[deleted] f you wish to undo the changes,

There seems to be little reason to undo something that hasn't actually changed anything. As my arm continues slowly to heal, before too long I'll be able to reach the laptop on its stand, and type on it the way I always have done. I can keep this keyboard as a spare for the media computer. Until then, I'll just put up with restarting the laptop when I need to, and have a lot of typing to do.

Thanks again for your help. If you happen to think of anything else I should try, please let me know, but otherwise I'm going to just deal with it as best I can for now.

      • [deleted]

      • Post #38
      • Edited

      WetGeek Yeah I just wanted to point it out in case you run into issues with wifi due to the settings or something.

      Have you tried to change the power saving setting in Control Center? I think there's a setting in the Power section that allows the system to turn off bluetooth to save power. Turn that setting off. I would give you clearer instructions but I use Plasma 😄

          [deleted] Turn that setting off.

          Yes. I'd seen that before, but forgotten about it. I just turned it OFF, and will see what effect that has.

            [deleted] Turn that setting off.

            It turns out that the setting you mentioned is rather puzzling. I turned it OFF, and it immediately turned OFF Bluetooth. I couldn't get it working again until I turned the setting back on, shutdown, and restarted. Apparently if you don't give it the ability to turn off the Bluetooth based on some usage timeout or other signal, it takes that to mean that you want it to be turned off unconditionally.

                • [deleted]

                • Post #41

                WetGeek Ah right. It just turns Bluetooth off. A bit misleading option.

                Let's see if this works
                sudo mkdir -p /etc/bluetooth
                echo -e "[General]\nIdleTimeout=0\n" | sudo tee /etc/bluetooth/input.conf
                Then reboot and see if it makes a difference

                    [deleted] Let's see if this works

                    If I continue to have trouble with it, I'll give that a try. For now, it's been working well for me all day so far. I hope it continues that way ... I'm pretty tired of restarting the laptop.

                      [deleted] Let's see if this works

                      That didn't take long. The keyboard quit soon after I answered you. I strongly suspect that it's not a timeout issue, though, because at least twice it's happened while I was in the middle of typing a reply to someone in Parler. The keyboard was definitely not idle.

                        [deleted] Let's see if this works

                        I'm not sure I actually invoked this. After I executed the second line, I didn't get a prompt back. I waited quite a while, and eventually rebooted from the system tray icon. Keyboard is now working, but I want to see it go longer than a day without misbehaving.

                        EDIT: Rebooted from the system tray icon because my terminal was completely non-responsive.

                            WetGeek I'm not sure I actually invoked this.

                            Well, now I'm sure I got the job done. This morning the keyboard was dead again, so I repeated that command, and this time the prompt returned immediately. Now I can evaluate whether it's had any effect. The keyboard is once again working, and I can't wait to find out how long it lasts this time.

                              That didn't last long. Two hours later the keyboard quit again while I was typing something, so I think our thinking long the lines of a timeout may be faulty. I've removed all the stuff I added to /etc, and rebooted. I wanted to make sure I didn't forget, and leave something there.

                              I'm not sure what line of enquiry to take next, but I'll continue to work on it. Fortunately, Solus restarts so quickly that most of the time the need to do that isn't a huge annoyance ... just a frequent one for me.

                                I'm certainly not a techie and don't know much about terminal codes and stuff but how is your BT keyboard powered?
                                Is there a slight chance that it runs on a faulty battery or batteries?
                                Or do you use rechargeable batteries (which I would never do on a device such as your keyboard)?
                                Or maybe some sort of an overheating issue as you said that you are typing a lot?

                                  SOLUSfiddler how is your BT keyboard powered

                                  It has an internal lithium-ion battery that's fully charged. It has a multicolor LED that indicates when it's becoming discharged by flashing and turns red when the battery is depleted.

                                  I've undone everything that I've done so far during this adventure, including un-pairing the keyboard and starting over from the beginning. The keyboard battery is supposedly good for 60+ hours on a charge, and it has a standby mode that engages after 10 minutes of non-use. One exits standby mode by pressing any key and waiting 3 seconds. I've never seen the LED flashing, so I'm not sure it's ever been run down.

                                  Online research into troubleshooting this model keyboard has me wondering whether the original pairing occurred normally, which is why I've redone that from the beginning. All's working well at the moment, but it will take a couple days of correct operation before I'm ready to believe that it's really fixed.

                                    • [deleted]

                                    • Post #49
                                    • Edited

                                    WetGeek Sorry to hear that. Sounds like a tough issue. It might be the keyboard actually losing its connection or some power saving thing, I'm not sure. I don't myself use a Bluetooth keyboard as I prefer ones with their own dongles (like Logitech has), so I'm not sure what to do next. I wish you a good luck with it though and hope you get it resolved in a way or another.