Eleksen ElekTek Fabric Keyboard
 

I just picked up an Eleksen ElekTek Bluetooth Fabric Keyboard. Using kbdd I can connect and pair the device but of course there is no mapping file (keyboard type). Has anyone out there created a map for this neat little keyboard? Or another serial SPP Bluetooth driver/application?

And before you start I already know the disadvantages of a fabric keyboard but for $20 it was too good to not try.

Getting back to kbdd, I am willing to do the work if I can get a bit of information. I have downloaded the source code and it seems pretty straight forward. What cross compiler does everyone recommend? I have Windows XP, Ubuntu 8 and Mac OS9. This may be my opportunity to get started in developing for the Nokia platform.

Matt Howe
I own a PC with Windows XP,
a PC with Ubuntu 8,
a Mac with OS9,
a Nokia N770,
a Apple Newton 2100 and
a hacked Nintendo DS.
Imagine my confusion!

Re: Eleksen ElekTek Fabric Keyboard
 

Hey, I myself have one of those keyboards and I am in the same boat. I thought I had it worked out but to no avail. Let me know if you end up getting it to work. Thanks.

Re: Eleksen ElekTek Fabric Keyboard
 

Good timing ... I don't have a keyboard, but I'm interested in getting it to work with an N800 - before I buy one.

No offense intended, but have you tried to look at the data output by the keyboard?

If you use a terminal emulator or protocol analyzer and connect to the virtual serial port created for the BT SPP, then you can monitor the incoming data for each key that is pressed. Have you tried this?

There may be an encryption layer, and there is almost certainly a bidirectional protocol to support some of the keyboard setup features.

If you are willing to capture some data, I'll be happy to figure out the key codes and share the results.

Re: Eleksen ElekTek Fabric Keyboard
 

Hard to guess but it may be that there is no bidirectional protocol. If keyboard sends analog data (coordinates and pressure) then rest can be done in driver. Looks like there are no real keys inside so maybe it works like touchscreen (i.e. you won't get real keycodes from the keyboard). Still it should be relatively easy to figure out the protocol and write the driver.

Re: Eleksen ElekTek Fabric Keyboard
 

What are the disadvantages? How does it feel? How usable it is? Except the missing driver issue of course ;-)

Well the maemo SDK inside scratchbox inside vmware is perhaps the easiest environment for full development. For quick and dirty things you can use almost any arm gcc toolchain that produce EABI binaries. Maemo uses 3.4.4cs2005q3.2 from Codesourcery.

BTW current kbdd has debug option which prints all received data. Also once keyboard is configured something like 'od -x /dev/rfcomm0' works too. Or even hyperterminal in windows can work too.

Re: Eleksen ElekTek Fabric Keyboard
 

All of this is way over my head but I will be really interested to see where this goes in the hands of someone a lot more knowledgeable than me.

Re: Eleksen ElekTek Fabric Keyboard
 

I searched my mailbox for kbdd related mails and found that someone already wrote support for this keyboard some time ago and sent me modified kbdd code and I forgot about it completely since then. I'll make proper diff and update kbdd binary with elektex support ASAP. Also I add source diff to my page

Looks like this keyboard sends real keycodes after all so it is not as dumb as I thought :-( This is unfortunate since having raw coordinates would allow us to change the layout and/or make additional buttons and do something fancy with pressure data too. Also it means that the calibration is unfortunately not supported since it indeed needs some bidirectional communication which is impossible to determine without sniffing real communication done via official driver.

Hmm, I wonder why they cared with implementing translation/calibration layer in the keyboard directly and still went with SPP profile and custom driver. Having the device to just passively send coordinates and leave rest to the driver would be IMO cheaper and simpler. Bluetooth SPP profile allows passive devices with one way communication to save costs.

Re: Eleksen ElekTek Fabric Keyboard
 

That's great thanks a lot.

Re: Eleksen ElekTek Fabric Keyboard
 

OK, http://fanoush.wz.cz/maemo/#kbdd is updated with suppport for Elektex keyboard. There are two kbdd keyboard types - 'elektex' and 'elektex_unmapped'. Elektex code was written by Jeffrey Mark Siskind.

Let me know how it works.

Re: Eleksen ElekTek Fabric Keyboard
 

I seem to be having a bit of a problem, everytime I get to the point where I am going to run ./btkbd I get the message "permission denied". Now, I am using becomeroot and then running sudo gainroot to become root to be root. I even ran "whoami" and it came back saying root. Anyways, am I doing something worng?