I knew having two electric-powered vehicles in the garage would initially present some charging problems. We have a garage fridge and an air compressor that already like to trip the circuit breaker when both are running full-tilt. Charging two vehicles from that same 120V circuit was going to be tricky.
Offset Charging Schedules
Until we could add a dedicated 240V circuit, the first thing I did was set charging schedules for both vehicles. I set the Bolt to charge from Midnight to 4PM. Because I work from home, I tend to drive my car (usually to rehearsal) after work.
Setting the Bolt’s charging schedule is a bit complex. It’s labeled rate scheduling because you can configure it to match your power company’s off-peak, mid-peak, and peak rates for weekdays and weekends, summer and winter. Lots of options!
I set the car to charge on off-peak only when at home and then made the off-peak hours Midnight to 4PM every day, year-round. Done and done.
The Pacifica is easier to set a schedule. It simply has start and stop times for weekdays and weekends. I set it to charge from 4PM to Midnight every day.
Because both vehicles clocks are synced to the cell phone network or GPS, I made them turn on/off at the exact same time. This seemed to work for a while until I tripped the breaker at 4PM one day. Just one second of overlap with one car coming off the charge and the other firing up was enough to trip the 20 amp circuit.
Both vehicles use 15-minute increments in their scheduling software. So I set the Bolt to charge from 12:15AM to 3:45PM to give a buffer. Still, on days when both cars were driven, neither were getting a full charge, so it was time for an upgrade.
240V Outlet & Level 1.5 Charging
To facilitate a Level 2 charger, we had an electrician install a 14-50 50-amp RV-style 240V outlet in the garage. If you have a 240V outlet and don’t yet have a Level 2 charger – don’t worry, you can double your charge rate with the included “portable” charger.
Dual Level 2 Charging
After the electrician installed a 50-amp 240V outlet, it was time to go big or go home at home. I ordered a Clipper Creek 40-amp dual car charger. While it’s true that most charging stations are just “fancy extension cords” – this one has some smarts in it. If two cars are charging at the same time it will split the charge and feed 20-amps to each vehicle. If only one vehicle is charging, it will get the full 40-amps.
At that rate, the van can charge fully in 2 hours and the Chevy could always get to a full charge overnight. Because having a Level 2 charger means we can really blast some power into charging, I set both vehicles charging schedules to 9PM-9AM which is off-peak for my power company.
Charging Extension
While I’m waiting to get my Bolt’s battery replaced because of the recall, I need to keep it outside. To be able to charge in the driveway I purchased a 40-amp J-1772 extension cable. It adds 20 feet to to my garage charger so I can reach it in the driveway. So the charge handle doesn’t just get left on the ground (or in the snow), I mounted a EV holster to the side of the garage.
When I first got the message about the battery recall affecting every model year Bolt, I started parking the car in the driveway (per Chevy’s recommendation). Before I got the extension cord I switched from using the high-amp Clipper Creek charger to the included “portable” charger, but plugged into 240 volts. This worked great for a while because I could use a normal extension cord with the included charger. To work on 240 volts, the extension cord just has to have low-gauge wires (thick) with no extras like LED indicator lights.
It started to become a nuisance as charging both cars meant I’d have to go out and switch the one active charge plug to the other car once the first was done. I could have purchased a 50-amp RV splitter for $100 and used both portable chargers at the same time. The 50 amp outlet would have more than enough overhead as each portable charger maxes out at 12 amps for 24 amps total. This would actually be a great (cheap!) setup for two cars and 240 volts without having to invest in a big charger.
But I already had the big charger and $100 was more than half of the J-1772 extension, so I went that route and it’s been working great.
We had a 1:24 scale Christmas last year, which was fun to set up under the tree. While the SCX24 RC crawler is small, the G-scale trains are decidedly big […]
We had a 1:24 scale Christmas last year, which was fun to set up under the tree. While the SCX24 RC crawler is small, the G-scale trains are decidedly big once you factor in the layout. I’ve always loved model trains and had a layout as a kid, but in my home it would be impossible to dedicate a room to model trains. Why not go outside?
