Linux Lite Forums

Hardware - Support => Other => Topic started by: fernqandoamat on January 05, 2017, 01:22:37 AM

Title: Microsoft Surface Ergonomic Bluetooth Keyboard paired but not working
Post by: fernqandoamat on January 05, 2017, 01:22:37 AM

Hi all,

I have Linux Lite 3.2 64-bit installed in an Intel NUC6i5SYK. Everything worked out of the box great except for one thing: Microsoft Surface Ergonomic Bluetooth Keyboard. Linux lite seems to pair the keyboard correctly as you can see from the output of bluetoothctl info:

[bluetooth]# info F1:8D:75:97:13:1B
Device F1:8D:75:97:13:1B
   Name: Ergonomic Keyboard
   Alias: Ergonomic Keyboard
   Appearance: 0x03c1
   Icon: input-keyboard
   Paired: yes
   Trusted: yes
   Blocked: no
   Connected: yes
   LegacyPairing: no
   UUID: Generic Access Profile    (00001800-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
   UUID: Generic Attribute Profile (00001801-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
   UUID: Device Information        (0000180a-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
   UUID: Battery Service           (0000180f-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
   UUID: Human Interface Device    (00001812-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)

However, when I press any key nothing happens. A few suspicious things:
-The LED light on the keyboard keeps blinking even after the pairing (usually once it is paired it stops)
-The bluetooth wizard (or the bluetoothctl terminal commands) never asked for a PIN

The keyboard works pairing it with my MacOS laptop, so that should not be a problem. Any ideas what could be wrong?

Thanks,
Fernando

Title: Re: Microsoft Surface Ergonomic Bluetooth Keyboard paired but not working
Post by: Maximus5684 on May 24, 2018, 02:30:23 PM

I had the same issue using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and I thought it would be worth posting my solution. This was an issue with the version of bluez that is included (assuming it's the same for this distro). BLE doesn't work correctly before bluez 5.42. I had to manually backport 5.43 (the 17.10 version) to get mine to work. Here are instructions for Ubuntu:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/883713/using-bluez-5-43-on-ubuntu-16-04

I then had to reboot and un-pair and re-pair the keyboard using bluetoothctl and typing in the passkey on the MS keyboard itself to get it to work.

Hope this helps someone!

Title: Re: Microsoft Surface Ergonomic Bluetooth Keyboard paired but not working
Post by: TheDead on May 25, 2018, 09:06:26 AM

Nice first post @Maximus5684 and @fernqandoamat  I'm sure this will be helpful to others too.

And a nice welcome to you two! :D

ADD : Ouch, just saw OP was in 2017 ... 0.0

Cheers!