bluetooth keyboard for blackberry

avriette · Post by **avriette** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:53 pm

I've got an 8310 and have a tedious email I need to send and I'd rather so it with a fullsize keyboard. Anyone paired a bluetooth keyboard with their BB? I get to the "authentication code" for the keyboard but have no idea what it is.

Has anyone done this or know if I can divine the code for the keyboard?

I do not has a mac with me right now.

avriette · Post by **avriette** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:57 pm

Its the apple slim bluetooth kb, hence mentioning lack of fruit.

Post by **ElZorro** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:24 am

The challenge is going to be if your BB supports that Bluetooth profile... you have the BT hardware (radio), firmware, and then a protocol stack. Inside that protocol stack you have a number of different profiles, or ways the BT devices can interact. Some of them are serial data, voice (mono and/or stereo depending on BT rev number), file transfer, etc. Depends on how the keyboard is implemented (which profile it uses to send data) and how your BB implements the BT profile, it may or may not work. For example, the keyboard could be serial data profile which the BB may ignore. And even if the BB doesn't ignore serial data profile, its 'OS' may not do anything with the serial data.

That being said, I'm curious how this works out, keep us posted!

chicken n waffles · Post by **chicken n waffles** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:13 am

this seems like overkill. i know us nerds like to do things "just because" but why don't you just type it on a regular computer/regular keyboard?

avriette · Post by **avriette** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:09 pm

chicken n waffles wrote:this seems like overkill. i know us nerds like to do things "just because" but why don't you just type it on a regular computer/regular keyboard?

Yeah, it's overkill. No doubt about that. However, at home we do not have the interwebs and an important email came through the BB. I had to type a multi-paragraph email with my thumbs, and I kept thinking, gosh, there has to be a better way to do this. It turns out that there are blackberry keyboards, so I'm hopeful it will work, but I'm not sure how to get that particular keyboard's authentication code. I may bring it to work, pair it to my mac, and try the same code with the BB.

And no, it couldn't wait until Monday.

Post by **complacent** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:31 pm

Have you tried any of the "default" codes? like 0000 and such?

if it supports the same profiles it *might* work.

My experience with Bluetooth keyboards and BBs is not that stellar.

I've used the Freedom Design keyboard with limited and varying success. IIRC, there was a driver that needed to be loaded on the BB in order for the pair to work together. I can prolly find it if you want to take a look.

I've never tried to pair it with mah appl keyboard, i just... um... type on teh bb?

chicken n waffles · Post by **chicken n waffles** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:35 pm

^ speaking of that... answer teh yoar gmailz, assneck

Phibs · Post by **Phibs** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:32 pm

Yeah if it's not 0000 or 1234 I don't know what it would be...

The blackberry does seem to support BT keyboards:

http://www.eaccess-estore.com/store/cat ... p?item=199

But @ $94.00..... hell no.

Post by **complacent** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:29 am

chicken n waffles wrote:^ speaking of that... answer teh yoar gmailz, assneck

Working on it... been stupid busy.

avriette · Post by **avriette** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 5:00 pm

ElZorro wrote:
That being said, I'm curious how this works out, keep us posted!

For the curious, my blackberry and my keyboard did the nasty. However, I don't think the BB really knew what to do with the keyboard so I wasn't able to get it to, you know, type anything for me, making it cute, but useless.

The way to do this was to put the keyboard in pairing mode with my mac, then I got the pairing key from the keyboard that way, then told the blackberry to pair with it using the same code. There were naughty bits exchanged, both parties thought about it, and then there was a sort of amicable divorce.

"This relationship isn't turning out the way I had planned it to," and things like that.