

The sense pin must be tied to ground on the peripheral to activate the other pins. This also informs the OS that the device is converted to “laptop mode”.