rm-pad | reMarkable | Page 1

worthy bluff Mar 4, 2026, 12:55 PM

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I've created a program that allows you to use the rm2 (and possibly the rmpp but I can't test it as I don't have one) as a touchpad + drawing tablet on linux, similar to remarkabe_mouse and remousable, but with basically 0 jank and latency.

Currently it's limited to linux (and only tested on wayland, but should work on xorg), as remarkable_mouse works good enough for me on windows.

Features:

Optional automatic connection when plugging in (using a systemd service)
Multi touch support + touch gestures
Simple and adjustable palm rejection
Pen tilt and pressure
Very low latency and very polling rate (at least compared to remarkable_mouse)
Ability to freeze the tablet while connected, so you do not accidentally press stuff while using it on the PC (also unfreezes automatically if the connection is dropped for any reason)

Maybe someone is interested in it, I've mostly made it for myself but it turned out pretty well :)

There's a PKGBUILD if you're on arch that should handle setting up permissions etc correctly

GitHub

GitHub - alvesvaren/rm-pad: A user-space driver for remarkable tabl...

A user-space driver for remarkable tablets on linux, converting it into a seamless libinput touch device and drawing tablet. - alvesvaren/rm-pad

north jetty Mar 4, 2026, 12:56 PM

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Ability to freeze the tablet while connected
That is huge

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Never had any real issues with Remouse, but it was kind of annoying that the tablet was still getting all the inputs

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But is there any possibility for this to ever run on Windows? One of my primary usecases for this is using it at work because I have a drawing tablet at home, but on the go am limited to the rM2

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Also, the Input Grab doesn't interfere with what is actually displayed on the screen, yes? So this could theoretically be used at the same time as vnsee to actually be able to see the screen you're drawing on?

worthy bluff Mar 4, 2026, 1:01 PM

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Yeah, the freeze just grabs the input devices (sadly causes it to sleep after a while but you can just start it again, probably fixable but not annoying enough yet for me to fix it)

north jetty Mar 4, 2026, 1:02 PM

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I'm not sure about this, but can't you just inhibit sleep through systemd?

worthy bluff Mar 4, 2026, 1:02 PM

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north jetty But is there any possibility for this to ever run on Windows? One of my primary ...

Maybe, it's basically only a translation layer between the remarkable input packet format to libinput on linux, so there's a fair amount of work to do the same on windows, but it's absolutely not impossible

worthy bluff Mar 4, 2026, 1:02 PM

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north jetty I'm not sure about this, but can't you just inhibit sleep through systemd?

Probably, haven't looked around that much

north jetty Mar 4, 2026, 1:02 PM

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Fair enough

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I wonder if this + vnsee could be used to turn the rM into a more or less full fledged touchscreen drawing tablet...

worthy bluff Mar 4, 2026, 1:04 PM

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mhm, I've looked at that a bit but I am running the latest remarkable firmware so I haven't really looked at package managers and getting that to work

north jetty Mar 4, 2026, 1:04 PM

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I mean, vnsee's mouse input stuff is very barebones, that certainly leaves some room for improvement.
Would you say it's difficult to make your project emulate a touchscreen input instead of a touchpad?

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Cause if that works then it might be possible to just use vnsee for display out and rm-pad for the inputs

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-# sorry i'm bombarding you with questions rn i just think this is really neat and am letting the ideas flood out

worthy bluff Mar 4, 2026, 1:08 PM

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It would be pretty easy, it's already sending absolute touch events, so changing it to a touch screen would just be telling libinput that it's a touch screen and not a touch pad

north jetty Mar 4, 2026, 1:08 PM

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Oh, neat

grand holly Mar 4, 2026, 1:09 PM

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Isn't that basically the same thing as netevent? I've been using that sucessfully for a long time now.

worthy bluff Mar 4, 2026, 1:13 PM

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that seems pretty similar, I'll have to check that out!

One advantage is that everything is automatically set up for you, so it's just a simple binary that you start, but most of that may possibly be easily done with that too

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does netevent also EVIOCGRAB the input devices?

grand holly Mar 4, 2026, 1:18 PM

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netevent has optional grab (I do not know the exact mechanism behind it), but it is not specifically made for the remarkable

worthy bluff Mar 4, 2026, 1:19 PM

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because I had a lot of issues getting that to work, as you basically need some way of creating syscalls on the actual remarkable, so my solution was to cross-compile a binary for the remarkable that I then upload over scp to it and use that to grab the devices

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afaik you'd probably need to run stuff on the remarkable for it to work, and also handle cleanup if the connection dies or freezes, so you're not stuck with an unresponsive tablet

grand holly Mar 4, 2026, 1:20 PM

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netevent needs binaries on both host and device

ionic wedge Mar 4, 2026, 1:22 PM

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north jetty I'm not sure about this, but can't you just inhibit sleep through systemd?

The most reliable way I’ve found to inhibit sleep is via pen hover events. reManager does that if anyone needs to cheat.

north jetty Mar 4, 2026, 1:22 PM

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That's kinda genius actually

worthy bluff Mar 4, 2026, 1:23 PM

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I wonder how that would work when I've told the kernel that I want exclusive access to the pen device though :O

ionic wedge Mar 4, 2026, 1:27 PM

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There’s this, but I’m not sure if it works on newer OSes, requires mounting / rw unmounting /etc overlay https://github.com/Eeems-Org/sysfs_preload

worthy bluff Mar 4, 2026, 1:30 PM

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my last idea before abandoning it because I didn't really need it, was to double click the power button every X minutes as it seems like it keeps the connection alive for while after starting the sleep

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and that resets the timer, but it also causes the screen to flicker and is a bit distracting

#rm-pad