I just watched the video for the new FW12 and it’s awesome to hear how the new input cover supports ZMK! Does anyone know if the FW13 input cover will see ZMK support in the future?
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They haven’t announced anything.
Quite unlikely since it is wired directly into the ec instead of being a separate controller like on the 12 and 16.
Could have done it with the fw13 pro,
At some point older gen parts will need to be phased out, ie new battery/touchpad requiring the new bottom housing. Not sure why they didnt switch off the EC for the new intel boards
Why does it matter though?
All of the mainboards work with a usb keyboard attached and the internal laptop keyboard disconnected. Just lose the current EC managed keyboard & hang the new zmk keyboard off usb. There is a usb 2.0 line that runs through for the fingerprint, add a usb hub chip to split the line. Would you even need an EC firmware update?
Doesn’t feel unlikely to me. It feels more like it might be inevitable that all their laptops converge to having zmk keyboard. The wireless FW keyboard to start, now the FWL12, then hopefully the 13. Switch the 16 over to zmk to bring it in line. And finally the 13 pro, being the most recent it hard to see releasing new keyboards or whatever part where the keyboard controller would live, so soon.
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That could work if they do find some space for the extra circuitry.
I’d say the 16 going first would be a lot more likely but it could happen.
The touchpad pcb has room for the extra chips. That’s where all the needed lines pass through anyway.
I was planning to get the new FW13 pro chassis, input cover, etc. once the parts become more available, but now I’m going to wait to see if a ZMK version becomes available for sure.
I have not found a lot of pictures of the underside of the new input cover (found this odd angle one from ifixit).
The touchpad section seems pretty much full, don’t think you are going to fit another 2 big chips (hub and micro for zmk) plus their passives in there might be some space on the board that connects the ribbon cables together.
I still don’t really see them doing it because on the 13 there isn’t much need to do it. For the 16 it was completely required to have separate keyboard controllers because of the input modules, on the 12 they did it for the pogo pins and on the wireless keyboard they did it cause it is just a keyboard but on the 13 they are already commuted to the input cover cable so they don’t gain all that much from going to zmk (sure zmk is quite neat but I expect 99% of users never do anything more than a dumb keyboard controller couldn’t already do). Also they likely still have the flawed matrix so that is a bit of a downer on that end.
I also find it a bit weird that they don’t just use the same micro as for the wireless keyboard in the 12 so they could share the codebase, the nrf can do usb just fine and uses so little power that any extra efficiency the stm may have can’t really be worth it.
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