Unresponsive Touchscreen

[HelloThisIsFlo]

Problem

Some people reported the touchscreen is unresponsive. This is problematic because it means Deckpad can't exit properly, and that cause other issues.

Ideas

• Maybe the touchscreen has a different name on different SteamDecks?

[HelloThisIsFlo]

I think I found the issue!

I did most my testing via SSH and I found I needed to explicitly set the DISPLAY envvar to be able to use xinput. But the value of DISPLAY is not always the same if we are locally on the machine vs accessing it via SSH. So, sometimes DISPLAY would point to the wrong value, and xinput would fail.

I then found out that the DISPLAY envvar should already be set when running konsole, so there's nothing to do to use xinput.

So I just removed the line below in bad9411

export DISPLAY=:1

As we can see I am no bash expert and I'm mostly hacking things around until they work 😅
Hopefully that fixes it 😊🤞

[HelloThisIsFlo]

So apparently the fix didn't fix it. Unfortunate.
I have reports from reddit as well as #2

It's a very difficult issue to fix because it works very consistently on my SteamDeck. So, since I can't reproduce, I'm never sure if the "fixes" actually fix anything 🤔

It may be due to Steam OS 3.4. I haven't done this update yet, so maybe it breaks something ... but that's unlikely. Still, if that's the case, I'll fix it once I'll update.

@imstupidwithlinux Could you try the following?

1. Run this command in Konsole and let me know what the result is

   xinput --list
   

   If it works (it fails if it returns Unable to connect to X server), then maybe could you try:
   1. Get the touchscreen ID

      xinput --list 2>/dev/null | grep -i -m 1 'touch' | grep -o 'id=[0-9]\+' | grep -o '[0-9]\+'
      

      This will give you a number, let's call it ID
   2. Query the state

      xinput --query-state ID
      

      (put the ID you found on the step before)

It would be helpful if you could post the results here

[EnteSuesssauer15]

It's not like the touchscreen doesn't work, it works but the script doesn't stop. Like I said it opens up the on screen keyboard when tapping on it.

[EnteSuesssauer15]

And after I got it installed I experienced softlocked sleep mode, either it wouldn't go into it or it tries to and get a blank black screen where the steam button can still open the side menu, I don't want to blame this on you as I haven't installed this to my now factory reset deck

[HelloThisIsFlo]

Oh, that's unfortunate, but yes it's 100% the script that causes this. There is a warning about it in the Installation instructions, with some simples steps to fix it: https://github.com/FlorianKempenich/Deckpad#setup-instructions
It's unfortunate you didn't see it, maybe I should make it more prominent somehow 🤔 Because yes, it's a pain to factory reset the deck for that.

What I mean by the touchscreen doesn't respond is that, yes the deck detects the touch, but Deckpad doesn't respond to the input. That's why the keyboard shows up instead of the exit and cleanup process being initiated

[Drone101]

Yeah, having the same problem. The touch screen doesn't register the tap on "tap here to quit! > 0 < " so the whole thing is kinda borked. Would not advise running this script as is.

Edit - tried plugging in usb mouse and keyboard on a dock and clicking the >0< to close just gives [[M -1 text in the konsole, using your closing commands worked in a separate konsole, thanks for providing those but they don't stop the deck's button inputs being subverted and unresponsive so you still need to factory reset to clean everything up again.

Tried the steps you asked of LinuxUser above,
xinput command just doesn't work at all in the running exe or a separate konsole.

[Drone101]

Overall your script works but won't let you close out of it on a currently upto-date deck. I would suggest adding a "close me".sh in the folder case of emergency so people have another avenue to end it. And hardbake holding R1+R2 + L1+L2 for 10 seconds to terminate the program cleanly and have this mentioned on the running screen too so people know how to close it. I appreciate you put a lot of time into this and I'm impressed it's working, just not being able to close the program is poor planning and form, sorry.

[HelloThisIsFlo]

Hey,
Don't have much time to answer in details, but don't factory reset!. Please read the message I posted just above, as well as the 'Setup Instructions'.
It's unfortunate the script doesn't work for some people, but of course it is offered with almost no guarantees of any sort. All I guarantee is that it won't break your steam deck, just run the commands in the https://github.com/FlorianKempenich/Deckpad#setup-instructions

I've copy pasted them here:

sudo chmod 666 /sys/class/backlight/amdgpu_bl0/brightness
sudo systemctl unmask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target >/dev/null 2>&1

This will revert everything and the steam deck will be as new 👍
The first command re-enable brightness control, the second re-enable sleep

[EnteSuesssauer15]

For me it did revert to its normal state after a reboot so I've never use this command

[HelloThisIsFlo]

Quick update:

I updated to Steam OS 3.4, and the touchscreen issue still isn't there on my device. It works great. So I still have no idea what the problem is on some people's Steam Deck 🤔

However, when launching Deckpad, the window is now tiny on Steam OS 3.4. The fix is easy, I've updated the README.md and added a note at the top.

In short you just need to add --fullscreen to the launch options

[tpma]

Just as a note but its the same issue for me. Clicking on the 'exit' location instead just opens up the keyboard.

[HelloThisIsFlo]

Hey,
What might happen is that the click is registered outside of the target, and if so, the keyboard will pop yes. Then you can just close it and try again.
To make hitting the target much easier, I've increased the active area by a lot. Hopefully that helps, let me know if it worked 🙂

As a reminder, to update the project, just run

cd ~/Deckpad/ && git pull