Bluetooth Keyboard Shenanigans

If you have followed my antics long enough then you will know that I am a little frugal. Some would say "cheap", well both are true :)

So on Hot UK Deals the other day, I saw a cheap Mac style Bluetooth keyboard that I thought would be perfect for hacks.

So I travelled to Manchester today, to get setup for Picademy tomorrow, if you don't know Picademy is training that focuses on the Raspberry Pi computer. I had a couple of hours to kill so I popped into the Arndale Shopping Centre...on a Sunday...it was busy! Sorry, back to the story. So I went into PC World and saw the keyboard for £9, so I bought it.

I eagerly brought it back to my exclusive hotel (Travelodge) and got hacking, and that is where the problem hit me.

The keyboard paired up using "blueman" on my Linux Mint 17 machine. All good, well there was a bug where the keyboard incorrectly states that the battery is dead.
The next problem was that I could now type anything. I pressed every key and found that the J,K,L keys printed numbers 1,2,3 in the text editor, so it looked like my bluetooth keyboard was showing as numeric pad.

After a long session of Google Fu, I found that

Pressing FN & F6 >>T W I C E<<

disables numlock on the keyboard and turns off the numeric pad!!!

So now I can use the keyboard as a keyboard. It isn't a bad keyboard, sure I'm spoilt by my Cherry MX Blue keyboard...oh I do love clicky keys! But for £9 and wireless keyboard it is good, slight bit of lag sometimes but that can be forgiven.
By the way, this keyboard works flawlessly with Android phones and tablets.

But why did I buy the keyboard? Well to hack a Raspberry Pi 3 of course!

Enjoy your new cheap Bluetooth Mac Keyboard.