Open gbakeman opened 4 years ago
Looks fun What do you know about this keyboard cover? Is it bluetooth + nfc pairing? Is it bluetooth + hardcoded pairing? Is it USB? Is it something else?
@phhusson, I own this device as well. The device has these little round gold connectors on one of the sides. So that the OEM connectable foldable keyboard case cover can connect to the device.
Hi @phhusson,
I'm glad you're interested! :) @secretwolf98 beat me to it, but as far as I can tell this is just a direct electrical connection between the two devices. From the product description page,
The quick connector transfers both data and power between your NOOK and the Smart Keyboard
I'm assuming this is a proprietary connector made by B&N. They seem to promote it as a big selling point of the tablet, but afaik there's only this keyboard and a docking station that actually utilize it. On the tablet product page, they're described as "pogo pins" and the product page goes into slightly more detail:
Our exclusive pogo-pin connectors give you the power to transform your NOOK whenever and wherever. In less than a second, insert your portable keyboard cover for an on-the-go laptop; or have hands-free video calling and streaming while you charge up, connected to your dock.
Emphasis mine. Exclusive probably == proprietary? In doing my own research, I'm not finding out very much about these pogo pins. Looking more into B&N's hardware venture is somewhat depressing - it sounds like the company is trying to get away from that part of the business as a whole. Customer support obviously didn't have any information about the design of the connectors, so I'll try sending an email to the B&N vendor inbox as a "hail mary" and maybe I can get in touch with someone who might know a thing or two about it.
k well that's all very fuzzy.
let's do it the usual
please give the result of:
lshal
Well, this is odd... I just powered on the tablet today, and suddenly... the keyboard is working fine. Every function seems to be recognized and working. Just in case, I'll attach the lshal output. @secretwolf98, maybe it was a reboot that fixed it. Can you confirm?
k, there is absolutely nothing in the lshal. If I had to guess, I'd say the connection is USB, and by default it is on only if it was on at startup And i'm supposed to turn usb back on when i detect the cover, or something like that
Nothing unusual, right? The file did still come through?
Updating after some more testing. After some period of system on time (like 30 minutes) the keyboard connection stops working entirely. Reconnecting the keyboard doesn't work, and a reboot is necessary to get it working again. You're right though, it is USB, as identified in the settings page:
It says: SINO WEALTH USB KEYBOARD
It sounds like you already know what needs to be done to fix this though?
+1, Very interested in hearing how all this turned out.
A little off-topic, I'd also be interested in any info anyone managed to find regarding the pinout for the "pogo" connector, looks like it would be ideal for a number of projects. @gbakeman, @Ryzen5-3600: have you got anything re: this?
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there hasn't been any progress on this as far as I'm aware. I heard there was an update for the stock NOOK ROM, so I've been considering going back to that.
@gbakeman sorry to hear it, and thanks for reporting back.
I don't have either the keyboard or the dock, but having the pinout for these pogo pins would be most interesting.
Re: the original ROM, I have some more info, will message you directly to avoid getting even more OOT here.
To anyone else wondering about this connector, I've been trying to map its pinout, and have had some progress (although so far not as much as I wanted), I've documented it here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/bntv650-info-on-the-quick-connector-aka-pogo-pins-used-to-connect-to-dock-and-keyboard-b-n-nook-tablet-10-1.4302477/
Feel free to contribute if/when you find anything else.
Regarding the B&N NOOK Tablet 10.1", I installed the v123 system-arm64-aonly-gapps-su build which appears to work great, except that the official keyboard cover does not seem to be detected at all by the tablet. I'm ready to provide any logs/info as needed.
Thank you!