Bluetooth kbd paired and trusted, but message "No bluetooth keyboards avialable"

[Moonbase59]

Hi, thanks for this project!

I’m trying to use this on my Pocketbook Era (PB700), firmware U700.6.8.4183, and a "Lab31" Bluetooth keyboard bought from the "Action" retail chain.

This PB firmware also allows to pair via the Bluetooth menu, but for safety’s sake I used bluetoothctl to set it as default device, paired and trusted it.

/mnt/secure/su works fine, your app enables/disables bluetooth on start/stop (nice touch!) but complains No bluetooth keyboards avialable (note the typo).

The keyboard has iOS, Android and Windows mode, I used the Windows mode (as I do with Linux devices, keyboard works fine). It has a German layout, and I copied de.keys to system/config/textEditor/map.keys.

What could be the issue here?

Note I’m currently unable to recompile it or set up a build environment here.

[JuanJakobo]

Hi, unfortunately my Pocketbook does not work anymore. Therefore I cannot reproduce the issue. The app gets the input devices from "/proc/bus/input/devices" (https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-Texteditor/blob/6e8935368ac14b230c69898391e54c83b0fa11aa/src/handler/eventHandler.cpp#L216C1-L216C57). When you use a terminal at the device, what content does this file have?
There is an docker build env available https://github.com/JuanJakobo/Pocketbook-dev-docker. Maybe that helps :)

[Moonbase59]

Thanks for coming back! Meanwhile, I have tried with two different Bluetooth keyboards, an Action "Lab 31 - Keyboard" and a Pearl "ZX-3562". Both show the same error, both can be paired.

I did a cat /proc/bus/input/devices when each was paired, and enclose the output. In short, here is what the two keyboards show:

The Lab31 - Keyboard:

I: Bus=0005 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000
N: Name="Lab31 - Keyboard"
P: Phys=88:6F:29:14:75:9F
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/misc/uhid/input6
U: Uniq=FF:FF:11:AD:CA:C3
H: Handlers=sysrq kbd event6 
B: PROP=0
B: EV=12001f
B: KEY=3007f 0 0 0 0 483ffff 17aff32d bf544446 0 0 1 130f93 8b17c007 ffff7bfa d9415fff febeffdf ffefffff ffffffff fffffffe
B: REL=40
B: ABS=1 0
B: MSC=10
B: LED=1f

The ZX-3562:

I: Bus=0005 Vendor=3554 Product=f605 Version=0800
N: Name="ZX-3562"
P: Phys=88:6F:29:14:75:9F
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/misc/uhid/input7
U: Uniq=E7:92:0C:EB:6F:98
H: Handlers=sysrq kbd event6 
B: PROP=0
B: EV=12001f
B: KEY=3007f 0 0 0 0 483ffff 17aff32d bf544446 0 0 1 130f93 8b17c007 ffff7bfa d9415fff febeffdf ffefffff ffffffff fffffffe
B: REL=40
B: ABS=1 0
B: MSC=10
B: LED=1f

Hope you can make something out of it. Thanks for investigating, and sorry your Pocketbook broke.

proc-bus-input-devices-Lab31.txt
proc-bus-input-devices-ZX-3562.txt

At a quick glance, I see two problems:

1. Here you assume the event number can only be 1 digit.
2. Here temp.eventID gets checked if > 6. Unfortunately, on my device, event6 wants to handle both keyboards. I wonder if there would be a better way to check if the device is an external keyboard than hardcoding event handler numbers?

Thinking out loud, couldn’t we, for instance, check if a device has

• "kbd" in the "H:" "Handlers=" field, and
• the "B:" bitmap field "EV=", and
• the "minimum typical bits for a keyboard" (120013) set (mine have 12001f, so just more LEDs, and would check okay on a bitwise AND), and then
• take whatever event handler the system suggests?

This would of course have to be tested on many devices, I fear.

A quick cross-check on my Thinkpad confirms the theory:

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0001 Product=0001 Version=ab83
N: Name="AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio0/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input3
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=sysrq kbd leds event3 
B: PROP=0
B: EV=120013
B: KEY=402000002 3803078f800d001 feffffdfffefffff fffffffffffffffe
B: MSC=10
B: LED=7

[JuanJakobo]

Hi,
thanks for having a look. Thats seems to be the issue. As mentioned an build env is available via docker and it should be pretty straight forward to build it yourself. I happly accept pull requests for this issue. If you require help setting up the build env, please give me a note and I will try to help.

[klapacz]

Hi!

I was able to make it work with a PocketBook Era 700. The code is available in my fork. I won’t create a PR because it was generated by an LLM, and I’m not sure about the code quality.

Also, I’ve added a Nix flake for easy building on Nix. Just run nix build.