Large scale trains are popular for garden railways, and I had a section of yard that was completely unused. But it won’t be for just trains – I want it to be a multi-modal play area: trains, crawlers, maybe even a landing pad for an RC helicopter
This site isn’t transforming into a model railroad blog (at least not permanently), but the next few posts will be about the train setup as groundwork before the crawler course is installed. Hopefully you can enjoy it all under the guise of RC and Trail & Scale
Garden Bed & Trains
For the area, I purchased some Vita 4’x4’x11″ vinyl garden beds from Costco. They came as a 2-pack that you can combine to make a 8’x8′ area. I bought two of those packs which let me combine them to make a 12’x20′ area.
Before I did any digging, I loosely fit the vinyl bed parts together in the yard to make sure I knew that the space would be appropriate
For the trains, I decided to stick with Lionel Ready-To-Play (RTP) sets. They’re basically the same size as Lionel’s G-scale lineup but they run on a slightly wider (proprietary) track system as Lionel does They are powered by batteries instead of power through the track, and have individual RC remotes. They’re more toy grade than true model trains – cemented by the fact that you can’t order additional rolling stock for these sets. But there are opportunities for modding them and other G-scale trains through 3D printing – something that interests me more than just wasting investing my money in endless train cars.
One look at the cost of “real” G-scale locomotives made me realize that for $100 I can buy another RTP set that will include a locomotive, remote control, rolling stock and track.
Make the manual RTP switches easy to access (near one edge)
Leave plenty of space in the center for a suitable 1:24 off-road vehicle recreation area.
I started with some books at the library on layouts – there are plenty available and you don’t always need to concern yourself with scale & gauge to get good ideas. The book 45 Original Track Plans had a lumber railroad that struck me because even with the switching yard out front, it was at an angle to the perimeter of the layout, which added some interest.
Doing something similar I’d be able to make psuedo tri-oval to fit inside my oddly-shaped area. To make sure everything would fit, I downloaded SCARM to create some layouts. It didn’t have any Lionel RTP tracks in the library, so I submitted the standard measurements to the software author and they’re now included in version 1.8.0 and above.
I settled on this layout:
You can see I in the lower left of this schematic (and the picture above) that there’s a maple tree that prevents me from making a regular 12’x20′ rectangle – so I inverted that corner and included it in my layout design for reference. I used that constraint to make the layout like a right-triangle, with a switching yard in the extra space.
The tracks don’t fully connect in this schematic – because I’m using several 3D printed track sections to fill the gaps which aren’t (yet) part of the SCARM library.
I kept the entire center area open to build a scale off-highway vehicle recreation area. The plan will be to keep that area flexible (not permanent), and have it be mostly rocks and hills to traverse up and down.
Costs
I want to be clear about the costs along the way with this project. Garden railroads are never cheap, and mine is likely no exception, but I’d like to think it will be cheap and cheerful compared to the many others out there. I’ll be sure to include the cost of materials at the end of every post that is part of this project.
(2) Vita 4’x4’x11″ Vinyl Garden Beds from Costco – $150
I took a road trip earlier this year in my new Chevy Bolt. While it’s not a study, I hope you’ll find my personal story and anecdotal evidence compelling.
TL;DR? I drove from Minneapolis to Chicago and back, and it cost me $45.90 in energy for the whole trip.
Before I went on my first EV road trip, I needed to know where to stop, as there aren’t fast charging stations on every corner like gas stations. The best resource for finding charging stations across all of the different networks is plugshare.com.
All of the other fast charging stations we used were Electrify America. I don’t want to make this an Electrify America commercial – but they seem to have a pretty darn good DC fast charging network:
EA Network May 2021
Probably second only to the Tesla Supercharger network:
Tesla Supercharger Network May 2021
An aside about Electrify America – it’s a Volkswagen company created in the wake of their diesel scandal.
