What obvious thing am I over looking?

[james_davis_nicoll]

I have a Nexxtech Bluetooth Keyboard which I used with my Playbook. For some reason it now refuses to connect to my Playbook, although it connected in the past: I get as far as the six number string to type in on the keyboard but then all that happens after I type in the numbers and hit enter is I get another string of numbers. Suggestions?

Comments

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Is the keyboard itself low on power?

Have you tried completely tearing down the pairing between the tablet and keyboard and rebuilding from scratch?

Is it possible to do a hardware reset on the keyboard before attempting that tear-down and rebuild?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I just bought new batteries so the power should be OK.

I have no idea how to tear down the pairing between the tablet and keyboard or how to rebuild from scratch.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

The tablet probably has a list of devices that it's set up to pair with (ie devices for which you've already gone through the pairing process). You can try removing the keyboard's entry from that list so that, essentially, you're starting from scratch when you set up the pairing.

Ideally, you'd like to have the pairing between the two devices automagically set itself up and be functional without having to re-authenticate, whenever the tablet detects that the keyboard is nearby. But your mileage may vary on that.

What the number sequence tells me is that the tablet is repeatedly trying to authenticate a pairing with the keyboard and the pairing is not, for some reason, working.

I assume you've also tried the route of rebooting the tablet.

For some reason (about which I do not wish to speculate or comment further), early PlayBook builds suffered a host of Bluetooth problems. I'd have expected those to be shaken out by now.

Typically the way I dealt with this kind of thing in the past was to try to erase all knowledge either device had about one another, and then re-establish that pairing from scratch.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I would like to second everything he just said, except the "I'd have expected those to be shaken out by now" part.

Because the Playbook tanked, and RIM are struggling. They're not trying to fix a product they've already given up on.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Very carefully worded clarification: the time period I am referring to was followed by a time when RIM desperately still cared about PlayBook. I have no real evidence that this is no longer true; it might be, but I'm not so sure. Don't forget that Bluetooth is a vital checkbox for most mobile smartphone offerings and RIM's upcoming saviour products are built on the same underlying OS and driver layer as PlayBook. It might have been hardware implementation one, but I suspect their drive to get the BT stack working properly probably didn't just stop when PB failed so miserably in the marketplace.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

At the same time, the Playbook tanked so furiously that I would expect them to fix things in the new hardware and not bother to look backwards.

I would be happy to be wrong?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Removing the device and reinstalling seems to have worked.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Bluetooth. The string and tin cans of IT.