Brando's Bluetooth Smart Keyboard

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://shop.brando.com.hk/btsmartkeyboard.php' target='_blank'>http://shop.brando.com.hk/btsmartkeyboard.php</a><br /><br /></div>For those of you looking for a Bluetooth keyboard with a number row, Brando has another choice for you.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/parekh-20041116-BrandoBTKeyboard.jpg" /><br /><br />What's cool about this keyboard is that it has broad device support -- not just Pocket PCs, but Palms and a number of Smartphones. Some PPCT members have been <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=34415">discussing the keyboard</a>, and PPCT member tourdewolf <a href="http://www.ipaqhq.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11670">unearthed an iPAQ HQ review</a> of the unit.

[outdoor]

speaking of keyboards, i have a question regarding battery life.

Which type of keyboard will eat up battery faster: IR keyboard or BT keyboard?

I own the new branded palmone IR keyboard (with number row) with my pda2k, and it works great together.
http://www.boomspeed.com/anth0ny65/pda2k_palmIRkeyboard.jpg

[delfuhd]

Well IR keyboards have a battery of their own, which means they use none of your PPC's battery, except that little amount that recieves the IR Beam. Bluetooth, on the other hand, takes up batter power comparible to WiFi, so I'm guessing the Bluetooth keyboard would definitely take up more battery power (or, I mean cause more battery power to be used)

[surur]

Well IR keyboards have a battery of their own, which means they use none of your PPC's battery, except that little amount that recieves the IR Beam. Bluetooth, on the other hand, takes up batter power comparible to WiFi, so I'm guessing the Bluetooth keyboard would definitely take up more battery power (or, I mean cause more battery power to be used)

This is strange logic. Bluetooth keyboards also contain their own batteries, and recieving IR information also drains the battery (hence switching it off on your handheld saves battery power).

Bluetooth certainly does not consume battery power comparible to WIFI. It in fact uses much less. If not connected I can leave bluetooth on the whole day on my PDA and lose maybe 5% of battery power.

Lastly, a simpler way to understand this is that the keyboard would almost certainly use more battery power transmitting than the handheld recieving, yet it uses (i think) 2 AAA's which lasts one to two months).

In short battery power is not a big issue, so dont let it dissaude you from buying this keyboard.

Surur

(Sorry about the rant, but bluetooth often needs some defending)

[Tierran]

Only $90 and a number row? I've finally found my BT keyboard 8O

[Craig Horlacher]

Can someone tell me if it works with the toshiba e830?

I have bought two bluetooth keyboards and after a lot of time and contacting manufactuers I can tell you that the HP bluetooth folding keyboard and the thinkoutside bluetooth keyboard are both incompatible with the toshiba e830 internal bluetooth. I'm desperate for a keyboard for this awesome pocket pc!!!

I can't totally blame toshiba since I can use the bluetooth with my laptop and my mobile phone - no problem!

[Jason Lee]

where's the bluetooth keyboard with the mouse like the targus IR keyboard? I want one of those. :) I like how the stowaway keyboard drivers also support thiir new bluetooth mouse on you ppc but i really don' t like their layout (lack of number row) and i would rather have the mouse and keyboard as one. I love my targus IR keyboard and would love a bluetooth one even more! then i could use it with my home made mediacenter pc! ooooo!

[after_forever]

Can someone tell me if it works with the toshiba e830?

I have bought two bluetooth keyboards and after a lot of time and contacting manufactuers I can tell you that the HP bluetooth folding keyboard and the thinkoutside bluetooth keyboard are both incompatible with the toshiba e830 internal bluetooth. I'm desperate for a keyboard for this awesome pocket pc!!!

I can't totally blame toshiba since I can use the bluetooth with my laptop and my mobile phone - no problem!


Vector, are you telling me I can use the thinkoutside bluetooth keyboard on my desktop/laptop? That's what I'm looking for!

Anyone know if the Brando keyboard works on a desktop that has bluetooth? I would like to have that number row...

