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Pairing A Bluetooth Keyboard With A Raspberry Pi

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This is a step by step guide on how I managed to pair my Bluetooth keyboard (RII ProMini) with the Raspberry Pi. This might help people who are struggling with it just as I was.

  1. First of all, start with a fresh install of NOOBS on your Raspberry Pi and install Raspbian. This will rule out anything you have done before that would prevent this guide from working.
  2. The Bluetooth installation was not working with me when I was using the latest NOOBS build so I went with a build before December 8th 2013 (November 4th 2013 build). I have noticed on several different forums that the latest build of NOOBS is using a kernel that is stopping most, if not all, Bluetooth dongles from working. I am not sure how true that is since I am not a Linux expert. But I can say that my Bluetooth keyboard worked with a older build of NOOBS and not with the latest build.

  3. Plug the Bluetooth dongle directly on the Raspberry PI board.
  4. Boot the Raspberry PI and connect to it using SSH from another computer.
  5. All you need is an SSH client like PuTTY, the IP address of your Raspberry and your login credentials. I would not recommend using a wired keyboard since my installation would not work when I was using one. This could have just been a one-off situationso it might not happen to you. Just do not say that I did not warn you.

  6. Switch to root.
  7. sudo -s