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Powermate Bluetooth support

Open tmuryn opened this issue 6 years ago • 5 comments

Hi Team,

This is not actually an issue but a question, recently I bought powermate bluetooth edition and was not able to connect to ubuntu 18.10, could you please advise if you have ever made bluetooth edition to work? I would really appreciate any advices on this!

Regards, Taras

tmuryn avatar Feb 08 '19 20:02 tmuryn

Hi Taras.

Good question. I don't have one. I sent them an email a few years ago, asking if they could provide a sample so that I could add support, but probably the person at the other end didn't know what I was talking about so nothing came of it.

The original powermate that I bought still works well for me, but if someone could convince them to send me a free one, then I'd be willing to try to add support (but I can't guarantee anything). It might work completely differently and be harder to support, but I'd try.

So that's the situation. Oh, and if someone else has one and can add support and test it and everything, then please feel free to send a PR.

stefansundin avatar Feb 08 '19 21:02 stefansundin

@stefansundin I bought two. :) I'm happy to ship you one? hit me up on twitter or my username at gmail.

rektide avatar Mar 29 '19 16:03 rektide

Thanks for the offer @rektide!

I was typing this in an email and was going to accept, but then I decided that I probably want two as well. So I started looking where they can be bought, and it looks like they're no longer available, and they look pretty hard to come by. However, there's someone on ebay selling them for $23 each, which looks like a bargain. I think they were $60 each from the manufacturer (I think the original one was also $60).

So I bought two, and you can send me a donation instead if you want. I will hopefully get them next Friday.

I would feel pretty bad taking your only spare.. especially since they seem to be pretty hard to come by right now.

Screen Shot 2019-03-29 at 15 40 30

The total came to $63, but don't feel like you have to cover all of it. Maybe some other people can chip in as well.

Here's the PayPal link: https://paypal.me/stefansundin

stefansundin avatar Mar 29 '19 22:03 stefansundin

Slightly delayed, but sent $25. Good luck, happy hacking, thanks for all the existing hard work!

rektide avatar May 15 '19 18:05 rektide

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the delay, but after having the device sitting on my desk and gathering dust for the last few weeks (oh, I guess it is months now), I finally got the time to investigate this, and I'm happy to report that your wait has not been in vain. I managed to build a python program that can receive events from the bluetooth device and update the LED.

Here it is: https://github.com/stefansundin/powermate-linux/tree/master/bluetooth

Special thanks to @rektide for the $25 donation. I haven't received any other donations, but I'm still accepting more if people want to chip in. :)

The proof of concept can probably be improved, so please let me know what you want in here. I am not sure how much I will be using it myself, as I find the original device to have a sturdier build and I think it is thus more convenient to use. I also feel like the bluetooth events have some lag, probably due to it using BLE? I don't know much about BLE, and what I know I just learned today.

Enjoy!

stefansundin avatar Jul 09 '19 00:07 stefansundin