Cheap keyboard for Loox N560...

bruisah · 26-08-2008, 10:32 PM

Hi all!

Third post in as many minutes (almost)!

I am a happy chappy, and I thought I'd let you all know why!

A while back, I bought an FSC Smart2 Keyboard for my Loox. Now, I was aware that my device is an N560, and the keyboard is old (turns out it was designed for the Loox 600 series).

I was tentatively hoping that the keyboard would also work for me!

I was happy to find that the connector was indeed the same, but turned round 180 degrees - in other words, if I plugged my N560 into the keyboard, I'd get the rear of my device pointing up at me - not too useful unless your touch typing is spot on!

So that was problem number 1.

Problem number 2 was that the keyboard wouldn't work with my PDA anyway...

Not to be deterred, I sniffed around the internet and found the pin-outs of, not just the N-Series loox, but the 600 series too!

N-Series: Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX N520, 720 pinout and signals @ pinouts.ru
600-Series: Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX 620 pinout and signals @ pinouts.ru

A quick comparison showed that the connections were very similar.

So I opened up the keyboard for a bit of hacking about.

Inside, I found that there were only three connections to the keyboard (plus an external power one): Ground, Vcc (i.e. power), and Rx (data).

Comparing with the pin-outs, I could see that Ground and Rx were the same, but the Vcc was coming from pin 19 (Cradle 3v) which is the same on both devices, but was not getting any power from mine (I actually used a screen-broken C550 to test!).

So, I rewired the connection to pin 11 (USB Host Power Out) - taking a gamble that the keyboard would survive 5V as I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be powered by 3V.

The hardest part was turning the connector 180 degrees in its casing (I had to grind away quite a bit of plastic to stop it all bulging).

I finally put the whole lot back together and tested it. I ran PocketPutty and used the serial connection to see what I could see - Success! I had a pile of garbage on the screen!!! At least I knew that the keyboard was powered and sending data in response to keypresses!

Now I needed drivers. I tried the standard driver that came with the keyboard. No joy - they simply wouldn't work. So off I went to FSC's support pages. Punched in the 600 device details, and, hey-presto, there was an updated keyboard driver.

I downloaded and installed it and, unexpectedly, the keyboard started working!!!

I am truly surprised!

It's not perfect though. The driver is pretty slow to respond to keypresses, sometimes missing some, and if you press 'o' twice, the PDA will record a constant stream of 'o's until you press another key.

However, for a measly few quid off eBay, and a bit of effort on my part, not bad at all!

Regards,

Andy B.

boz · 26-08-2008, 10:48 PM

Nice work Andy, I love it when a plan comes together.

bruisah · 26-08-2008, 11:25 PM

Stage two is to make a small adapter so I can connect my old Palm Vx keyboard to the Loox and see if I can get that working (it's also an RS232 connection)...

It's a much nicer keyboard!

A.