5ThirtyOne

Wow, never thought I’d say it but I want one over my Apple Wireless Keyboard, it looks great.

If you’re simply swapping the command and option keys, why not use the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane? If you go in to the Keyboard section and choose Modifier Keys you can swap or disable Caps Lock, Control, Option and Command.

DoubleCommand looks nice, but might be overkill if you’re only swapping command and option.

I really want to get this keyboard… even though I recently payed $250 for my current keyboard. Hum; time to get some money out again.

Okay, I watched the video again and now I may have to eat my words. You’ve got a Revolution next to the keyboard. Did you get both working at the same time? If so, did you use LCC, and did you use both of the dongles or were you able to pair some other way? I’m working with a MacBook Pro and didn’t have such luck.

I’m pretty sure what they announced wasn’t a Mac version of the Edge, but rather the previous incarnation of the di Novo.

Well, that is a sick keyboard…

That’s a nice keyboard but I like having F14/F15 buttons for brightness control.. but then again you have ACD’s with brightness control buttons.

I just got the diNovo Edge over the weekend, but I can’t even get as far as you! I’m using a Kensington Bluetooth 2.0 adapter on my G5, which has paired with every bluetooth device i’ve used before. However, when I go to pair my Edge to the G5, the Bluetooth Setup Assisstant sees the keyboard, but when I hit the pair button, it asks me to type in a pass key and press return. When I do that, nothing happens, like it’s not getting the pass key i’m entering. I tried using a clear passkey, and no passkey, but neither work.

I was able to get it to work using the bundled Logitech Bluetooth adapter, but that brought 2 new issues: 1) The G5 doesn’t see it as a bluetooth device, so I can’t use that adapater to pair to other devices like my mouse and phone, and 2) I can’t get the Edge’s touchpad, or volume buttons to work.

Any ideas? I didn’t even get to the screen where it asks me what type of keyboard it is (ANSI, ISO, etc)

Nice post,
1 question though:
Where’d you get that desktop wallpaper in the second video? Pretty chic =)

joel

I’m such a sucker for sexy gadgets, you convinced me. Ordered.

thanks for those great videos. gonna buy one. looks neat and seems to work great!!

but as a previous poster I’m also really hooked on your tile-graphics-wallpaper… any chance to get that somewhere or from you?? that’d even greater!!!

thanks for your work.
best
rob

Thanks for the tip Derek. I’ll fiddle around a bit more, but will probably give up and get another dongle. I really like the Kensington i have now since it’s Bluetooth 2.0. I wish the D-Link one that apple pimps was 2.0!

Hey Derek, I got a new Bluetooth adapter and now all is well with the Edge on my Mac, woo hoo!

Just for reference sake, i’m using an MSI BToes, Bluetooth 2.0 adapter. The BToes model uses the same Cambridge Silicon Radio chipset that Apple uses for its bluetooth functionality, which is why I chose that model.

Hi Derek
Well the Dinovo Edge is realy nice no quetion.
But you said in the Vidio you have a Macbook Pro well now I Asking me how do you get a Dual Screen working. The Macbook Pro Intel Duo 2 has only one DVI output.

Greez Cy

Damm Ok well search for a other solution

I have the same problem as Oban had before. I have to connect from my laptop to repair the connection. I’m running an intel macmini with bluetooth integrated and it i running mostly all time. But every now and then the pairing is lost when the OS gets asleep. Any idea will be very appreciated, the keyboard is amazing except for its lack of Mac OS integration

I purchased it after reading your blog entry and I want to thank you for that. I’m very satisfied with this keyboard and amazingly it just works with my MacBook Pro very well. If I understood right, there are two things that I’d like to add (which seemed to be not so clear in your video on youtube): After it’s paired once, all the described functionality works without any hassle, you can type, navigate, adjust the volume, mute. The arrow key to the left is very handy when scrolling (use the left arrow key to press, the right trackpad to scroll) - I think this is very clever.
I was using PCs for 20 years now and I missed one key very bad on Macs: The Delete-Key. Here it is on this keyboard and it works too. Indeed its a pity the special functions don’t work without programming, and I would be very greatful if you’d publish a link where one can download the result of your work done with controller-mate (a file, a script?).
For me as a Mac AND PC user, this is a great product, and you can feel the value of quality work. If just the keys would glow in the dark, it would be absolutely perfect…

Oh, and one more thing: It took me 3 minutes or less to make it work with my Mac, and over 30 to make it work with my Vista (including editing an ini file with the text editor…)

I’m thinking about buy a Intel Mac Mini for my TV as a media center computer but should I have a regular keyboard to do at least the settings ?? I mean how could I turn the BT on when I don’t have any control over the mac?

Has anyone tried this with a KVM switch? I move back and forth between Macs an PCs all day and I’ve heard some people have problems with bluetooth keyboards and KVMs. (Obviously the dongle is attached to the KVMs USB hub).

Under Leopard, it is possible to swap Command and Alt on a per keyboard basis. I also noticed that it was easy to swap the keycaps of the Windows and Alt keys on the Logitech keyboard, giving me the standard Mac key arrangement (i.e. Ctrl - Option - Cmd). The only other thing I need is a command sticker that fits on top of the round Windows logo key (and a couple for insert/print screen/scroll lock).

The battery life on this keyboard is amazing.

Derek, thanks for this article. I brought 2 DiNovo keyboards for 2 of our machines and they have been great.

The only glitch is after installing OSX Leopard the keyboard bluetooth connection is always lost and each time either computer is turned on we need to turn off bluetooth/turn it back on to resync.

Hopefully this will be fixed with a Leopard update as from the Apple forums it’s an issue with not only DiNovo but other bluetooth keyboards too.

Curious if anyone else experienced the same thing?

