Onyx Boox BT Remote problem

[Calim3ro]

Hi all,

Since i bought my Boox Note 2 about a year ago, i also bought the Onyx BT Remote with it. The problem that i have -since day one- is that the remote seems to fall asleep in case i don't click it for 1 or 2 minutes. It happens not always, but in about 40% of all clicks. When nothing happens by the next click, than after a few seconds the Note gives a short melody (connection problem?) and after that sound, than i can do a succesfully click. It is very annoying.
I also have several bluetooth mouses, keyboards and cheap clickers from Ali, and all of them gives me no problems. Only with a clicker sometimes i have to click twice, but that is one click in about fifty clicks, so i can live with that.

If anyone have a solution, that would be really great!

Oh and yes, i have updated the remote with the latest firmware with the dfu.apk.

[Renate]

I don't have a Onyx remote, so I've not been able to examine one.

Sleeping Bluetooth devices is always a problem. The cheap ($1) selfie clickers go to sleep in one minute. I'm not a slow reader but I am prone to spacing out and thinking about something and 60 seconds per page is not always enough. I set my Poke3 to sleep after five minutes so when I wrote software for my own custom Bluetooth clicker, I set the sleep timeout for that at 5 minutes.

I also have an app that throws a toast up for every Bluetooth device appearing or disappearing. It takes around 5 seconds for Android to notice that a Bluetooth device has gone away.

Your options include pestering Onyx to extend the sleep timeout on the remote or try your hand at binary editing the firmware.

I'd hook it up to my current monitor and determine when exactly it goes to sleep.

[Calim3ro]

Thanks for your response Renate. Reading your comment, I think I'll just have to accept that I regularly have to perform extra clicks. I'm going to try to live with it!

[Renate]

I have reprogrammed clickers to have a longer timeout. It's tricky because without a full disassembly you have to look for constants that may not be in seconds. (It could be in random quanta like 35 mS or whatever.) That's why measuring the timeout exactly is helpful.

The us.boox.com apparently does not offer the remote for sale right now.

Do you have a link for the remote update?

[Renate]

Just to show you what pointless modifications you can make to a Bluetooth device...

I have an English and a Russian Bluetooth keyboard. They advertise themselves (to Android) as "Anker 12345" and "Bluetooth Keyboard" which I don't find very helpful. Of course you can go into Settings in Android and rename them so that they have meaningful nicknames. The problem with that is that it's not a "real" renaming. If you connect to another Android (or iThing) it will have the old names. Fortunately, most of these Bluetooth devices are all the same. They use an I²C EEPROM for storage. (See photo.) So all you have to do is download the image, decide what you want to change then write that to the EEPROM. Things like names are easy, which keys it sends, usually easy, things like timeouts can be trickier. The composite screenshot shows a little utility that I have that pops up a little balloon (i.e. "Toast") when Bluetooth devices connect or disconnect. It's better than asking yourself, "Is this thing on?"

Full disclosure: Although at the start of the year I had planned to learn some Russian my ardour since has been somewhat dampened.

[Calim3ro]

Originally Posted by Renate

I have reprogrammed clickers to have a longer timeout. It's tricky because without a full disassembly you have to look for constants that may not be in seconds. (It could be in random quanta like 35 mS or whatever.) That's why measuring the timeout exactly is helpful.

The us.boox.com apparently does not offer the remote for sale right now.

Do you have a link for the remote update?

As far as i know there is no way to download the firmware directly. You have to install the dfu.apk on an android phone, then start the app. Next step is you connect the remote with the phone via bluetooth. Once connected, if the app finds a newer version of the firmware, it will be installed on the remote via bluetooth.
The link to download the apk you can find on this page.

[bazookajoe]

How long did you have to wait? I have 2 remotes now (got one for a relative) so I decided to try it out on my Leaf because my own remote won't register with dfu and neither does this brand new one. It's the only thing it's ever been connected to as well. Straight to my Leaf. It's just stuck on the "Please click any button of the device" screen. Maybe that means I'm up-to-date but they should signal something to that effect.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Calim3ro

The link to download the apk you can find on this page.

Seriously, Onyx is pretty bad at being bloated. 30 Megs for a little clicky box updater? There's also a full 1 Meg of JavaScript in that too. I'm not surprised that you're having trouble getting it to work, bazookajoe. It's just a mess.

The link for the actual software is:

http://data.onyx-international.cn/api/peripherals/getUpdate?model=fred&buildNumber=1

No, that's not a real link because I don't know the model or buildNumber. Does anybody know that stuff? What does it call itself on the Bluetooth connection setting?

[bazookajoe]

In bluetooth settings it's called Boox-RemoteControl

I can't find any model info on the little info booklet that comes with it, their website, I checked a couple of my local reseller websites too, nothing.

Back of the box label picture attached.

[Renate]

Thanks!

Lol! Silly me, it's "RC2019" as in:
http://data.onyx-international.cn/ap...&buildNumber=1
Which gives me:
http://onyx-static.oss-cn-shenzhen.a...b4e09c61b6.zip

30 Megs of fou-fa-ra to download 57 kB?

Man-oh, man-oh, man. I can already see errors in their HID descriptors. <smacks forehead>

Edit: I sent an email off to Boox. We'll see if they rise to the challenge.

Edit^2: You're probably up-to-date bazookajoe because the latest software was released 2019-12-16!

1.0  New: After the BOOX device wakes up from sleep, press any button on the Bluetooth remote to automatically reconnect
2.0  New: Long press on the Bluetooth remote Function
2.1  Up and down direction: font zoom level 2
2.2  Menu key: recall and cancel the search function
2.3  Return key: directly return to the main interface
2.4  Contrast: call up the contrast menu and the contrast is 50%
2.5  Refresh: call up and undo the refresh menu
2.6  Screenshot: activate the screenshot and display the sharing QR code
2.7  Front light: recall and cancel the front light menu

Edit^3: The "PEDAL2019" uses similar software, identical (minor) bugs. They both use the same Nordic Semiconductor nRF52832 Bluetooth module.

[bazookajoe]

Thanks for the info Renate

Hope it gives you some fun to tinker with lol.