Bluetooth page turning for Kobo eReaders

[akadaedalus]

Originally Posted by Renate

My Bluetooth remote has buttons for PgDn, PgUp and Swap.
Making it painless to read footnotes lets me not miss "here's an interesting story" in a sea of ibids.

Hey, that's interesting. My working ring has one button only (one click forward, two clicks back) but if I get my other rings functional I will think about how to use the third button like this. I prefer e-Ink but if I have a reason to switch back to Android I think I can make it work.

I applaud your creative "laziness".

[Renate]

Originally Posted by akadaedalus

I applaud your creative "laziness".

Originally Posted by akadaedalus

It's not perfect because there are like 10 steps to take to exit the book, turn on bluetooth, pair the ring, and go back to the book.

Huh? I just leave Bluetooth on all the time.
It's not like WiFi sucking the electrons out of your battery.
I open the cover on my book and hit a (any) button on my remote.
At that point a tiny popup (Toast) shows that says that it's connected.
The next button does what it should.
If I fall asleep everything shuts down.

The same is true for my foot pedals.
I don't turn them off, just hit something when I want to use them.
When I'm done I just push them out of the way.

[akadaedalus]

Originally Posted by Renate

Huh? I just leave Bluetooth on all the time.
It's not like WiFi sucking the electrons out of your battery.
I open the cover on my book and hit a (any) button on my remote.
At that point a tiny popup (Toast) shows that says that it's connected.
The next button does what it should.
If I fall asleep everything shuts down.

The same is true for my foot pedals.
I don't turn them off, just hit something when I want to use them.
When I'm done I just push them out of the way.

This may be a Kobo Libra2 thing. I have it configured to go to sleep after 15 minutes. On waking up the wifi still reconnects but bluetooth remains off. Actually, the wifi occasionally goes to sleep too even with the reader active.

I seem to remember a mod that will force the wifi to always stay on. I haven't really played with it, and I suspect it won't make much of a difference with bluetooth.

[Renate]

Don't you just hit your ring and then it connects?
Then you hit it again and the page turns?

[CrazyCoder]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

We murder BT on startup, so, no .

Are there any updates/hacks to make it work with KOReader via BT (without using WiFi page turner option with a server)?

[NiLuJe]

I have subzero interest in this and subzero² free time to allocate to it, so, someone else will have to look into it .

(The fact that, so far, every device coming out has had a slightly or not so slightly different BT chip and associated software quirks did not help, FWIW).

[CrazyCoder]

OK, thanks. I'll follow https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/9059.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

(The fact that, so far, every device coming out has had a slightly or not so slightly different BT chip and associated software quirks did not help, FWIW).

C'mon, this stuff is trivial. All you have to do is read the manual.
(The Bluetooth documentation is about 3700 pages the last that I checked.)

But seriously, you should be able to get this stuff to work.
I've made 4 Bluetooth devices with my own hardware and software.
I've modded 4 other stock Bluetooth devices (keyboards & clickers) to have custom names and custom keypresses.
I've reverse-engineered a bunch of stock Bluetooth devices (iRig BlueBoard, heart monitor) so that I could write custom Android handlers.

Usually the problem is to get the BT to send commands (like PgDn) and to get the apps to honor them.

My biggest problem is the accessories showing that they are connected but the device not acknowledging them.
This is usually because I have so many loose devices that are paired already to them.

[jospalau]

Originally Posted by CrazyCoder

Are there any updates/hacks to make it work with KOReader via BT (without using WiFi page turner option with a server)?

Don't kill the bluetoothd daemon in the KOReader startup script and it will work.

Just connect the device and run KOReader.

The problem is that after exiting the Bluetooth will be stuck and you will have to restart the device.







Sent from my 22081212UG using Tapatalk

[CrazyCoder]

Originally Posted by jospalau

Don't kill the bluetoothd daemon in the KOReader startup script and it will work.

Just connect the device and run KOReader.

That's the first thing I tried. Unfortunately, it didn't work. BT stays connected, and the device receives the page turns, but KOReader needs to read these events. If you check the discussion at https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/9059, you'll see that it's not that simple. No one has provided a working solution so far.

If you know the exact steps to make it work, please share them with us (in the linked GitHub issue, if possible). Thanks!

[jospalau]

Originally Posted by CrazyCoder

That's the first thing I tried. Unfortunately, it didn't work. BT stays connected, and the device receives the page turns, but KOReader needs to read these events. If you check the discussion at https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/9059, you'll see that it's not that simple. No one has provided a working solution so far.



If you know the exact steps to make it work, please share them with us (in the linked GitHub issue, if possible). Thanks!

You can make a daemon with Lua that listens for events and launches touches to the screen. You will find in KOReader code how to do both things. You start/stop it in NickelMenu.

Sent from my 22081212UG using Tapatalk

[CrazyCoder]

Originally Posted by jospalau

You can make a daemon with Lua that listens for events and launches touches to the screen. You will find in KOReader code how to do both things. You start/stop it in NickelMenu.

Sure, I just hoped someone already did it in the last years. Not willing to invest time into this project right now.

[akadaedalus]

Originally Posted by Renate

Don't you just hit your ring and then it connects?
Then you hit it again and the page turns?

Nope. I gave it a fair try.

I don't use KOReader if that means anything.

I have a software switch in the menus that reset to "off" every time the reader goes to sleep. BT devices just don't work until I turn that back on.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by akadaedalus

I have a software switch in the menus that reset to "off" every time the reader goes to sleep.

Well, that's stupid and needs to get patched.

The whole point of Bluetooth LE (low energy) is to make things simple.
I have a couple of keyboards. If I want to use them I just hit a key.
I always leave Bluetooth on. I never power off Bluetooth accessories.

[danosaurus_rex]

Originally Posted by WalkingSilentz

I'm a third person trying to get this product working for this use! Works fine on the devices they officially support of course so getting it to work with my Libra 2 would simply be a bonus.

When connected to a phone, the buttons seem to emulate mouse/touches that either swipe from the top down, tap in the middle, or swipe from the bottom up. I've got access to evtest thanks to NiLuJe. Whilst the "D01" BT device is connected I don't seem to be able to get anything from it using evtest (but I get outputs if I use evtest on my Arch Linux device).

If I try 'logread -f' with the D01 ring connected it just shows a lot of "void BluetoothManager:bjectManagerInterfacesRemoved" and then the same but with "Added" instead of removed.

Any other ideas? I have the same EV_KEYS entries as Shiplap, so tried their config also. Just to confirm, I also have the config for btpt in the .btpt folder, and it's simply named "D01" (definitely a 0, not O) with no extensions on the filename.

Would be amazing to get this working! Getting cold in town and I don't want to turn pages with an exposed hand.

I bought the same ring remote, and stumbled upon this thread trying to get it working with my Sage -- unearthing a bit of an older discussion to let you know that I was successful. I didn't need to patch the UHID module.

Using some of the information shared here, in conjunction with the configuration information in Step 5 on this page, I can flip pages both forward and backward, by double clicking the arrow buttons on the ring. My config file is saved as D01 in .btpt, and the contents are as follows:

nextPage  EV_ABS  ABS_X 512
prevPage EV_ABS ABS_X 3328

Works for me! I think I have done enough faffing around with it at this point that I don't dare try and sort out how I might be able to make it work with a single click instead.

Many thanks to everyone on this forum who shared bits of information that led me to a solution!