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Ubuntu Logitech 810

lunux
5 Min Read
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bluetoothctl

The Logitech K810 is a nice keyboard, but it does not work with Ubuntu out of the box. Still contrary to what some websites might lead you to believe, it does work. The following instructions worked for me on Ubuntu 13.10 & 14.04.

  1. Start a terminal (terminal 1)
  2. Install the tools needed for this walk-through
    1
    sudo apt-get install bluez-hcidump bluez-utils blueman
  3. Enable Bluetooth on your Ubuntu machine (you might have a hardware button, don’t forget about that)
  4. Start the bluetooth manager (blueman) from your start menu, dash, or whatever other way of starting programs your desktop has
  5. Start another terminal (terminal 2) – yep you’ll need two for this exercise
  6. Get the K810 into pairing mode by pressing the button on the back of the keyboard and then one of the device buttons on the front (F1-F3). You should see the bluetooth light flashing now.
  7. In terminal 1 run
    1
    hcitool scan

    if the K810 is found this should give you something like

    1
    2
    Scanning ...
           xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx   Logitech K810
  8. Copy the address of your K810 (that’s the xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx)
  9. In terminal 2 run
    1
    sudo hcidump -at | grep pass
  10. In terminal 1 run
    1
    sudo bluetoothctl --agent hci0
  11. In terminal 2 you should now see the passkey which is a number
  12. Type that code on your K810 followed by enter
  13. The bluetooth manager should now show the K810.
  14. In blueman select the K810 and mark it as “trusted”
  15. Now click on Setup and follow the dialog box.
  16. Tada, you’re done, you can now close all terminals as well as blueman.

The Function Keys

By default, the function keys (the ones above the numbers row) are assigned to special functions like media control, which I find annoying. – Every time you want to do something normal like Alt-F4 or search via F3 you need the Fn key. Logitech’s windows software on the other hand lets you invert the Fn key. Actually all the Windows software does is to send a certain string of commands to the keyboard, which some clever Linux Guru has reverse engineered and coded into a nice little program, that can be found at  http://www.trial-n-error.de/posts/2012/12/31/logitech-k810-keyboard-configurator/. I’ll again add a step-by-step guide:

  1. Optional: Go to http://www.trial-n-error.de/posts/2012/12/31/logitech-k810-keyboard-configurator/ and read about how he did it 😉
  2. Install a compiler
    1
    sudo apt-get install build-essential
  3. Download and extract Mario’s program
    1
    2
    wget http://blog.chschmid.com/media/k810_conf-v0.1.tar.bz2
    tar -jxf k810_conf-v0.1.tar.bz2
  4. Compile it
    1
    ./build.sh
  5. Run it
    1
    sudo ./k810_conf -d /dev/hidraw<x> -f on

    You will have to replace <x> by the hid number that was assigned to your keyboard. In my case it is hidraw2. Of course there are more clever ways, but just work through the numbers brute force starting with hidraw0. – Mario’s program is clever enough to detect if it’s not the K810.

  1. sudo apt-get install bluez-hcidump bluez-utils

    Bluetooth menu -> New device setup…

    Put the keyboard in pairing mode and pick a profile

    Select the keyboard and click continue (don’t enter the code)

    hcitool scan

    sudo hcidump -at | grep pass

    Put the keyboard in pairing mode and pick a profile again

    In the new device wizard, click try again, select the keyboard and click continue

    Enter the code shown in the terminal on your keyboard and press enter

    Replace the placeholder MAC address with the one from the terminal you copied:
    bluez-test-device trusted xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx yes

    sudo apt-get install build-essential

    wget http://blog.chschmid.com/media/k810_conf-v0.1.tar.bz2

    tar -jxf k810_conf-v0.1.tar.bz2

    ./build.sh

    Try the following command multiple times but replace # with numbers from 0 and up until it reports a write:
    sudo ./k810_conf -d /dev/hidraw# -f on

    —-

  4. Marten
    Hi,Thank you very much for this information. Very helpful. ?
    I’ve made a bash only version of the k810_conf program. It seems to work just fine for me, but use it at your own risk.
    It finds (the first) K810 by itself and sends the magic string to it.

    ————————–

    #!/bin/bash

    # bash version of this program
    # http://blog.chschmid.com/media/k810_conf-v0.1.tar.bz2

    k810_seq_fkeys_on=’\x10\xff\x06\x15\x00\x00\x00′
    k810_seq_fkeys_off=’\x10\xff\x06\x15\x01\x00\x00′

    case $1 in
    on) ;;
    off) ;;
    *) echo “Usage: $(basename $0) on|off”
    exit 1
    ;;
    esac

    if [  “$(whoami)” != “root” ]
    then
    echo “Must be run as root (sudo)”
    exit 1
    fi

    for d in $(ls -1 /sys/class/hidraw/hidraw*/device/uevent)
    do
    if [ -n “$(cat $d | grep ‘HID_NAME=Logitech K810’)” ]
    then
    h=$(echo “${d}” | grep -o ‘hidraw[0-9]’)
    case $1 in
    on)
    echo -n -e ${k810_seq_fkeys_on} | dd oflag=nonblock of=/dev/${h} 2> /dev/null
    ;;
    off)
    echo -n -e ${k810_seq_fkeys_off} | dd oflag=nonblock of=/dev/${h} 2> /dev/null
    ;;
    esac
    exit 0
    fi
    done

    echo “No ‘Logitech K810’ keyboard found”

Thanks to https://blog.chschmid.com/?p=1537