TIA
After Forever

[gibson042]

Well IR keyboards have a battery of their own, which means they use none of your PPC's battery, except that little amount that recieves the IR Beam. Bluetooth, on the other hand, takes up batter power comparible to WiFi, so I'm guessing the Bluetooth keyboard would definitely take up more battery power (or, I mean cause more battery power to be used)
From looking at the ICs used to implement both IrDA and Bluetooth (which, again (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=300271#300271), was designed as a low power wireless communication scheme and alternative to IrDA), power consumption is approximately equivalent in the two technologies. Variations of course occur, and I have no idea which technology demands a higher CPU load (I suspect that difference is so small as to have no measurable impact on battery life), but the numbers indicate that SIR (which most PPCs use and all IR keyboards should) and Class 3 Bluetooth (which most Bluetooth keyboards should use) have similar power drains, as do MIR/SIR (which the remaining PPCs use--excepting CIR, which I haven't looked up but wouldn't be used for talking to a keyboard anyway) and Class 2 Bluetooth (which most PPCs and the remaining Bluetooth keyboards use).

End result? Your battery life should be shortened by the same amount, give or take 10%, when using IR or Bluetooth keyboards. I haven't done this test because I'm too clumsy to keep an IR keyboard lined up long enough to use it, but I would welcome the results of anyone who has. Surur? Bueller? Anyone, anyone?

[Craig Horlacher]

Can someone tell me if it works with the toshiba e830?

I have bought two bluetooth keyboards and after a lot of time and contacting manufactuers I can tell you that the HP bluetooth folding keyboard and the thinkoutside bluetooth keyboard are both incompatible with the toshiba e830 internal bluetooth. I'm desperate for a keyboard for this awesome pocket pc!!!

I can't totally blame toshiba since I can use the bluetooth with my laptop and my mobile phone - no problem!


Vector, are you telling me I can use the thinkoutside bluetooth keyboard on my desktop/laptop? That's what I'm looking for!

Anyone know if the Brando keyboard works on a desktop that has bluetooth? I would like to have that number row...

TIA
After Forever

Well, you should be able to but let me be more specific. What I meant to say is I can't blame Toshiba's bluetooth on the e830 because I can use the bluetooth on the e830 to transfer files to and from my laptop using bluetooth and my mobile phone using bluetooth. In other words, I didn't mean to say the keyboard works with my mobile phone or my laptop.

Now, to help answer your question, I did try it with my keyboard and it did not work very well, to the point where it was unusable. The one catch is that I was using my usb bluetooth adapters software with xp service pack one and the human interface device driver it has is beta...so I'm guessing the problems I had with the keyboard (keys repeating, not working, giving the wrong character, etc - and all very often, not sometimes) were due to bad drivers. I will say that I'm using XP SP1 and I know that XP SP2 has it's own bluetooth drivers and those may very well work with the keyboard. I don't want to apply sp2 since I have activesync working over my current bluetooth configuration and I don't want to mess with that all over again.

[Judgeless]

Bluetooth, on the other hand, takes up batter power comparible to WiFi, so I'm guessing the Bluetooth keyboard would definitely take up more battery power (or, I mean cause more battery power to be used)
Bluetooth consumes 1/10 the power of WiFi. Here is a comparison

http://mbu.com/bt_pow.jpg

An IR LED takes about 5mA to drive the LED alone. I bet total power for IR compared to Bluetooth is about the same.

[Artuk]

Can these keyboards be used with an emulator like morphgear? That is.. can I use the arrow keys and buttons instead of the dpad and pda buttons without appreciable lag?

Thanks,

Artuk

[tourdewolf]

and PPCT member tourdewolf unearthed an iPAQ HQ review (http://www.ipaqhq.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11670) of the unit.



Woooohoooo! I am famous! Made the front page! Wooohooo! :mrgreen:

[ctmagnus]

I figure that the actual key assembly is roughly 65% to 70% of the size of a typical laptop keyboard

How does this factor compare to the HP BT keyboard? iirc, the HP's keys/overall size are/is bigger.

[pbg]

Does anybody have any information as to whether this will or will not work with an iPAQ 4150?

