Arduino Keyboard starts lower case (but it shouldn't)

Question

So I flashed the KeyboardMessage example to my Arduino SS Micro ATmega32U4.

When I open an editor and push the button, I would assume the output to be

Zou pressed the button XX times.

(The "Z" is because I use a German keyboard)

In some editors (Arduino IDE, LibreOffice) this assumption is fulfilled.

However, in several other editors (Linux Shell, gedit), most of the times the output is

zou pressed the button 1 times.

starting with a lower case "z".

I use a Debian Testing computer. The only thing I changed in the sketch was the buttonPin as my button is soldered to pin 11.

I noticed, that this problem doesn't occur when the button is pressed a second time shortly after the first message. To investigate this, I coded a little sketch to find the threshold.

This is what I got (in gedit)

As line 8 shows, even after 70 millis, the upper case start is not reliable, however, somewhere after 250 millis, the error occurs every time.

My questions are:

1. What could be the cause for this issue?
2. How can it be fixed (if necessary, I also welcome a workaround)?

Please tell me if you need any additional information.

[edit] After slightly altering the script, I noticed, that the problem doesn't only occur on the start of a line, but also (although less often) later in the output. See lines 24, 31 and 52 for example

Answer 1

I am not sure I have the answer to your problem, just a collection of observations that hopefully steer you in the right direction.

According to your nopaste link, when you send "ON", the first four keyboard events received by xev are: press(Shift_L), press(O), release(Shift_L), release(o). One may notice that there is no point in releasing the Shift key if it's going to be pressed again right away, but let's assume that simply holding Shift is not such a useful optimization. The detail that strikes me is that the last two events look backwards: you usually release the letter before releasing Shift. As a result of releasing Shift first, the release event for the O key reports lowercase "o" as a keysym. I tried this backward way of releasing the keys on a real keyboard, but both gnome-terminal and gedit correctly registered the uppercase letters.

Another detail apparent in the xev dump is that the two key presses (Shit and O) happen at the exact same time. Ditto for the corresponding key releases. Looking at the source of the Keyboard library, it appears that both key presses are sent to the PC as a single "key report". Same for the key releases. This is contrary to what a real keyboard does: actuations on the Shift keys are reported immediately, irrespective of whether other keys are actuated.

You may try to modify the Keyboard library so that the actuations on Shift are sent in their own reports. Maybe something like this (warning: completely untested):

diff --git a/src/Keyboard.cpp b/src/Keyboard.cpp
index 4a948f6..9fbf7b6 100644
--- a/src/Keyboard.cpp
+++ b/src/Keyboard.cpp
@@ -239,6 +239,7 @@ size_t Keyboard_::press(uint8_t k)
        }
        if (k & 0x80) {                     // it's a capital letter or other character reached with shift
            _keyReport.modifiers |= 0x02;   // the left shift modifier
+           sendReport(&_keyReport);        // send the shift key by itself
            k &= 0x7F;
        }
    }
@@ -270,6 +271,7 @@ size_t Keyboard_::press(uint8_t k)
 size_t Keyboard_::release(uint8_t k) 
 {
    uint8_t i;
+   bool has_shift = false;
    if (k >= 136) {         // it's a non-printing key (not a modifier)
        k = k - 136;
    } else if (k >= 128) {  // it's a modifier key
@@ -281,7 +283,7 @@ size_t Keyboard_::release(uint8_t k)
            return 0;
        }
        if (k & 0x80) {                         // it's a capital letter or other character reached with shift
-           _keyReport.modifiers &= ~(0x02);    // the left shift modifier
+           has_shift = true;
            k &= 0x7F;
        }
    }
@@ -295,6 +297,10 @@ size_t Keyboard_::release(uint8_t k)
    }
 
    sendReport(&_keyReport);
+   if (has_shift) {
+       _keyReport.modifiers &= ~(0x02);    // the left shift modifier
+       sendReport(&_keyReport);            // release shift after releasing the letter
+   }
    return 1;
 }
 

Alternatively, as suggested by @jstola in a comment, you may try to press the Shift key by itself. Maybe you don't need to care about the key release, or about any character but the first one (as it is the only one that seems to cause problems). A minimal workaround to try would be:

Keyboard.press(KEY_LEFT_SHIFT);
Keyboard.println("ON");