Raspberry Pi 3B and Das Keyboard

Hello again Gurus!

I had hopefully a quick question:

I'm using Raspberry Pi 3Bs (not the plus models) as thin clients and they're working great. Also running the basic Raspbian OS because I've not had the time to do it right with a desktopless flavor. Problem is, recently at work I was asked to help out with reception. I type a minimum of 30 wpm faster on my personal keyboard. I've not type raced to really see for certain, but I'm pretty confident that I loose at least 30 wpm and maybe 40 or more using the junk that I salvaged for these terminals. (Perhaps this is just karma?)

My keyboard simply will not work on any of the Pi based thin clients. I've plugged it in directly and also plugged it into the 2.4amp powered hubs that I have on each of them. No dice.

What I think is happening is that my keyboard is drawing too much current. It's a DAS Ultimate 4 which has a usb 3.0 two way hub built in. Do you think that it's still drawing too much current even on the powered hub?

If that's the device you think is causing the problem then what happens when you swap it out for a generic keyboard?

and actually does it work with another host? (and what about that usb hub?)

do you really need to type that much in reception?
isn't the text rather short (name, address etc.), and waiting for customers' replies takes the most time anyhow?

i looked at that keyboard.
it seems to have some fancy under-the-hood functionality, but i just don't see why it wouldn't work with reduced functionality.
have you looked at dmesg etc., maybe it's being miscategorized or something.

maybe it's not a hardware, but rather an operating system problem?
are the OS versions you compare very different?

edit: also this.

Sorry for the hiatus.. I ended up solving the problem myself by elimination.

Oddly, the DAS key board worked on some of the thin clients, but not others. All clients where identical down to everything except serial numbers (which where dang near consecutive). I will get to the bottom of that mystery one day though.

I came up with a new system to eliminate the need for a guest services/secretary position. So.. The thin client at the front desk plays more mood music than actually being used to schedule appointments.

To answer your other question though, you'd be surprised how much a person sitting there had to type, lol. Every new client has to fill out paperwork, and each time any of them come back, the state says detailed notes about the visit have to be documented. They're both scanned to pdf as well as the answers to the questions typed out so they can be easily searched later. Also, with every call, the boss said detailed notes had to be taken so whoever answered the phone could know what's going on with that particular client. Plus, nearly every day, something's typed up for the web site, a promotion, a flier, a special, etc etc etc.. Also, I was in the process of re-writing/updating their protocol books. I say books because they are pretty lengthy. I would accuse the boss of being a micromanager. However, after being around the people who actually perform the services.. You can't depend on them to connect the dots or really anything that requires common sense. It's not that they're stupid, they're lazy. Where as she could look at me, point at something and say "make it work" (most of the time there where only enough seconds to say something like 'microderm' with the implication 'ex post haste'). And I would fix it the right way and do my best to eliminate the factor(s) that caused it to malfunction/break in the first place, that didn't work with everyone.

Thank you again with all of your help. You've not just saved me time and headache, but you and the rest of this community have probably kept the business I worked for from closing it's doors at least a handful of times.

^ I see, so you do have to type a lot...
I hope you get paid according to the effort you put in, sounds like you're very dedicated to your job!

Meh.. I walked away with less than I showed up with. You guys where all right when you cautioned me about jobs/businesses like these.

I worked myself right out of a job at that place. I let the owner know how it was and that I was leaving. It was crystal clear that I was never going to get ahead there - the intention of building custom equipment never existed. It was just a ruse to get free labor and a whipping boy. Fortunately, she was smart enough to listen to me and took all of my suggestions. I eliminated the need for any employees by various means. (Fixed/optimized the online booking, scripted a message to put on the phone to tell people to go to the online booking, created a system where all customers could communicate directly with the owner via text messages without having her personal phone number, cancel/reschedule/modify their own appointments, created a list of all useless equipment to sell and a list of exactly what to keep.. Also stripped down all of her services and made a spreadsheet of them in order of most dollars per minute to least dollars to minute taking all factors into account. Then filtered all that through a lens of waiting lists so that I could make a final list of what services she should only offer so that she's booked 100% of the time with the highest profit services.)

She's doing pretty well now, making more money in a day than I've ever made in my life, lol. I was shocked that she listened at all. I was expecting her to explode when I told her I was quitting and tell me to get the hell out and subsequently file for bankruptcy. But, she followed all of my suggestions almost to the letter. Daily operations, organizational schemes, tax and flow structure, telling the social elites in the area to [PC]go create a vacuum inside their mouths with their lips against a bag of phallic organs..[/PC] The works.

Upon reflection later, after getting over the self loathing of being a total door mat, I felt quite proud of myself for fixing the business. I've decided to give it a try in my own life. Just built a new shop, traded for an embroidery machine and I'm going to try and give that a go. Still trying to get into college. If I do manage to get into school, this'll be something I can do after hours.

Sorry to hear that - I enjoyed sharing the joy of your work with you - and good to hear that apparently you're moving on already.
I bet there's some good experience value in all this.

Update for alien archaeologists that uncover this thread:

I've since used the same or similar DAS keyboards on many, many other Raspberry Pis. It's hit and miss. One keyboard will work with some of the pies and not others while another will have different results. There seems to be no rhyme or reason. I've not even began to discern any kind of a pattern or even a clue as to what the issue is.

It's probably down to the chips used, there was, I think, an upgrade somewhere along the line to the 3B, a little before the 3B+ came out.

If it was drawing too much power the lightning bolt thing for the pi's would show up on screen (I assume). I'm assuming that you tried ALL the various port options. Could be some oddity where you used the same port the ethernet was on, or other quirks. Could also try a USB2 hub or extension cable, and see if that makes it submit. Could be a bad cable to the keyboard, and it's actually flakey on all the pi's. You're just winning the cable lottery on some of them (implied some of the time).

Might also be various versions of the same board. Recalling something about one component being photo sensitive. AKA flash photography would make those reboot. Although that would be more consistent when faced with multiple keyboards of same make and model being attempted on it. Normally when it's quirky like that it's hardware IMO. Could be the power supply(s). I'm using a 4 port charging hub that goes up to 3.4A per port with 24W max draw. And one port would not power my 3B+ and touch screen which has a Y adapter and worked fine with it's original 2.5A power supply. It does work on that hub thing, but I have to use two cables, not the Y adapter.