Dave, tjhe same issue is happening to me too but even with Tiger. When I bought the Dinovo keyboard firstly paired during OSX startup (but a couple of times) and suddenly it started to fail.

I´m using the same workaround as you mentioned, disabling/enabling BT will pair with the keyboard fast and smoothly.

I took my Mac Mini to an Apple Store and their reply was: it is not a supported keyboard (after paying 50€)

Digging a little into the web I found some guys which came across to similar scenarios and I´m using a solutoin I found somwhere. These are 2 scripts which will disable and enable BT, and you can use automator or any other way to get them running so you will be able to automate the workaround.

These are the scripts which are working for me:

BTOn:
=====
property bounceBlueD : “/usr/bin/killall -HUP blued”
property bluetoothOn : “/usr/bin/defaults write com.apple.Bluetooth \”ControllerPowerState\” 1″

do shell script bluetoothOn
do shell script bounceBlueD with administrator privileges

BTOff:
=====
property bounceBlueD : “/usr/bin/killall -HUP blued”
property bluetoothOff : “/usr/bin/defaults write com.apple.Bluetooth \”ControllerPowerState\” 0″

do shell script bluetoothOff
do shell script bounceBlueD with administrator privileges

ok I should have looked at the bottom two posts - looks like I am having the same problem. HUP’ing the bluetooth process during login would seem to work for me as well. I am using Leopord on both systems but I assume because the mini never goes to screen lock something is not shutting down that is on the MBP. grrr

Derek,

I recently bought an MX Revolution to use with my new iMac (for one because the nice fragmat mousepads I was given for Christmas weren’t working so well with the included wired optical red-light Mighty Mouse, and for two because I’ve been using a VX Revolution on my Vista notebook for awhile now). I used to use a Logitech mouse on a Mini I owned last year and I knew that LCC caused kernal panics and did crazy things to Tiger … but the new Unibin 2.4.0 is actually working perfectly for me and has let me set up my MX R. with ease.

Now, I’m considerin picking up the diNovo (maybe for my birthday next month as a gift?) because it’s quite sexy and I’m not a huge fan of the flat aluminum wired thing that came with the iMac so my question to you is this… now that I use 2.4.0 and it doesn’t ’cause my Leopard installation to go bananas, what is going to happen when I try connecting the diNovo to this thing? Does the LCC support it at all or can I still use ControllerMate while using LCC for my MX R.?

Bonus question: does ControllerMate give 100% of the same features as LCC does for the MX R., i.e. complete controller over the speed at which the Microgear kicks in, etc.?

tl:dr ver.: does LCC work with the diNovo now at v. 2.4.0 and does ControllerMate give complete control of the MX Revolution?

I have an old mirror door G4 PowerMac which I’ve outfitted with a USB 2.0 PCI card and hub. If I plug in the bluetooth-USB dongle that comes with this keyboard, will I be able to set it up in the same way?

Jesse,

I have a mac mini and don’t have any issues with it. I have another one of these keyboards though i use with my MBP and it i have to do this with all the time. Very strange you have the issue with your mini. Mine is a newer Intel Core 2 duo. I run video to a projector behind a wall i have my home entertainment stuff running through. That one works great. I did by that keyboard almost 8 months ago and wonder if its the keyboard. I might have to swap them to see if that changes anything.

My partner recently purchased a MacBook Pro and now a “Logitech diNovo Media Desktop Laser” (http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/keyboards/keyboard_mice_combos/devices/164&cl=us,en) and has been experiencing the same issue with the MBP not staying connected with the keyboard when waking from sleep mode (even though it still had the peripherals in the bluetooth settings panel).

Tonight, after getting passed up to tier two of Apple Care support and staying on hold for a painfully long time (over an hour), I finally got a sequence of reset events that I was to try in order to make the computer behave. But first, make sure that you’ve set the computer to “wake from bluetooth devices” (tier one advice there).

I haven’t had the time to see if this resolves the issue, but it’s the only advice I received that I didn’t find online already…maybe it will help someone.

Here goes…

Second tier of Apple Care support regarding the intermittent behavior around having bluetooth peripheral devices not-connected to the computer when coming out of sleep mode.

First: Reset the ‘Power Management Unit’ (PMU)
Apple article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449

1. Shut Down your computer
2. Take out the battery
3. Press and hold power button for 5 seconds
4. Re-install the battery
5. (normally you would reboot here…but wait)

Next: Reset the ‘Parameter RAM’ (PRAM)
Resets the video settings, system clock, bluetooth prefs*, etc.
Apple article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

Press and hold the following buttons all at the same time, while turning on the computer power…
Keep these buttons held until you hear three (3) sets of boot-up-chimes.

1. (Apple-Command) + (Option-Alt) + P + R + (Power-On Button to Boot up your computer)
2. Keep holding the buttons until you here the chimes three times (what I was told).
3. You’re now reset!

Hope this helps me and anyone else on this quest out of frustration–peace

Under Leopard, it is possible to swap Command and Alt on a per keyboard basis. I also noticed that it was easy to swap the keycaps of the Windows and Alt keys on the Logitech keyboard, giving me the standard Mac key arrangement (i.e. Ctrl - Option - Cmd). The only other thing I need is a command sticker that fits on top of the round Windows logo key (and a couple for insert/print screen/scroll lock).

The battery life on this keyboard is amazing.

Anyone know how to remove a key on the dinovo media keyboard without ruining it? i can’t really see how the mechanism works in there and I’m afraid to break one of the small moving parts. I noticed the person above did it.

How do you use Controllermate to make the %zoom key on the left side reset the screen?

Thanks for some of your suggestions. Based on this post, I actually did a bit more research and found a much better alternative than DoubleCommand called KeyRemap4MacBook. Since I am on a MBP, I had to keep switching the profiles for DoubleCommand because it w