Bluetooth Keyboard And Mouse Use

[icruise]

I've been playing around with a USB optical mouse and USB keyboard with my Zaurus, and while they work pretty well, the wires are a problem. Especially if you want to have them both plugged in at once, you have to add a USB hub into the mix, and things start to get pretty cumbersome.

I never really understood the need for wireless mice and keyboards for desktop machines, but I'm beginning to think that getting a bluetooth keyboard and mouse for my Zaurus might not be such a bad idea. But I have a few questions. First of all, is it even possible for the Zaurus to access two bluetooth peripherals at once? What about using Bluetooth to access my cell phone? Would I be able to all of these at once (my guess is no)?

Second, is there anything I should know when picking out bluetooth accessories like this? I know that it can be a little tricky to find compatible CF cards, but I think I know which work and which don't. I'm not sure whether there are similar compatibility problems with the peripherals themselves, though.

I was thinking of getting the Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard and maybe the Macally Bluetooth Micro Mouse, although I could probably do without a mouse, just using the mouse emulation in keyhelper.

Anyway, is there anyone out there who is regularly using these kinds of accessories who could give me some advice about the possible problems I could run into trying to set this kind of thing up?

[icruise]

I found this Japanese web site where someone is working on getting bluetooth keyboards to work with the Zaurus, and he specifically is using the Stowaway model I mentioned above. Apparently he has it working. He mentioned on another part of his site that he also got a bluetooth mouse to work, but it sounds like he hasn't gotten the mouse and keyboard to work at the same time. Anyway, it sounds encouraging.

[guylhem]

Using the mouse and keyboard reported in the first post. Both work like a charm on the S6L000. You may need my distributions because the keyboard stuff has to be totally remapped (or you can do some ugly hack if you prefer)

[icruise]

So are you able to use both the mouse and keyboard simultaneously? When you say that the keyboard has to be totally remapped, what exactly do you mean? My USB keyboard uses the Japanese (JIS) keyboard map, which means that the letters and numbers are in the correct places, but the punctuation keys are often wrong. But I'm sort of used to using JIS keyboards, so I can deal with it. Is this the same mapping problem you mentioned, or is it more serious?

Could you give me a little more information on how you got them working?

[guylhem]

Hello

Jis is fine, but not even the letters will work unless you remap the zaurus keyboard. It has to be done on the kernel side. It does not requires C knowledge, just good logic.

Try externe.net/zaurus/kernel and look at the Tosa keyboard support.
You have to:
 - remap the keycodes in the kernel to the normal keycodes (ex: 30=A IIRC) used by other keyboards (usb and bluetooth keyboards will send you 30 when you press on A. If it means Z on a zaurus you are toasted :-)
 - recreate a driver.map for the console then a keycode.tbl for qtopia.

The solution that's popular in Japan is to do the remap in the usb or bluetooth part of the kernel, but IHMO it's just moving the problem. Fix it once where it's broken (zaurus internal keyboard keycodes) and you're worry free with every other keyboard (usb, bt, etc) supported by linux.

But if you use a SL6000 just flash my distro and it works out of the box.

Guylhem

[icruise]

Hmm, that's more complicated than I had imagined. I'm using a 3100 with Tetsu's special kernel. Can someone who doesn't know much about Linux get it working? Does it require actually recompiling the kernel?