Flashing a Liatris controller | Liatris | splitkb.com documentation

First use

When connecting a new Liatris to your computer using a USB C cable, the power LED will light up orange. The RGB LED remain turned off.

It will present itself to your computer as a disk, called RPI-RP2.

You can drag a .UF2 file to the newly mounted disk to it to flash it. You can find such files for your keyboard using our Firmware Finder, or compile them yourself from QMK or Vial-based firmware.

Every Liatris is tested at the factory. The on-board flash chip has its own identifier, making each Liatris uniquely identifiable. Every controller gets tested semi-automatically, using a test suite and testing software we developed in-house. We test for many aspects, including memory size and integrity, on-board shorts, voltage sensing and the power and RGB LEDs. Being able to test it extensively was the main reason why we developed our own controller.

Regardless, though very infrequently, controllers can get damaged along the way due to handling and logistics. That's why it's still important to perform this manual check, as it'll weed out the last few possible causes of the controller not working.

After flashing

Once flashed with keyboard firmware, connecting the Liatris to your computer or other host device will cause the Liatris to show up as a keyboard. For example, as "Kyria rev3".

You should not be seeing the disk attached to your computer anymore. If the RPI-RP2 disk pops right back up, that means the flashing process has failed. Please try it again, and skip to the bottom of this page if the issue persists.

You can connect a row and a column pad with one another to output a key. You can do so with metal tweezers, a paperclip or a piece of wire. You can look at the bottom of your keyboard (the labels next to the controller footprint, like connecting C0 with R0) or at the schematics for your keyboard to see which pins you can connect.

Be careful when shorting with the VCC pin. The VCC pin has 5V output by default, but all other pins are tolerant of a voltage up to 3.6V. If you connect the VCC pin to any other pin, you'll risk damaging that pin. When testing your controller this way, you can can connect any other pin together harmlessly—just not the VCC pin.

Mind that not all combinations of rows and columns will output a key. Some combinations won't be connected in the firmware, and some combinations are connected but are mapped to a modifier or layer key. Just try a few combinations (and be sure to have your cursor's focus on a text field on your computer). Any character output means that it's good to go!

Boot button

Holding the on-board boot button while connecting the Liatris with a USB C cable will cause the Liatris to enter its bootloader mode, which will present the Liatris as a disk named RPI-RP2.

When flashed with Vial or QMK firmware, double tapping the on-board boot button will enter the bootloader mode, too. This is a feature specific to QMK and Vial, so this will not work if you're using a different framework or when using custom-compiled firmware such as CircuitPython.

If it doesn't work after troubleshooting, don't panic just yet! Please follow the instructions on Problems before using your product. We'll help you troubleshoot, and will replace the controller if need be.

Pinout diagram

See which pins offer what functionality for the Liatris controller.

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