Charge Speed
I’ve seen some complaints that the only reason they’re not buying a Chevy Bolt specifically is because of the charge rate. I could see this argument as valid if you’re consistently doing cross-country road trips. But for a 400-mile (each way) road trip, this car is great.
The Bolt will fast charge at around 53kw – a far cry from the hundreds of kilowatts the Teslas will slurp up, but it’s no slouch. On our trip we left in the morning and our first charge was at lunch time. After an hour lunch it charged from 25% to over 90% – good to go for another 200+ miles.
It’s sort of topsy turvy to think about charging in terms of miles per hour – the charger is stationary 🤓 But Level 1 & 2 and DC fast chargers can all pump X amount of miles back into your EV in an hour.
At 53kw when you’re at the bottom of the tank it will fill about 28 miles every 10 minutes. That comes out to 168MPH, but that’s not the full story. Charging will slow in all EVs as they approach the top of the tank so to speak. Full charge rate usually starts dropping off somewhere between 66-80% charge level. Around 66% when the charge rate is between 30-40kwh, the Bolt added 18 miles in 10 minutes (108MPH).
At our second stop we just needed to “top up” to get to the final destination. Topping up is a bit of a misnomer. EV lithium batteries take the fastest charge when they’re below 50%. So it’s best to use the middle range of the battery and not get hung up on getting it to 100%. The very end of the charge takes longer because all of the battery cells need to reach their maximum voltage together without going over 🔋🔥
Hotel & Return Trip
I found a hotel on plugshare.com that had a level 2 (240 volt) charger. The $5 was a single-use fee that the hotel charged to activate the charger. You could probably find a hotel that includes it for free, but it wasn’t a big deal. I paid the $5 and charged up to 100% which covered all my in-town trips, plus enough power leftover to get to Madison on the way out of town.
On our way home during the last charge, the Bolt went from %18 to 60% in 35 minutes. It brought the range back up to 160 miles – more than enough to get home from Eau Claire to Minneapolis with energy to spare.
What do you do while you’re waiting?
One thing I didn’t expect to do was talk to curious people noticing me plugging the monster cable into a little hatchback. One guy who just bought an EV chatted me up while he was going around town to get familiar with his neighborhood charging stations.
Another guy wanted to know what we did while it charged. Well, I had a conversation with him – how meta. We told him about the new Ford F-150 Lightning as he needs a truck for his farm.
If no one else is around and it’s not mealtime, we both brought books. I honestly didn’t get more than a chapter in between the bathroom breaks, the conversations, and snack time 📕🍫
Then it happened again, and again, and again. I found myself having to use my phone to record the remainder of the ride. That is, if I even noticed that my fitbit had conked out.
I could be riding outside in perfectly clear weather and then BAM, I’d get the dreaded “Cannot establish a GPS Connection. Turning GPS off” message 😡 WTF? No option to retry or anything. My fitbit would say “we’re done here” and give up. Very frustrating.
I opened a support chat with Fitbit to see what’s up. They had me go through the usual paces of making sure it had a full charge, disabling/removing unnecessary apps, make sure the firmware was updated, double-checking the GPS settings. Then they put a “watch” on my account to see what the tracker was logging.
Charge 4 RMA
They saw the same problems I was having, and then they told me to send my unit in for a replacement. Curiously they didn’t tell me what they were doing – presumably they knew what the problem was and they had a newer hardware version of the Charge 4 that would remedy the problem. But I can’t tell what has changed since there’s no indication of hardware version without opening it up to look at the circuit board.
I did some testing and noticed a new behavior when doing activities that use GPS. When you go into a building, or tunnel, or someplace where GPS signal is lost, it doesn’t turn the GPS off, it starts looking for a signal – indicated by a dim arrow icon in the upper left.
To confirm that it’s truly fixed, I went to my piano lesson (which is in a basement) and left the GPS running the whole time – 30 minutes indoors. It never turned the GPS off and I was able to record my full ride home.
I wouldn’t recommend doing this normally – searching for GPS signal is likely a very power hungry operation. If you’re stopping somewhere, best to hit the pause button and then resume when you leave.
