How do you get the keyboard into pair mode? Does it actually have bluetooth? Didn’t see any mention of this in the quickstart guide.
The keyboard does not support bluetooth, it is wired only.
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Long before the Kickstarter, we’d been looking at doing Bluetooth, but we ended up deciding that it didn’t make sense for our first product. Between the huge batteries we’d need to support the LEDs and the added complexity, it’s something we elected to save for a future product.
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This all adds up. Thanks.
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I would love to see a true wireless “Model 02” or similar in the future, but I’ll admit, it would be annoying to have to charge both sides.
Is there a product somewhere that has USB on one side and Bluetooth on the other for keyboards? I tried looking, but my Google Fu was insufficient to the task once again. I know there are similar things for audio in both directions, and, naively, it doesn’t seem that different.
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The problem seems like it would be power - the Model 01 gets its power from the computer it’s attached to. It’s unclear how it would get power if you don’t plug it in to anything.
There are such things. We haven’t tested one with the Model 01. You might need to hack up the firmware to disable the LEDs and only request 100mA instead of 500mA.
http://handheldsci.com/kb is one
https://www.amazon.com/Nulaxy-Wired-Keyboard-Bluetooth-Adapter/dp/B00T5YXNL0 was one
https://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-Bluetooth-Desktop-Devices-GKMB01/dp/B00CA7ST22/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 was another. That one got sold under a bunch of brand names.
Convert Any USB Keyboard to Bluetooth with a DIY Adapter | Lifehacker is a homebrew one.
We haven’t tested any of these and can’t endorse em. If you do, please tell us.
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I too have unsuccessfully searched for such a device. Even if it did exist, there are a few problems. First, as mentioned by others, it would need a large battery and a charging port. Second, Bluetooth is not designed to tunnel USB - the BT HID spec is much less featureful than USB and even if a vanilla USB keyboard could be converted, the model01 would probably be missing some or all functionality.
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In theory, I think that BT should cover our keyboard, mouse and ‘absolute mouse’ functionality.
One other solution for the Model 01 is to add a battery and a bluetooth module in the left hand side of the keyboard and hack up the firmware to deliver events to it over a simple serial protocol. (Be careful when hooking up a battery to the Model 01. It’s possible to toast the electronics if you do it wrong)
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It’s been a while, has anybody successfully tried a usb-to-bluetooth adapter on their Model01?
This is Alan from handheldsci.com. We are the maker of the Bluetooth Adapter for keyboard and mouse, the little dongle that converts a USB keyboard or mouse to a Bluetooth one. Our adapter works with most keyboards, including mechanical ones. See this page for the list: http://handheldsci.com/comp. As you can see Model 01 from keyboard.io is one of the very few we are still working on. Once we get it to work I will post update here.
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Alan,
What issues are you running into with the Model 01, other than the LED power draw? We’d be thrilled to help out.
Hi Jesse,
Here is the question: is it possible to switch the keyboard to use the boot protocol instead of report protocol (without re-flashing a new firmware)? Most keyboards default to use the boot protocol. There are a few exceptions but those can all be switched using the “set protocol” call. However, this doesn’t seem to work with your keyboard. Our Bluetooth Adapter does not have the resource to parse the complete report descriptors which can be very complex. So we rely on using the boot protocol with the fixed simple report format.
We will be exhibiting at CES 2019 with most high end mechanical keyboards. We really want to include this one since it is unique and interesting. We can talk more offline (email to support at handheldsci dot com).
Best Regards,
Alan
Can you try coming up to the 1.93 firmware? The boot protocol support in the factory firmware was nowhere near done.
Got it. Will try that.
Did the updated firmware work with the bluetooth adapter?
So, in case anyone else is interested: I ordered one of the handheldsci adapters. The vendor said it worked with the stock firmware and cautioned me they had not tested more recent ones.
My Model-01 had a locally built but otherwise unmodified 1.22, which did not work with the adapter. I built 1.94.0-beta (File>Examples>Model01-Firmware) and uploaded it to the keyboard. A few quick tests suggest that this works just fine.
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Thanks for the heads-up. I created a video to show the Bluetooth Adapter working with Model 01 with stock firmware: https://youtu.be/7e-p36ixa94
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I really appreciate Bluetooth not being a feature. I work in security and knowing I don’t have to worry about bt as an attack vector is really nice.