# ClockworkPi uConsole
*Entered: in emacs on XyloPi*
*Date: 20240403*
## Finally Got it
I ordered a ClockworkPi uConsole back in October of 2023. It
finally arrived at my house last week while I was out of
town. I drove home yesterday from Colorado, late. This
morning I woke at 0558 and proceded to build the device (it
comes as a kit). I was done in ten minutes, but no display.
Turns out that the CM4 can indeed be inserted into the
carrier board 180-out. A google image search later and an
image of someone else's build showed my mistake. Flipped the
CM4 over and voila, it booted.
I am a tiling window manager user, the default Raspbian GUI
doesn't appeal to me so I installed i3. Somehow this hosed
LightDM and I could no longer log in. I dropped to a TTY and
apt remove'd lightdm and i3. I intalled SDDM instead and
configured it to rotate the screen 90 degrees right (ths is
one of those devices that uses a repurposed tablet screen
and so it defaults to potrait, 90 degrees left). I installed
sway since I know how to configure i3 and I have never
messed with wayland before.
Next I installed emacs and it was v27 which is too old for
my config. So, I removed that and installed from snap, which
gave me v29. After this I installed tmux - I use it even in
a gui. Next I installed Iosevka Nerd Font and riced sway a
bit, using the read_file module in i3status to display my
battery percentage. I don't care about charge status because
I know if I am plugged in or not (and if I am plugged in but
the percentage keeps dropping, I'd investigate).
This thing is made of aluminum, feels good in the hands. The
keyboard is squishy, but servicable. It only has one USB
port, and that is a USB 2.0 A port. The USB C atop that A
port is only for charging. Many have complained about wifi
reception, but mine is doing fine. I think this device is a
fun addition to my kit.