Get it replaced
I’m not the only one having this issue, as indicated by this thread in the Fitbit community forum. If you have one of these, you should contact support to get it replaced. With the issue fixed, it’s great and I no longer worry about losing my riding log.
My wife bought a pontoon this summer and while I’m not an avid angler, it has given us more opportunities to go fishing. If you’re out on the lake, why not drop a line in? 🎣
I’m normally one of those guys that buys the waterproof lake map to keep in the boat:
These Minnesota-made lakemaps are no longer produced and considered “vintage” – but you can still get them at bait shops around the state. What about something a little more high tech, but not too expensive? I went to eBay looking for an old multi-mode Garmin GPS and got a nüvi 500 that has modes for driving, hiking, biking and boating.
Knowing that it was pretty easy to load Open Street Maps onto my handheld Garmin eTrex Vista HCx, I assumed I could do the same thing with the nüvi 500… Yes and no. You can do it, but it’s not easy.
Sea vs. Lake
The first thing to understand is commercial and free maps such as Garmin Bluechart and Open Sea Map are for ocean-going. The only lakes they cover are the Great Lakes and some very popular inland waters, such as the Boundary Waters. Loading those maps will allow the nuvi to switch to “Boat Mode” (you must have a nautical map loaded to switch), but they won’t have any info about your local lake. Also, the older Garmin Inland Lakes maps that used to work for this unit is no longer available. Planned obsolescence is an art, not a science 😩
Boat Mode
I found Jeff Jahr’s boatmode.img file which is an empty map with the nautical flag set that allows me to choose “Boating” as the mode. The file needs to be renamed to gmapsupp.img and placed in a garmin folder either on a microSD card (inserted near the battery) or on the device’s internal memory.
But you can really only have one or two gmapsupp.img files on the device (one in internal memory and one on the SD card). How can I add more map data? It turns out these img files act as containers and can contain many maps 💪 Here’s how I put them together
The Process
To put these together I used a Windows computer. All of the software shown here is available for MacOS as well. It is probably possible in Linux, but I don’t (yet) know how to do the GPX to IMG conversion. If you have Linux tips, share them in the comments.
Download Lake Contours
I get the lake depth contours from the MN DNR “Lake Finder” – just search for the lake you frequent and click the “Google Earth / KML” link in the sidebar.
That will download a lake.kml file. I always rename them to lake-name.kml (lake-minnetonka.kml in this case) and put them in a folder with the lake name, because we’ll be repeating this process and adding more files later.
Convert KML to GPX
Use Garmin’s free BaseCamp program to import the KML data into “My Collection.” With BaseCamp installed and started, drag and drop the lake kml file into the “My Collection” folder in BaseCamp.
I like to use BaseCamp because it keeps the contour depth labels when converting to GPX. The downside is it wants to copy those GPX files to your GPS device, so you need to have your GPS plugged in during the conversion.
Select your imported KML lake under “My Collection”, right-click and select “Send To…”
Choose your GPS’s memory card “User Data” folder and the conversion will start. There will be a progress bar under “User Data” while it’s working.
All of the lake depth GPX files will be on your GPS’s memory card in the Garmin -> GPX folder. I move those files back into the lake folder I created earlier for my KML file.
Alternative:
gpsbabel is a cross platform (Windows/MacOS/Linux) program to convert the KML files to GPX, but I couldn’t figure out how to retain the track labels (5ft, 10ft, 15ft, etc.) during conversion. If you know how, let me know in the comments!
Create IMG from GPX
I installed IMGfromGPX (Windows & MacOS only) to turn the lake contour tracks into a map. With IMGfromGPX started, drag the GPX files created by BaseCamp from your lake folder into the main IMGfromGPX window:
I set the Map ID to the last 4 or 5 digits of the Lake ID on the MN DNR site – just in case they need to be unique. Set the computer/device names to the lake name – that name is what shows up in the “Map Info” screen on your Garmin. For TYP file select “Thin.typ” to keep the contour lines thin. I don’t mess with track color since the default has been fine.