[Bujin]

For anyone curious... I e- mailed Brando and they do not know if their keyboard works with a Dell Axim X30

[Barak]

hmmm. Anyone know if this will work with a HP 4350?? It's not listed, but others are.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

I figure that the actual key assembly is roughly 65% to 70% of the size of a typical laptop keyboard

How does this factor compare to the HP BT keyboard? iirc, the HP's keys/overall size are/is bigger.
I just obtained the HP BT keyboard and the keys are much closer to standard size, but not completely. In measuring the keyboard width from the start of the A key to the end of the quote key, my laptop keyboard (which I assume is standard size) measures 21cm. The HP BT keyboard measures 19.5cm.

In terms of height, the 3 alphabet rows on my laptop measured about 5.6cm. The HP BT keyboard measured 5cm for the same 3 rows (note, that the number row and the space-bar row are noticeably skinnier).

So in terms of width, the HP keyboard would be about 93% and in terms of height (for the 3 alphabet rows), the HP keyboard is about 89%.

FWIW, the difference is not noticeable to me when typing on the HP keyboard. YMMV.

[ctmagnus]

8) Thx. I'll definitely have to consider the HP keyboard.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

8) Thx. I'll definitely have to consider the HP keyboard.
No problem. It's definitely a nice keyboard.

I ordered mine via MobilePlanet. I didn't expect to receive it very soon as their website said "out of stock" but it ended up arriving only a few days after ordering.

As for the keyboard itself, if I really had to nitpick, there 4 areas I would target (note that all 4 nitpicks are REALLY minor in my book):

1) My biggest gripe is with the placement of the question-mark/forward-slash key. It was moved two places to the right (outside of the up-arrow key and the right-shift key), which means when you intend to hit the forward slash or question mark, you'll end up hitting the "up" arrow instead. At first, it also didn't make sense to me why they wouldn't just keep the right-shift key to the far right, but when examining a standard keyboard and after typing on this keyboard, the reason became clear. The right shift key is placed exactly where I'm accustomed to hitting it.

2) Whenever you use this keyboard, you have to activate an applet from within your PPC and tell it to connect to your keyboard first. Not a huge deal as the process only takes about 5-7 seconds, but I'd prefer a button on the keyboard where you push it and it automatically connects to your PPC. Also, the next time you use your PPC after you've used it with the keyboard AND the keyboard is turned off, the PPC will automatically pop up a window that tells you it's searching for the keyboard. You can either just hit a CANCEL button or you can wait the 5-7 seconds it takes to give up (in both cases, it will no longer search for the keyboard until you reactivated the applet again to tell it to connect). This is really not a huge deal for me, it's just an extra step that takes a few seconds before and after each use of the keyboard

3) The number row and the space-bar row are slightly skinnier in height (or should I say shorter in height) relative to the 3 alphabet rows (though the width is perfectly proportional). I find myself sometimes hitting the upper edge of the number keys when typing. This is still greatly outweighed by excitement of actually having a numbers row! Also the space bar is split in half and I sometimes find myself hitting the space bar right at the crease, but this is probably just a necessary characteristic of a folding keyboard

4) No drivers for non-PPC devices. Not a big deal to me as I only intend on using it with my PPC.

It's a fantastic keyboard overall. I have no regrets whatsoever and would heartily recommend this keyboard to anyone (unless you want to use it with your phone).

[frankenbike]

Main disadvantage of Bluetooth is that some airlines won't let you use it during the flight. American Airlines comes to mind, but I'm pretty sure there are others.

[Bujin]

Hello,

Received one of these Brando Smart Keyboards today. My Dell Axim X30 isn't on their compatibility list, but I figured I'd try it anyway. Got the software installed and can see the device in my Bluetooth manager, but it won't connect via the keyboard's config screen.

Anybody that knows about Bluetooth have any ideas of what might be wrong?

== Sean

[Pat Logsdon]

Received one of these Brando Smart Keyboards today. My Dell Axim X30 isn't on their compatibility list, but I figured I'd try it anyway. Got the software installed and can see the device in my Bluetooth manager, but it won't connect via the keyboard's config screen.

Anybody that knows about Bluetooth have any ideas of what might be wrong?
Yup. You (like me) probably didn't read the instructions. ;) You don't pair the device. If you can see it in BT Manager, delete the partnership, soft reset, and use the driver. It will automatically turn on the BT radio and discover and pair with the device once you click the "Activate Keyboard" checkbox.

