Cut the cord

March 23, 2009 11:01 AM

Is it possible to hack bluetooth onto a USB keyboard or trackball? Bluetooth dongles that plug into USB are common as dirt, but as I understand it, these only work on the host side. I'm not a pro at this, but I'm not afraid of a little soldering.

Assuming this could be managed at the hardware level, I also wonder how the driver software for the trackball would respond, and what might be done if it doesn't play nice with the bluetoothed hardware.

posted by adamrice to computers & internet (8 answers total)

It is not clear what you're asking. Do you want to make a wired mouse into a mouse that communicates with the computer over bluetooth? (Likewise for the keyboard.)
posted by odinsdream at 11:17 AM on March 23, 2009

Yes, I want to take a USB keyboard and/or trackball, and hack it up so that it can communicate over Bluetooth. So that a laptop that is frequently docked/undocked at a desk has fewer cords to plug/unplug.
posted by adamrice at 11:22 AM on March 23, 2009

Will you also install a battery of some kind?
posted by box at 11:23 AM on March 23, 2009

Bluetooth does more than replace wires. There's a whole signing protocol that I wish I understood better. If you add a Bluetooth USB dongle to your computer, the OS will handle the signing on devices. But if you somehow attach the same dongle to a USB device, the USB device won't be able to identify itself and sign on through a strange protocol it has never seen before. Whatever dongle you used would have to have enough smarts to handle the bluetooth protocol and, as box mentioned, handle power which is usually done over USB.
posted by valadil at 11:56 AM on March 23, 2009

Here's someone who converted an existing bluetooth audio headset to work with a hearing aid. He's also an electrical engineer who worked on a patent for a bluetooth device.

It is possible, but you'd basically have to cannibalise an existing bluetooth HID (keyboard/mouse) set to get the appropriate parts, which seems to rather defeat the object really.
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:46 PM on March 23, 2009

Look into something like this which will send the USB signal wirelessly.

You could hack bluetooth into it "easily" if it has serial output, but that depends on the trackball. ("Easily" if you're comfortable with circuit bending, microcontrollers and shields like this

Both of these solutions are more expensive than simply buying a new bluetooth trackball.
posted by Ookseer at 3:35 PM on March 23, 2009

You could probably do it if you gutted a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and directly wired those guts to the inputs of your current keyboard, but I don't know how compatible the two may be let alone how much work is involved.

Are you trying to save money or do you really like your current keyboard and mouse?
posted by wongcorgi at 4:39 PM on March 23, 2009

I think you want this. Terrible title. Great book for exactly this kind of thing.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 6:28 PM on March 23, 2009