Check “Include creation of gmapsupp.img file” and then push the “Create map” button. It will prompt where to save your data – choose your lake folder. Ignore any prompts to run registry files – we’re not using these maps with MapSource or other mapping software on the computer.
Linux Only:
I think that mkgmap can turn GPX files into a Garmin IMG file. If you know how to do it, let me know in the comments.
Combine multiple IMG files
Repeat these steps for whatever lakes you frequent:
Download Lake Contours
Convert KML to GPX
Create IMG from GPX
Once you’ve got a few, we’ll combine them into one IMG file map using mkgmap. To install mkgmap, I unzipped the mkgmap folder in C:\Program Files\mkgmap-r4807. If you installed yours in a different place, your command for combining them will look a little different – just replace C:\Program Files\mkgmap-r4807\mkgmap.jar with the path to where you installed it.
Since my individual lake folders were all in my Documents\Garmin\Lake KML folder, my command to combine them looked like this:
Once they’re combined, you can copy the master gmapsupp.img file to the garmin folder on your microSD card, or directly to the garmin folder on your GPS’s internal memory. When you restart it, you should now have contour lines on the lakes you added:
Conclusion
Yes this process is a bit tedious, but it might give life to an old device that would otherwise get tossed out. I’m not sure if I’ll stick with this unit or not. It’s got some other quirks too – I immediately noticed the clock was wrong as part of some bizarro Y2K for GPSes problem that happened in April 2019.
If I try something different, I’ll probably get a Navionics subscription next summer @ $15/year and use my phone. But if I do ditch this GPS, hopefully this information will be useful for the next owner ♻️
That’s a click-baity title. But seriously I bought a Chevy Bolt without ever driving one. However, I had ridden in one and it seemed perfectly fine. It also met all of my criteria:
Is it all-electric? Yes ✅
Does it have a good range? Yes ✅
Does it look like a normal car? Yes ✅
Great! I’m sure whatever other quirks it has I can get used to. Even with an open battery recall, I think it’s a fantastic car.
I got a great deal on a new 2021 Bolt from an out-state dealer, and they just dropped it off at my house. My first “test drive” was picking my daughter up at school. After driving it for a couple of months I’ve gotten used to it. The number of settings that you can configure is rather daunting, so I put this reference together 😎
You can get to these options by going to the Settings icon from the all-icons menu.
Rear seat reminder: off. This is probably useful if you’re traveling with small kids or pets.
Radio settings
Auto volume: medium-low. This setting seemed the most natural to me where I didn’t notice the volume actively going up and down with the vehicle speed.
Vehicle settings
Remote lock / unlock / start
Passive lock / unlock: on
At first I wasn’t sure if I liked this setting. Mostly because my alarm was blaring when I was trying to get in the car. Later I realized it was from unplugging the charge cord before unlocking the vehicle (see charge cord theft alert below).
I’ve since gotten used to keeping the key fob in my pocket and pressing the door handle button to unlock the car.
The car locking on it’s own after I get out is mostly convenient, but sometimes the car locks while I’m getting out and walking to the other side to get something out of the back seat. No worries, just press the unlock button on the passenger side.
Energy Settings
Energy settings are always accessible at the bottom of the screen. Energy settings are kind of weird. You may want to turn location based charging on while you’re parked at home. Once your home location is set you can have separate options for home and away. To configure the away options, you’ll want to set them while you’re away from your home.
Charging options
Location based charging: on
Charge cord theft alert: off. I turned this off in case I’m at a charging station and someone else needs to charge. Otherwise the alarm will honk when you unplug it before the car is unlocked.
Charging
Home
Make these settings changes after you’ve set the home location, and while you’re there.
Charge mode: Departure
Portable cord limit: 12 Amps. Setting this to 12 Amps will only save if location-based charging is on. Make sure you’re on a 20-amp circuit or on a 15-amp circuit with no other loads.
Target charge level: 80% (the recall letter I received suggests 90%)
Away
Charge mode: Immediate
Target charge level: 100% (this is currently not recommended until the battery recall has been performed).
