USB mini-keyboard HowTo
 

I found the N810 slide down keyboard fine for entering parameters. Two hand typing however requires an external keyboard that stays put without being held. I purchased a Nokia SU8W Bluetooth keyboard and found it lacking. I want to draft articles so I purchased a mini-keyboard from DealExtreme. It comes with a compact USB cable on a reel. For use with my N810 I also purchased a microUSB to Female USA A cable which automatically switched the N810's USB into Host mode. If I had an N800 I would have purchased a miniUSB A to miniUSB B cable for a direct connect of keyboard to N800. URLs for purchasing the mini keyboard and both cables are at the end of this HowTo.

I tried the mini on my Ubuntu desktop and it worked well. On the N810 the keyboard layout was supported the same as with Ubuntu. The keys are small but I adjusted quickly. The function key worked with all the keys it was supposed to except for the up-arrow. This differs with what has been posted by some members of our community. I can live without up-arrow. I like the fact that a full set of symbol keys are included as on the qwerty keyboards we're all accustomed to. I do get some unwanted repeated keys and attempted to adjust the repeat delay with the Configuration Editor application -- the N810 doesn't appear to use the entered repeat key parameters and there's no way to turn off keyboard repeat. This bug has been reported but the response was "Fixed in Fremantle" which ignores the N8x0 user community. The lack of a spell checker in the Notes application makes finding duplicate keystrokes all the more difficult. I have the spell checker for MicroB but that's the only application it seems to work with. I tried Abiword but found it buggy on this platform. No doubt some will suggest installing Debian or Mer but both of those are IMHO a work in progress and I may loose some of the capabilities I've discovered and use daily in the Diablo environment.

It's not clear to me that the keyboard rate adjustments offered even work for a USB connected keyboard, I verified they don't for Bluetooth keyboards. The keyboard is black and all the keys that work with the function key are marked in blue -- normal key values are marked in white. The blue legends don't have much contrast with the black key color and are hard to see in dim light. The keyboard has LEDs for Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock.

I'm disappointed that the keyboard bugs in Diablo, latest N8x0 OS release, won't be fixed by Nokia. If it gets fixed it will be by the Maemo community. I would find making a delay of 0 turn off key repeating a workable solution. Desktop Linux distributions have a separate parameter to disable key repeating that doesn't appear to exist on the Nokia tablets. A USB connected keyboard brings me closer to being able to draft text documents on the N810 as long as I don't mind editing out repeated keys. The mini-keyboard deals with the portability issue. It's very pocket-able.

Such time as I find a verifiable solution for key repeat delay setting I will update this post. At that point the mini-keyboard would have achieved full usability.

Mini 56-Key USB Keyboard with Retractable USB Cable for PC and Laptops $21.64
https://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15953

Cable - microUSB to Female USB A for N810. Automaticaly sets the USB to OTG - $9.38
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/Dk...name=H11576-ND

Cable - miniUSB A to miniUSB B for N800 to mini keyboard. haven't tried this cable and am unsure if it sets USB to OTG - $4.08
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/Dk...ame=WM17494-ND

Re: USB mini-keyboard HowTo
 

if you can find a copy of xset you might be able to disable key repeat that way. unless it's actually a hardware problem of some sort, such as keybounce.

-John

Re: USB mini-keyboard HowTo
 

Thanks, sure looks like xset would do it but I can't find a binary for the tablet.

Re: USB mini-keyboard HowTo
 

A quote from the pro/con comment


"You have to push Fn key to use left, right and down key. and have to push Numlock + Fn to use up key"

In case that helps.

Re: USB mini-keyboard HowTo
 

Fragos,

Which version of AbiWord were you using, and what bugs did you encounter? I'm trying to fix all Maemo-related bugs in the program.

Re: USB mini-keyboard HowTo
 

I'm reasonable sure it was abiword_2.6.4-0rp0+pre2_armel.deb but it might have been 2.5. This was months ago and I gave up on it because it seemed unstable and subject to crashing. I didn't take it any farther than that. and used Notes and Leafpad for drafting -- final edits were done on my Ubuntu desktop with OpenOffice.

Re: USB mini-keyboard HowTo
 

I just tried to update my howto but the EDIT button goes into an endless spinning dots mode and never goes to edit. I tried Chromium and Epiphany -- neither worked for the EDIT button.

In my howto I talked about the blue labels on the keys being unreadable. It turn out that those that go with the Fn key are teal green with little contrast with the blue which is used for the Numeric Pad. As it turns out if you initial Num Lock and press the up arrow it will work but of course now some of the alpha keys aren't available.

Re: USB mini-keyboard HowTo
 

This keyboard is actually a Fujitsu U810 keyboard fitted in an usb case. It will be nice to see the same done with a U820 keyboard, as keys are slightly bigger with an extra row. Deal extreme sells the same keyboard with some extra multimedia keys. Not sure those extra keys can be used on Maemo.