This repository is meant to be a guide to use a Remarkable2 tablet as a pen display for linux hosts. It is mainly a description of the process I went through to make my setup work in my use case. Several things could have been done differently. Suggestions on how to make this simpler to deploy and more user friendly are welcome.

The same process should work also for Remarkable1 with few minor modifications (e.g. to the device paths and screen sizes).

The secret ingredient here is uinput so this is not going to work as is for osx nor windows.

This repository is currently a work in progress

Requirements

• a Remarkable2 tablet, I will refer to this as rm2
• a linux machine with an Intel video card, I will refer to this as host

Steps

• Install toltec on rm2

• Install netevent and vnsee on rm2 through toltec

• Install sshd on host

• Setup key-based ssh access on both devices: user@host should be able to log in as root@rm2 and vice versa without typing passwords

• Make sure hosts runs a kernel that supports uinput; if it is a module make sure it gets loaded. Grant user sufficient rights to manage uinput devices. On my gentoo machine this amounted to adding user to the input group and loading the following udev rule

  KERNEL=="uinput", GROUP="input", MODE="0660"
  

• Add the following to the host's hwdb and refresh the database

  evdev:input:b0018v056Ap0000*
   LIBINPUT_DEVICE_GROUP=remarkable2
   EVDEV_ABS_00=::101
   EVDEV_ABS_01=::101
   ID_INPUT_TABLET=1
  
  evdev:input:b0000v0000p0000e0000-e0*
   LIBINPUT_DEVICE_GROUP=remarkable2
   EVDEV_ABS_00=::7
   EVDEV_ABS_01=::12
   EVDEV_ABS_35=::7
   EVDEV_ABS_36=::12
   LIBINPUT_CALIBRATION_MATRIX=0 1 0 1 0 0
   ID_INPUT_KEY=0
   ID_INPUT_TOUCHSCREEN=1
  

• Configure the host's X11 to use libinput drivers adding the following in /etx/X11/xorg.conf.d/ then reload X11

  Section "InputClass"
  	Identifier      "Remarkable2 Touchscreen"
  	MatchProduct    "remarkable2-touchscreen"
  	Driver          "libinput"
  EndSection
  
  Section "InputClass"
  	Identifier      "Remarkable2 Digitizer"
  	MatchProduct    "remarkable2-digitizer"
  	Driver          "libinput"
  EndSection
  

• Add a new mode to the host's X11 and enable it on VIRTUAL1:

  xrandr --newmode 1872x1404 0 1872 1872 1872 1872 1404 1404 1404 1404 
  xrandr --addmode VIRTUAL1 1872x1404
  

• Create a file called netevent.ne2 on rm2 containing these commands with the correct user@host

  device add digitizer /dev/input/by-path/platform-30a20000.i2c-event-mouse
  device add touchscreen /dev/input/by-path/platform-30a40000.i2c-event
  device rename digitizer remarkable2-digitizer
  device rename touchscreen remarkable2-touchscreen
  output add remote exec:ssh user@host netevent create
  use remote
  write-events on
  

All pieces of the configuration should now be in place. To start the system run the following (These commands assume that the main output is eDP1 and its width is 1920, adapt them to your needs):

host$ xrandr --output VIRTUAL1 --right-of eDP1 --auto 
host$ x11vnc -repeat -forever -nocursor -nopw  -rotate 270 -clip 1872x1404+1920+0 -pipeinput UINPUT
rm2$ systemctl stop xochitl
rm2$ netevent daemon -s netevent.ne2 /var/run/netevent.sock &
rm2$ vnsee host
host$ xinput float "x11vnc injector"

The last command is there just to remove duplicates events while still retaining the possibility to do fast refreshes when writing.

TODO

• Refactor this into a single script to be run from host.

• It should be possible to use udev rules rather than hwdb; unfortunately libinput complains about missing capabilities. My udev foo is not strong enough here

• It should be possible to match both devices using the name we gave them remarkable2-* rather than vendor and product hex codes. This would be preferable since the touchscreen reports these numbers all to be zeros. Again my udev foo was not strong enough.