Keep Bluetooth keyboard alive?

Cubytus · May 17, 2018 at 5:51 AM

Hi there,

I have the latest stable LibreELEC version 8.2.5 running on an RPi 3. I often use it with the iPhone app as a remote, but would rather use the Bluetooth keyboard because I prefer having physical keys. It's a Zoweetek keyboard-trackpad combo.

Problem is, is takes a very long time to wake up from sleep state (about 30 seconds), at least compared to my Apple Magic keyboard (1 to 2 seconds at most). Timeout occurs after 10 mins. Since it doesn't seem to have an adjustable timeout period, I'd like to know if there would be a way for LibreELEC to periodically "ping" the keyboard so as to keep it awake. I don't mind the increased power consumption as it uses rechargeable batteries.

Thanks,

**chewitt** · May 18, 2018 at 4:41 PM Official Post

There's a tool called l2ping that's part of bluez-tools, but we don't compile it into standard LE images. If you did a custom build with that you can ping the device. I'm not sure that will keep the device alive though. I would expect the keyboard to sleep and then the pings will just time out. You probably need to do something that queries information from the device. I'm not sure what that would be though

Cubytus · May 28, 2018 at 8:07 AM

Hm, what kind of information could provide a Bluetooth keyboard? Except a key press? This one doesn't report battery status to the computer like the Mac wireless keyboard