7.8 KiB
ThinkNode M9: Keyboard & D-pad Guide
The Elecrow ThinkNode M9 has no touchscreen — every screen, every setting, and every chat is driven by the d-pad, the dedicated function keys, and the QWERTY keyboard. If you're coming from the T-Deck or Heltec V4 (touch-first), this page is the five-minute tour that makes the board feel native.
The inputs
- D-pad — four arrows around a centre button (OK). Arrows move the on-screen focus highlight; OK activates whatever is focused. Holding OK is the board's long-press: it fires the held item's long-press action (a chat message's context menu, the SD row's hold-to-format) and unlocks the lock screen.
- Function row — dedicated keys for Chats, Home, Mentions, Advert, Map, Back, Mic and Ctrl (see the table below).
- QWERTY keyboard — the keyboard controller resolves Shift/symbol layers itself, so keys always deliver their final character. It latches one key at a time, which is why there are no chords on this board — long-press carries the second layer instead. Start typing in a chat and the composer focuses itself; any key wakes the screen from idle.
The one rule: Back closes what you see, then goes back
Back always closes the top layer, one per press: map pan mode → an open dropdown → the power menu → the Control Center → a full-screen app → a dialog → any popup → an open chat. Nothing ever closes invisibly beneath something else.
Once there is nothing left covering the screen, Back returns you to the previous screen — the tab you came from, however you got there: a function key, an app-drawer tile, "Show on map", a contact's Send-msg button. Keep pressing and you keep walking back through where you have been. When the trail runs out Back lands on Home, and on Home with nothing open it does nothing, because that is the root.
HOME is the shortcut past all of that: it goes straight to the root and clears the trail, so Back from there won't jump you back out again. When App drawer as home is enabled, the drawer cog's Lock home to drawer option makes HOME stay in or return to the drawer. The Cmdr tile still opens the Commander screen when you need it.
The only exception is deliberate: progress overlays (SD format, bulk delete) block all keys until the operation finishes — Back will not navigate out from under a running operation.
Function keys
| Key | Press | Hold |
|---|---|---|
| MSG | Jump to the Chats tab; inside a conversation, return to the chat list (closes an open app first) | — |
| HOME | Peel one layer off an open app; on the Home tab, toggle the app drawer; otherwise jump Home (and clear the Back trail) | — |
| @ (Mentions) | Open the Mentions screen | — |
| ADV | Open the Send Advert page | Toggle GPS on/off |
| MAP | Jump to the Map tab — press again on the map to toggle pan mode | — |
| BACK | Close the top layer (see above) | — |
| CTRL | Open the Control Center (quick toggles, incl. the keyboard light: off / on / auto) | — |
| MIC | Nothing yet — deliberately reserved | — |
| OK / Enter | Activate the focused item; send a message; run a terminal command; newline in the editor | Long-press the focused item / unlock the lock screen |
The MSG, HOME, @, ADV, MAP, and CTRL shortcuts remain active while typing or using a picker. Back, the d-pad, and OK remain contextual so they can leave edit mode, move the caret or selection, and activate controls.
Map pan mode
On the Map tab, press MAP again: the arrows now pan the map instead of moving focus. MAP or BACK exits. Pan mode switches itself off whenever you leave the map or anything opens over it, so a stale pan can never eat a key press later. Auto-follow pauses while you pan and resumes when you exit. Entering the map fresh always starts in normal navigation.
Typing & editing
Inside a text field the left/right arrows move the caret — and when the caret is already at the edge of the text, the same press steps focus out of the field, so you're never stuck. Enter sends (toggleable under Settings), Back leaves the field. In the Terminal, Enter runs the command; in the text editor it inserts a newline.
While a chat message is focused and newer messages are below it, a down arrow appears at the right edge. Press Right to select it, then OK to jump to the newest message.
Channels, direct messages, and room conversations place # and emoji to the right of the message input. Press Right to move from the input to #, and Right again to move to emoji. Press OK on either button to open its picker.
In the symbol grid, use all four arrows to move the highlight and OK to insert the selected character.
The Create/Join channel forms use the same # action beside every text field. Right moves from the field to #; Left returns to editing the field. Password fields use the same control, including Wi-Fi, MQTT, and repeater login. After inserting a symbol, focus returns to the originating text field.
Lock screen
Hold OK to unlock — the keyboard's hardware long-press stands in for the hold-to-unlock other boards do by touch. With "Flash on new message" enabled, an incoming message wakes (or lock-reveals) the screen and pulses the keyboard backlight.
Inside apps
Store apps (Snake and friends) get the d-pad natively: arrows steer, OK taps the centre — start, steer, and tap-to-retry all work. Display-only apps (Airtime, RF Monitor) keep normal navigation: arrows move between the app's own buttons or scroll the feed. Back and Home always escape an app — no app can trap the keys, even while the screen is locked.
Recent improvements (beta_66 branch)
If you last used the M9 on an earlier beta, the notable navigation changes:
- Back now actually goes back — once everything covering the screen was closed, Back had nothing left to do and the press simply died on any bare tab. It now walks back through the screens you visited, then Home. Jumps that used to strand you ("Show on map" from Discover or Contacts, a route replay from a chat, the Home unread line, the ✉ badge, app-drawer tiles) all return properly. Back also works in the first-boot wizard now, stepping back through its screens like the on-screen Back button.
- Back restored and made consistent — it had regressed to doing nothing outside text fields, and could close hidden popups beneath the Control Center. Both fixed; the close-what-you-see rule above now holds everywhere.
- The map opens faster the first time — the cold open was doing a whole-card zoom scan whose result was thrown away, and (with no GPS fix) was repeating that scan on every open. The "Loading map…" hint now appears immediately instead of after the scan, so the board no longer looks frozen on the previous screen while the first tiles decode.
- The d-pad no longer goes dead for a second when a message arrives, and the Spectrum page no longer steers an invisible cursor around the app drawer underneath it.
- Apps can't strand you — opening Advert/Mentions over a running app used to orphan it with no key path back; app permission dialogs are now answerable with the d-pad.
- Map pan cleans up after itself (see above — it used to leak across tab jumps).
- Keyboard light "On" applies at boot, not after the first dim cycle.
- Terminal chat shows incoming replies, not just your own sent lines.
- GPS works from a cold boot — the toggle (and ADV-hold) no longer depends on a boot-time detection race.
- Spectrum analyzer sweeps roughly twice as fast, survives read glitches without flattening the trace, and waits for an in-flight transmission instead of cutting it off when opened mid-send.
The engineering record behind these lives in
variants/thinknode_m9/M9_PORT.md.