Keep Bluetooth keyboard alive?

1st Official Post

    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,

    • 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 :)

    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