[AG-TECH] Re: [Westgrid-AGTech] FYI: Bluetooth wireless keyboard

Doug Bowman bowman at mvoice.com
Wed Jan 21 19:26:06 CST 2004


We've been using the Interlink keyboard at UC which is RF and has about 
a 50' range. People don't like the mouse action very much. Sounds like 
the Logitech is also about $150 cheaper.

Doug

Andrew Daviel wrote:

>FYI
>
>We have a conference room for AccessGrid with a table in the middle and
>computers in the corner (wired up to the projectors, echo canceller etc.).
>Since it's useful to be able to drive a Web browser or other apps while
>sitting at the table, we installed a wireless keyboard and a
>Logitech "cordless presenter" bluetooth mouse.
>
>The Bluetooth mouse worked fine anywhere in the room (maybe 30 foot
>diagonal, but ate batteries - I think it draws 20ma when switched on, and
>everyone forgot to switch it off. The regular wireless keyboard was rated
>for 6 foot range but in that environment (interference from 802.11,
>projectors ??) was lucky to get 4 foot and was sensitive to orientation,
>people sitting near the receiver, etc.
>
>I complained to LogiTech support and said "I wish you had a Bluetooth
>keyboard like the mouse" and they basically said "We do now; the DiNovo
>Media Desktop". So we bought one, and it works very nicely anywhere in
>the room.
>
>It comes in 4 parts - a wireless keyboard, a wireless keypad, a wireless
>mouse, and a Bluetooth base station with integrated charger for the mouse,
>which is fitted with swappable rechargeable batteries.
>
>As the name implies, it is being marketed to kids who want to sit on the
>couch and select MP3s using the wireless keypad. The keypad has an LCD
>display which will display song titles, and both keyboard and pad have a
>shuttle control to stop/pause/play media. The pad also functions as a
>cheap calculator.
>
>We are using it under Linux on the AG display/audio computer (1 machine
>since we wanted to easily run VRVS as well as AG). Under RedHat 9.0
>it was detected as a USB device and  works fine in parallel with the
>PS/2 mouse and keyboard. The keypad works in numeric mode but in standard
>XFree86 only the media buttons on the keyboard send key events, not the
>ones on the keypad. Not a concern for us.
>
>If the device is to be the only keyboard, it includes a PS/2 cable so you
>can access the BIOS etc. before the operating system boots - neat.
>
>I did install the device under Windows 2000 to play with it first, and
>the installation procedure included a step where the base station
>registered the Bluetooth addresses of the mobile units. I'm not sure
>whether this step would have been required before it would work under
>Linux, or whether it just makes it more secure by rejecting traffic from
>unknown devices - it did work under Windows before the registration step.
>(I played with some of the media tools and was not impressed; probably
>works better under XP on a 2GHz machine than on a 400MHz laptop)
>
>It's featured on http://www.logitech.com at the moment. It cost us about
>$340 Canadian.
>
>
>The recipe to get two mice to work in XFree86 was:
>
>Section "ServerLayout"
>        InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
>        InputDevice    "Mouse1" "AlwaysCore"
>EndSection
>Section "InputDevice"
>        Identifier  "Mouse1"
>        Driver      "mouse"
>        Option      "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
>        Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
>        Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
>EndSection
>
>
>
>(cc. to VanLUG as I bought it in Vancouver and it works under Linux..)
>  
>
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