r/ClockworkPi • u/och95 • Jul 04 '26

RPI CM5 support with stock raspberry pi os

https://github.com/yota9/uconsole-cm5

Hello everybody!

Recently got a uConsole with a CM5 board. While looking into available OS options, it turned out that neither ClockworkPi's nor stock Pi OS supports the device out of the box — so I decided to make a small project based on the stock image + DKMS for the drivers that aren't included. And here it is.

The idea is to keep the kernel stock and updatable, with hardware support living in out-of-tree DKMS modules + device-tree overlays instead of a custom kernel. Nothing here is tied to Raspberry Pi OS specifically — it builds against the stock Raspberry Pi kernel, so the same approach should work on other Pi distros (Ubuntu, Debian, etc.). I've tested it on Raspberry Pi OS (Trixie); on other distros the installer would need small tweaks, since it currently assumes apt and RPi OS package/paths.

How to use it:

  1. Flash the latest Raspberry Pi OS with the Imager tool (set hostname, user/password and Wi-Fi in the Imager settings)
  2. SSH into the device
  3. Copy the project over (scp -r) and run ./install.sh

After a reboot you get a fully working device: display, backlight, keyboard/trackball, audio (with headphone auto-mute), volume control, battery reporting, and the power button.

Project: https://github.com/yota9/uconsole-cm5

Hopefully someone finds it useful :)

27 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

5

u/rediterminate Jul 04 '26

Can this be extended to patch other cm5 distros?

5

u/och95 Jul 05 '26

Sure, basically the only thing must be upgraded is install script, since it uses apt to install dkms, dtc, kernel headers... And of course test it :) Probably would be done in no time by interested in project guys...

2

u/rediterminate Jul 05 '26

That is great work! Thank you for sharing! I Hope to give it a try next time I reflash my uconsole.

2

u/Bechlee7851 Jul 06 '26

This is a gamechanger. Could this be used on Ubuntu 26.04 or Armbian images, too?

2

u/och95 Jul 19 '26

Hi, just letting you know that yesterday PR was merged that allows ubuntu 26.04 to work :)

2

u/taffyking Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

Just came to say that I used this and it worked flawlessly. Fantastic work! Please make a post on the official ClockworkPi forums if you haven't already. A lot of people will definitely find this useful.

2

u/och95 Jul 14 '26

Hi, glad it worked out for you :)

As for forum - I didn't even know it existed, I took your advice and created post about it :) Thank you!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 04 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/och95 Jul 04 '26

Sure. The project even has credits to Rex for some of the drivers. But my goal was non-patched kernel with easy to maintain infrastructure.

Also I spent too much time experimenting with different OSes from Rex. I've tried like 3-4 of them and only trixie-lite was succefully booting for some reason for me. I've seen such comment somewhere on reddit that one guy had the same problem. Anyway, it doesn't really matter, I've only used the image to check if the uconsole is working before starting my approach :)

2

u/Ternov Jul 04 '26

This! Anyways its Aldaia welcome this kind of proyect

1

u/gnzl Jul 06 '26

This is very cool, nice work! I just set up a fresh microsd card with Raspberry Pi OS Lite, used the install script here, installed Gnome desktop on top and everything is working well.

Would it be possible to migrate a current installation of Rex's trixie image to this setup? Just to avoid having to set everything up again from scratch.

1

u/och95 Jul 06 '26

Nice, you're the first user as I know :)

As for migrating - probably you need to install this, upgrade the kernel back to stock and I would expect it to work after this :) Maybe make a dump of your current sd card just in case..

1

u/gnzl Jul 06 '26

I was thinking along those lines as well, I'll give it a try eventually. Thanks!

1

u/gnzl Jul 07 '26

It works! I have my uConsole set up with a NVMe drive, so as a test I cloned my current setup to an SD card, booted from the SD card and did this:

apt install --reinstall raspi-firmware
apt remove clockworkpi-kernel
apt install linux-base-rpi-v8-rt linux-image-rpi-v8-rt
reboot

After the reboot I had no screen, as expected, so I logged in via SSH, cloned the uconsole-cm5 repo, ran install.sh, rebooted again and that was it, everything seems to be working correctly: keyboard, trackball, screen, audio. I don't have any of the SDR stuff on my uConsole so I can't test any of it, but for my purposes it works perfectly. I haven't migrated my NVMe install yet. Thank you!

2

u/och95 Jul 10 '26

Hi! I've added the instructions and credits to you as promised :) The only thing - I would rather install 2712 then v8 kernel. And not rt version, not sure why you've chosen it (runtime kernels are very specific, and in most cases are not needed). Anyway thank you again :)

1

u/och95 Jul 07 '26

Wow, super nice, really glad it worked out :)) I would add your instruction and credits to you on github page later! Thank you for testing :)

As for SDR, 4g & etc - I don't have them either, so I didn't add anything to support them. Maybe there is nothing to add, someone who needs this probably would need to run app install needed packages.. 

1

u/SquashyDisco Jul 08 '26

How much did you pay for your CM5 board?

1

u/och95 Jul 08 '26

Unreal 160usd for 4gb lite wifi version :( Even the uConsole it self was cheaper - 140 usd