Bluetooth HID
Contents |
Keyboards
Nokia SU-8W
Of course Nokia's own Bluetooth keyboard plays with Maemo very well, but in some cases, as in Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR) language, some accents don't work. There's a workaround in [1].
The Apple Bluetooth Keyboard
Apple's keyboard works out of the box if you set the keyboard type to "Generic 105-key PC" and the layout to "English (USA)".
An extensive discussion about customizing this keyboard for Maemo (adding page-up/page-down, lots more keys and functionality, etc.) may be found here. Much of this information is applicable to other keyboards as well, particularly discussion about xmodmap.
Cygnet ("Smart") Keyboards
A large number of Cygnet Bluetooth keyboards are currently showing up around eBay for very reasonable prices. The good news is that they are indeed Maemo-compatible. The bad news is that they're not HID keyboards, they're serial keyboards, which means that setting them up is currently a little more work. (We're working on making this easier).
There are two types of Cygnet keyboard, both rebranded Chainpus ("Smart") keyboards:
- The keyboard currently advertised on the Cygnet website is a rebranded BK-600, a nice clamshell serial keyboard. The key travel is a bit squidgy, but altogether it feels like a very well-put-together unit.
- There is also another keyboard being sold, branded as Cygnet - it's the BK-300 (currently only available on the Chainpus home page). I got one by mistake - they're gratifyingly thin and tiny, but I didn't like the equally tiny calculator-style buttons, and exchanged mine. It claims to be HID-compatible, so you shouldn't have any problems.
The BK-600 is supported by kbdd (source code), the serial-port keyboard daemon, using the "smartbt" driver. You will need a version of kbdd built for Maemo, and the uinput.ko kernel module. Binaries of both of these for Maemo v1.1 are available at http://fanoush.webpark.cz/maemo/
Both he and I have also succeeded in building them for v2.0, and a similar binary tarball should be posted on that website by the time you read this. Failing which, email the site maintainer, as he is known to have a working version with some extra patches.
Installing Non-HID Bluetooth Keyboards
Keyboards such as the HP iPAQ Bluetooth Foldable or the Freedom Keyboard will need the kbdd driver for the 770, N800, and N810. (original source here).
Maemo Devices
N800 and N810 devices have Bluetooth HID out of the box.
The N900 does not officially support Bluetooth HID. However, you can enable Bluetooth keyboards with some hacking: see Fremantle Bluetooth Keyboard Layout. cell phone number lookup