Verdict
This car is great. Even with the battery recall I would still buy one. Heck now would be a great time to buy a used Bolt (privately) because it’s going to get a brand new battery with a 100k mile warranty.
Several people on the r/BoltEV subreddit complain about the GM experience. Sure the dealerships aren’t as clean or well lit as the others, but does that matter? I bought my car over the phone because I don’t like going into any dealerships – no matter how nice they are 😱 My sales guy was great, I knew what I was getting in to, and he helped me get the best deal possible.
I’ve taken several road trips (post upcoming) and it’s been a pleasure to drive. Cheap and cheerful, would recommend.
Whenever I had the Dells I would tell my wife: “Remind me to get a ThinkPad next time.” I wish I listened to my own advice. They’re well thought out – ThinkPads just get a little more love when it comes to design and build. While they’re not without fault, they are generally better than your average laptop.
The Dell laptops I’ve owned have felt cheap and both have gone in for repairs. The good news is, Dell support is pretty good about fixing things. But I wish I didn’t have to send them in for repairs. Sidenote: my old ThinkPads have made for excellent loaners during repair periods. Dell really should be cheap and cheerful, but the whole experience leaves me feeling a bit “meh.”
The latest issue on my 2019 XPS 13 is that the keyboard appeared to be getting out of whack. I noticed the control and function keys were sitting at different angles.
Then I realized: my battery is puffed. I confirmed it when the lid wouldn’t close fully.
After reflecting on the situation, I realized my laptop has spent the better part of 1.5 years (since COVID started) operating on AC power. Normally on my ThinkPad I’d use TLP to keep my normal battery charge at around 60-80%. But those features aren’t available on my XPS:
$ sudo tlp-stat
...
+++ Battery Features: Charge Thresholds and Recalibrate
natacpi = inactive (laptop not supported)
tpacpi-bat = inactive (laptop not supported)
tp-smapi = inactive (laptop not supported)
...
Other TLP features (like disabling wifi when plugged into the wired network) do work on my XPS, so I leave it installed & enabled. For battery management, you must use Dell’s own Command Configure tool: cctk
A coworker gave a lunch and learn about mechanical keyboards. I should have known it would be an entrance to a black hole… it all started 25 years ago with my beloved Zeos Keyboard with Alps keygates – which I consequently wrecked after spilling a beer into it 🍺 Then onto my HHKB Lite2 which I still have but need a host of adapters to connect its PS/2 connector.
Now I’m entering the modern mechanical era with a Keychron K6 – a 65% keyboard that closely resembles my HHKB layout. It has Gateron Blue (light and clicky) switches that remind me of my famed Zeos board. Here’s the original layout:
My first issue is I have a bit of OCD when it comes to pairing. I expect insert/del, home/end, and page up/down to be at least near each other, if not next to each other. So I changed the keycaps in the far right row, around the corner to the FN1/2 keys. I used low(ish) profile DSA keys on this edge to mimic the lower arrow keys from the HHKB. Also I got custom colored beige/blue FN1/FN2 keys to quickly remind me that FN1 is for the gold functions and FN2 is for blue.
Now I needed to change what the swapped keys did when I pressed them…
For our research you’ll probably need to install a couple of things:
sudo apt install evtest evemu-tools
You can use evemu-describe to get information about your keyboard. If you run evemu-describe without any arguments, you’ll be prompted to select the input device. I’ve highlighted my input in bold.
$ sudo evemu-describe
Available devices:
/dev/input/event0: Lid Switch
...
/dev/input/event19: Generic USB Audio
/dev/input/event20: Keychron K6 Keyboard
/dev/input/event21: Keychron K6 Consumer Control
/dev/input/event22: Keychron K6 System Control
/dev/input/event23: BluetoothMouse3600 Mouse
/dev/input/event24: BluetoothMouse3600 Consumer Control
Select the device event number [0-24]: 20
# EVEMU 1.3
# Kernel: 5.11.0-27-generic
# DMI: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.7.0:bd10/22/2020:br1.7:svnDellInc.:pnXPS137390:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0G2D0W:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:
# Input device name: "Keychron K6 Keyboard"
# Input device ID: bus 0x05 vendor 0x5ac product 0x24f version 0x11b
# Supported events:
# Event type 0 (EV_SYN)
# Event code 0 (SYN_REPORT)
...
