I’ve been looking for a small, but not too small Bluetooth keyboard for the Raspberry Pi. I was hoping to use an older Mac bluetooth keyboard but kept getting time out errors during connection after pairing for some reason. This appears to be a common problem. The local Central Computer sells a brand of small bluetooth keyboards under the model Comkia B405. This is a combo trackpad and small keyboard.
The box didn’t come with any instructions (though says its supposed to). I found the following was able to get it to pair with the Raspberry Pi.
- Plug in the keyboard to USB power using the supplied cable
- Turn the keyboard on using the sliding power switch on the front edge near the USB port
- On the Raspberry Pi select the “Make discoverable” option in the Bluetooth menu in the upper Right of the screen
- Click the small copper colored button on the bottom of the Comkia keyboard
- Select the “Add Device…” menu option from the same menu
- You may notice that the entire computer hangs up for a bit (I’ve noticed this on the Raspberry Pi when new bluetooth devices appear)
- You will see a “Bluetooth 3.0 Macro Keyboard” appear in the bluetooth menu near a keyboard icon
- Select this / click the Pair button
- Watch the pairing process
- If all works as expected you will have the keyboard and track pad working at this time
They keyboard is okay, though with some weird key placements (the – key is on the bottom right with a couple other moved around keys. I’ve also noticed that it takes bluetooth keyboards a little while to become active after reboot, the mouse pointer will not be active for a minute or two after boot!
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