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Possible to use Microsoft wireless keyboard?

Former Member

I booted up the Raspberry Pi and made it to the configuration screen but couldn't control anything by the keyboard. I was using a a wireless microsoft keyboard that was connected through a wireless hub.

 

Do I have to use a wired keyboard for setup? Or how can I get this one to work for my needs

  • Erik,

      As far as I know, nobody has reported success using the Microsoft 800 wireless keyboard.

    See for example this thread:

       http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=13001

     

    Unfortunately, as far as I know, nobody understands the cause, or is trying to resolve it.

  • in reply to Former Member

    I guess I will just have to pick up a wired one... Does this rule out any wireless keyboards or just ones that run off of a wireless hub?

  • in reply to Former Member

    Some wireless keyboards do work.

    There is an unofficial list of what reportedly works and doesn't at:

     

       http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals

     

    although some of these entries may be out of date or not

    100% reliable.

  • Keyboards that work or not with the Pi can be somewhat of a mystery.  I have a pretty standard wired USB keyboard from a Dell desktop that used to work fine with the Pi, but after some regular updates it totally stopped working (still works on a Linux PC).

     

    The Pi seems to miss some key down or key up events for some keyboards which results in dropped or repeated keys (or missing mouse clicks from mice).  A fix for that is to force USB 1.1 by adding dwc_otg.speed=1 to the end of the one long line in /boot/cmdline.txt (make sure that line does not wordwrap).  Forcing USB 1.1 may reduce network speed and speed of USB flash or hard drives, but is still faster than my 6 mbps DSL internet.

     

    I had to do that for my older Logitech di Novo Edge wireless keyboard/mousepad, and that works as well for new Logitech K400 wireless keyboard/mousepad.  And a nice thing about the K400 is that I was also able (to use Windows) to associate a Logitech wireless mouse to its unifying receiver (quake3 is tough to play with a mousepad).  Either of those wireless keyboard dongles works along with a mini-WiFi directly on the Pi USB ports

     

    However, what should have been a nice little GearHead wireless keyboard/mousepad (KB3800TPW) that someone else reported as working, does not work at all for me.  It totally disrupts USB whether connected directly, or on a powered USB hub.  It works fine on a Linux desktop PC, just not on any of my 3 Raspberry Pi.

  • 6 months later, there are over 200 keyboards in the US config file, and a few of these are wireless.  Microsoft has a few, I believe.   You have to go into the keyboard file and change one line if you only see UK keyboards.  That line has "gb" that should be changed to "us" and then saved and rebooted.  They helped us by providing a default keyboard file for the UK, slightly confusing to fix for beginner.

     

    Chuck.