# Event code 15 (SYN_MAX)
# Event type 1 (EV_KEY)
# Event code 1 (KEY_ESC)
...
# Properties:
N: Keychron K6 Keyboard
I: 0005 05ac 024f 011b
...
Take note of the properties line towards the bottom: I: 0005 05ac 024f 011b It is the Bus/Product/Vendor/Version identifier that we’ll use that to identify the keyboard in our hardware DB file.
Gather Keycode & Scancode Information
Along with the Bus/Product/Vendor/Version identifier, you’ll need scancodes and keycodes for our configuration file.
The keys I wanted to replace on the far right are:
Home -> Grave/Tilde
Page Up -> Insert
Page Down -> Delete
To get scancodes, run sudo evtest and select the input device you want to test (same as above), and then press the keys you want to switch out.
$ sudo evtest
No device specified, trying to scan all of /dev/input/event*
Available devices:
/dev/input/event0: Lid Switch
...
/dev/input/event19: Generic USB Audio
/dev/input/event20: Keychron K6 Keyboard
/dev/input/event21: Keychron K6 Consumer Control
/dev/input/event22: Keychron K6 System Control
/dev/input/event23: BluetoothMouse3600 Mouse
/dev/input/event24: BluetoothMouse3600 Consumer Control
Select the device event number [0-24]: 20
Input driver version is 1.0.1
Input device ID: bus 0x5 vendor 0x5ac product 0x24f version 0x11b
Input device name: "Keychron K6 Keyboard"
Supported events:
Event type 0 (EV_SYN)
Event type 1 (EV_KEY)
Event code 1 (KEY_ESC)
...
Testing ... (interrupt to exit)
Event: time 1629497486.881450, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 70028
Event: time 1629497486.881450, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 28 (KEY_ENTER), value 0
Event: time 1629497486.881450, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1629497489.406440, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 7004a
Event: time 1629497489.406440, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 102 (KEY_HOME), value 1
Event: time 1629497489.406440, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
For example, the scancode for the HOME key is 7004a. The keycodes are printed in all caps, such as KEY_HOME. You can also look up keycodes here, or if you’re trying to add a new key that isn’t on your keyboard, you can find all keycodes in /usr/include/linux/input-event-codes.h
We’re going to put this all into a hardware DB file. The filename is arbitrary, as long as it has a .hwdb extension. I put a number at the beginning because config files like this are loaded in filename order. If something should load before or after, it can use a lower/higher number (respectively).
sudo vi /etc/udev/hwdb.d/50-k6keyboard-bt.hwdb
# Input device ID: bus 0x5 vendor 0x5ac product 0x24f version 0x11b
# evdev:input:b<bus_id>v<vendor_id>p<product_id>e<version_id>-<modalias>
evdev:input:b0005v05ACp024F*
KEYBOARD_KEY_7004a=grave
KEYBOARD_KEY_7004b=delete
KEYBOARD_KEY_7004e=insert
The first command (systemd-hwdb update) reads the hwdb files and rebuilds the binary hardware database from the text files. The second (udevadm trigger) tells udev to (re)scan hardware for matches. The last (udevadm info) helps verify that the configuration – remember to replace event20 with your device ID.
You can see in the output that my KEYBOARD_KEY entries are there and they do indeed work 💪 It will also be there after you reboot.
My next step will be adding home/end and page up/down modifiers to my arrow keys…
They are powered by batteries instead of power through the track, and have individual RC remotes. They’re more toy grade than true model trains – cemented by the fact that you can’t order additional rolling stock for these sets. But there are opportunities for modding them and other G-scale trains through 
