Author Topic: Bluetooth Keyboard not usable in menu  (Read 2787 times)

factoid

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Bluetooth Keyboard not usable in menu
« on: October 22, 2017, 11:46:12 PM »
I have a small bluetooth keyboard that is paired directly to my Pi3, not using any sort of bluetooth dongle.  In retrospect I wish I had gotten one that was RF and used a dedicated pre-paired dongle because those are just USB keyboards as far as the hardware it's connected to is concerned.

I have attract mode set up and working pretty much how I want it now.  It's set up to be pretty much 100% operated with a 360 wireless controller, and that works no problem.  But they keyboard simply isn't recognized within the attractmode menu at all.

Nothing I do seems to register a key press. 

Up, Down, Left and Right are all configured in controls as defaults, but the arrow keys on my keyboard do nothing.

If I use my controller to map new controls, no button on my keyboard registers as having been pressed, so it just sits there waiting for me to press a button, as if I hadn't done anything at all.

But as soon as I go into something like retroarch, MAME, the retropie setup menu, my keyboard works just fine there.  I can type, I can map keys in retroarch, etc.  Super weird.

Anyone know how I can get it to work in AttractMode?

I'm going to be cloning this setup for use in a cabinet where the controls are an x-arcade tankstick, which emulates keyboard presses, so I'll need the menu to operate via keyboard eventually.

Otherwise I'm really digging attract mode. The wheels and video snaps, along with the customizeable filters solve the problems inherent with having thousands of ROMs on a system.  You can actually navigate it and find something to play this way.

EDIT:  I just plugged in a wired keyboard and that didn't work at first, but then I rebooted and it was detected and I could use the wired keyboard within attract-mode. So I guess that might imply that I won't have a problem when I get to using a tankstick because that will behave like a wired keyboard.  Still, I'd like to get it working, so if anyone has suggestions on getting a bluetooth keyboard working please let me know.
« Last Edit: October 23, 2017, 06:35:02 AM by factoid »

factoid

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Re: Bluetooth Keyboard not usable in menu
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2017, 10:42:25 AM »
I came up with a workaround that got my keyboard working.

A USB hardwired keyboard works fine if it's connected at startup.

The bluetooth one I noticed worked OK if you restarted attract-mode  without doing a full reboot.  So that made me think that the keyboard needed to be already connected or else attract mode wouldn't look for it.

I figured out that if I mash a few buttons on the keyboard while the pi is booting that AttractMode will recognize it and let me use it.

Still not ideal.  I don't know why it can't detect a keyboard connected after startup, but at least I know I can reboot the device and make it work.

If anyone has any ideas of how to address this long term, let me know.  I'm pretty sure this isn't working as designed, there must be smoething weird in the pdark image causing it.  When I was using a MadLittlePixel image I didn't have trouble turning my bluetooth keyboard on and off at will.

wrybread

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Re: Bluetooth Keyboard not usable in menu
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2024, 03:23:44 PM »
Ancient topic I know, but did you ever happen to find a solution to this? I'm having the same problem.

Thanks for the tip about hitting a key during bootup to force the KB to be recognized before Attract Mode launches. But as you say not ideal.