[Bujin]

I actually tried just following the instructions first. I only started poking around after it wouldn't connect.

[Pat Logsdon]

I actually tried just following the instructions first. I only started poking around after it wouldn't connect.
Hmmm...it should work just fine with the X30. There's a new driver available in a download here, (http://www.chainpus.com/support/) and an updated instruction manual that includes quite a bit more troubleshooting info than the first manual.

[Bujin]

Ahh... great. Different supplier, but I assume the keyboard is the same. The version number is slightly newer than the one I have, so hopefully it will do the trick. I'll take a look.

[Bujin]

Nah... still doesn't work.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

You don't pair the device. If you can see it in BT Manager, delete the partnership, soft reset, and use the driver. It will automatically turn on the BT radio and discover and pair with the device once you click the "Activate Keyboard" checkbox.
Does this keyboard not use the HID profile like the ThinkOutside BT Keyboard? It doesn't sound like it does, though I'm not even sure that PPCs have the HID profile supported.

Can this keyboard be used automatically with any device with the HID profile supported?

If not, there would be little difference between this and the HP BT keyboard in terms of device support.

[Bujin]

You don't pair the device. If you can see it in BT Manager, delete the partnership, soft reset, and use the driver. It will automatically turn on the BT radio and discover and pair with the device once you click the "Activate Keyboard" checkbox.
Does this keyboard not use the HID profile like the ThinkOutside BT Keyboard? It doesn't sound like it does, though I'm not even sure that PPCs have the HID profile supported.

Can this keyboard be used automatically with any device with the HID profile supported?

If not, there would be little difference between this and the HP BT keyboard in terms of device support.

Not sure... how do I tell?

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Does this keyboard not use the HID profile like the ThinkOutside BT Keyboard? It doesn't sound like it does, though I'm not even sure that PPCs have the HID profile supported.

Can this keyboard be used automatically with any device with the HID profile supported?
Not sure... how do I tell?
I guess you'd have to have another BT device that supports the HID profile. One popular thing that Stowaway users like to do is pair their keyboard with their BT-enabled desktop. Assuming that you have the HID profile already supported by the secondary device, you should just be able to pair and connect the keyboard with the BT-enabled device and just start using the keyboard without any need for software or driver installation.

Additionally, if you can pair the keyboard with your PPC (using BT manager), you should be able to do a "search" on the type of services offered by the keyboard. I *think* if the keyboard supports HID, there should be some indication of that when the PPC tells you what services are available. Then again, since the PPC itself doesn't support HID, I'm not sure that it can recognize whether or not another device does support HID.

[Bujin]

I played around alot and was able to browse to the keyboard through the manager to create a connection, the input software on the PPC still can't talk to the keyboard though.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

I played around alot and was able to browse to the keyboard through the manager to create a connection, the input software on the PPC still can't talk to the keyboard though.
When you browsed the keyboard, what services did it tell you was available on the keyboard?

No matter what, you won't be able to connect your PPC to the keyboard without the drivers b/c AFAIK, there's no built-in HID support for PPCs.

No worries though. Sooner or later, someone will figure out the full range of compatibility for this keyboard. I'm only curious b/c my friend is looking for a BT keyboard for his mobile phone.

I have the HP BT keyboard, but it's limited to PPCs only. It does not support the HID profile (unlike the ThinkOutside keyboard). It's not a deal-breaker for me b/c I only plan on using the keyboard with my PPC.

[Bujin]

The service it offers is SPP Slave. Have your friend check the Brando or Chainpus compatibility lists and see if this keyboard will work. If it will, I'll sell it to them for less than retail.

[Pat Logsdon]

Did you get any kind of error message when you tried to pair with the device via the driver?

[Bujin]

Did you get any kind of error message when you tried to pair with the device via the driver?

Just the "cannot connect to your keyboard" message.

[Pat Logsdon]

Did you try changing the com ports as described in the manual I linked to previously?

[Bujin]

Did you try changing the com ports as described in the manual I linked to previously?

I tried because I noticed it was set to 7 and not 5, but the field that shows the port number doesn't seem to accept changes.