Varmilo VB87M Bluetooth Keyboard Discussions | Drop

Aug 26, 2015

Zone3 things it is slow 2 it is unstable 3 too many things are already on that frequency

Aug 26, 2015

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Tatteredmidnight

170

Aug 26, 2015

ZoneBluetooth 4 LE is much friendlier with Android and iOS devices. To get a 2.4ghz dongle to work on Android, you need an OTG cable, and will probably consume a lot more power. These keyboards are aimed at tablet use as well as PC use, and therefore are not well suited for use with a proprietary dongle.
In response to Antony, Bluetooth IS on 2.4 Ghz, so spectrum crowding won't be improved. A good source for this comes from this document on USB3 (source linked below: USB Implementers Forum, Inc.)
"The 2.4GHz ISM band is a widely used unlicensed radio frequency band for devices such as wireless routers, as well as wireless PC peripherals such as a mouse or keyboard. These devices may use standard protocols such as the IEEE 802.11b/g/n or Bluetooth,or they may use proprietary protocols. The radios may use frequency hopping, frequency agility, or may operate on a fixed frequency."
http://www.usb.org/developers/whitepapers/327216.pdf

Aug 26, 2015

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Aug 26, 2015

TatteredmidnightI could have sworn I read it was on a 5.2 GHZ frequency somewhere

Aug 26, 2015

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Tatteredmidnight

170

Aug 27, 2015

AntonyFaragNot trying to beat a dead horse here, but I think its very important to get correct information out there about this product. This is from the Bluetooth 4.2 core specification, but should be consistent with the 4.0 spec.
"...1.1 OVERVIEW OFBR/EDR OPERATION The Basic Rate / Enhanced Data Rate (BR/EDR) radio (physical layer or PHY) operates in the unlicensed ISM band at 2.4 GHz. The system employs a frequency hopping transceiver to combat interference and fading and provides many FHSS carriers..."
more information about the core specs for the various versions of the Bluetooth protocol can be found at the provided link.
Individual cards may come with their own stacks, but this is very dependent on the specific card or dongle. In this case, I think its valuable to specify which implementations have been successfully used with Windows 7.
I have personally tested the Kinivo unit with 2 separate Windows 7 Pro x64 machines successfully, so in that regard you are absolutely correct.
https://www.bluetooth.org/en-us/specification/adopted-specifications
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Bluetooth+frequency#

Aug 27, 2015

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Aug 27, 2015

Tatteredmidnightok yes I was mistaken as I said I thought I had seen it somewhere just should have added oh well guess I was wrong when I wrote that I thought I had already implied that.

Aug 27, 2015

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LORDWORM

Aug 28, 2015

TatteredmidnightHey! I am on Win 7 64bit and I am able to connect to the keyboard but windows just recognizes it as a "bluetooth peripheral device" with an exclamation mark signifying that it needs to be troubleshooted. Do you have any idea how I can get it recognized as a keyboard? Thanks is advance!

Aug 28, 2015

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Aug 28, 2015

LORDWORMwhat you need is a driver that adds the stack to your OS and operates independently from windows 7. if your chip is based on the intel Bluetooth chipset usually the 7000 series it will come with a program stack. if you never installed it you can get it from intel's website. these tend to be the most reliable internal cards for Bluetooth. if you have a dongle that is 4.0 again you will need a separate driver from the manufacturer. you can check the maker of your Bluetooth by going to control panel >device manager> Bluetooth then should appear a list of not only your Bluetooth devices but also your card/Dongle. notice I say to look this way because sometimes the maker of the casing and final product did not make the actual chipset. the card I had was from gigabyte but the Bluetooth portion was actually made by intel it is the same concept.

Aug 28, 2015

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Jan 3, 2016

AntonyFaragIs the Gigabyte adapter you're referring to the GC-WB867D-I ? I have this card and it pairs with the keyboard but only has the Generic Attribute Profile and does not function properly. I have the Intel PROSet drivers installed (WP-BT-17.1.1531.1764_s64.exe). I looked for Gigabyte-specific software on their website but they have nothing but older Intel drivers on the support page, which won't let me install over the newer drivers.

Jan 3, 2016

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Jan 3, 2016

arcroxwhat version of windows are you running. here are the latest drivers for it for windows 10 http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4739#dl as you see it looks like the version you got was slightly older and had a bug this one is called 17.1.1504.02G. the other way to go about doing the update is to go to device manager selecting the bluetooth and then the one called Intel(R) Wireless Bluetooth(R) you select that go to drivers and say update drivers. My drivers have a date of 11/12/2015 and are version 18.1.1546.2762 and i have no problems with that one.

Jan 3, 2016

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Jan 3, 2016

AntonyFaragI'm on Win 7 Pro x64. Nothing I've tried works. I'm starting to think I have to get a different adapter to use BLE 4.0 on this OS.

Jan 3, 2016

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Jan 3, 2016

arcroxtry updating the drivers from within windows and see if that works follow the instructions i gave to find them

Jan 3, 2016

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Jan 4, 2016

AntonyFaragI tried this and it's to no avail, so I ordered the Kinivo Btd-400 adapter.
On a side note, on Android, I'm noticing severe latency when typing sentences. The latency when just typing single letters or typing slowly is fine and quite snappy, but when I start typing at my normal ~120wpm, it seems to bog up and get slow to the point where it'll take upwards of 5 seconds to catch up to me after I finish typing a sentence. Is this a known issue and something I can remedy?

Jan 4, 2016

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Jan 5, 2016

arcroxthis has to do with android not anything to do with the keyboard. sometimes ios and android because they are smaller os's on smaller slower chips have harder time processing everything so it takes them some time to catch up on processing.

Jan 5, 2016

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Jan 5, 2016

AntonyFaragThanks for the feedback. During all my fiddling today, I cleared the keyboard's memory and re-paired it to my phone, and the issue seems a lot better for some reason. I also upgraded my PC to Windows 10 and the keyboard paired instantly without any issues. I intend to use the USB dongle I ordered on my Windows 7 workstation at work to give me the option to use the keyboard there. This keyboard is a real pleasure to type on.

Jan 5, 2016

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