Help for the Dirtywave M8 setup and troubleshooting on RG351V.
If you want to save some time, you can buy one instead on Etsy
The official guide to the Dirtywave M8 can be found here on their site: https://dirtywave.com/pages/resources-downloads
The console itself can be found here. There are other units besides the 351V that you could get, but the 351V is nice because it has two USB-C ports, allowing one to host the Teensy while the other stays open for charging.
The official list of recommended SD cards can be found here and specifically this is a great option for cheap.
The Teensy can be found here on Amazon, you do NOT need the version with pins. Follow the official headless setup on your computer to get the Teensy up and running with your SanDisk SD card. You can also plug your Teensy into your computer via the OTG cable and see its output via https://m8.run/. This is a great way to test things out and gives you a larger screen to work with.
A good cable option is found here - a two pack! 1 foot is a bit long, but half a foot is just too short.
The slot case design can be found here. Thanks a bunch to dschroeter for its creation. It can be quite difficult to get the Teensy in there the first time, you may be surprised at the level of force you need to apply. Ask your friend with a 3D printer to print it for you! Or get one on Etsy
You can use strips of this adhesive to mount the slot case to the back of the 351V.
Currently, ArkOS 2.0 is used, specifically the build ArkOS_RK2023_v2.0_10162023. Later builds do have issues with the rg351_m8c specifically because that project uses subdirectories, which are not supported in later ArkOS versions. For this reason, we also recommend against updating the OS in the settings (for now) until this is resolved. Newly shipped versions of the RG351V seem to have a different screen than some older modules, so if you are setting things up and see a white screen with a black bar on the side, you have run into this issue and will need to download this .dtb file and replace the one in the root of the SD card to get things working.
The RG351V with m8c is currently found here, but tweaks are needed to make things work. For example, you cannot use m8 firmware greater than 3.0.4 with that project, since it does not compile the latest version of m8c but rather relies on an earlier build. If you want to resolve this, you need to update the submodules via running git submodule update --recursive and then following the instructions for installation and setup. Keep in mind that you need to have an internet connection on the RG351 when you first run the setup scripts.
The experience with using this is of course not perfect. Here are some tips to avoid a bad experience:
- The speaker on the 351V is not great. Headhpones are highly recommended.
- Turn off Wifi after initial setup (ie. when using the M8 tracker). It is known to cause sound issues.
- Do NOT turn off the screen (press the power button) on the device without first saving your project. I have experienced putting the device to sleep, then waking it up to find that the progress on my project was gone and another project was open and nothing I had been doing was saved.
- Always SAVE your project before turning off the device. Really, just get into the habit of saving every few minutes on this thing.
- Backup your projects off the Teensy SD card and onto your computer. You never know when an SD card is going to fail.
- You cannot see the battery percentage while using M8 unfortunately, but the light in the middle will start blinking red and green when the battery gets low. So, be sure to save when this starts happening too!
This entire project/experience would not be possible without the great work from Dirtywave and all the help I found in the Discord. Thanks to christianhaitian for the creation of ArkOS, jasonporritt for creating rg351_m8c and also laamaa for the work on m8c. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.