[BRLTTY] Orbit Writer bluetooth braille keyboard, key presses do nothing, BRLTTY 5.5 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

[Emma Sajic]

Hi Dave,

On 02/07/2022 19:35, Dave Mielke wrote:
> That isn't a very secure way to do it. Perhaps you aren't using a distributin that sets all of this up properly for you. You did say that it came with 5.5, which would be rather out-of-date.

Yep I'm on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and it doesn't seem to be setting things up 
properly for me!

Thanks for letting me know it was defaulting to UK Computer Braille.

I edited my brltty.conf and am now able to type in US Computer Braille 
OK if I use the USB connection and -d usb: switch like this

brltty -d usb:

These are the only lines that differ from the 6.5 out of the box 
brltty.conf file:

braille-driver	bm	
braille-device	bluetooth:5C:B6:CC:86:F3:75
text-table	en-nabcc	# English (North American Braille Computer Code)
pid-file /run/brltty/brltty.pid

I have now hit a problem on Bluetooth however. brltty is not connecting 
to my Orbit Writer keyboard over Bluetooth and when I type hello nothing 
happens. Seems like the keyboard is flicking between a connected and 
disconnected state very quickly.

brltty -n -e -ldebug -L /tmp/brltty-debug-bluetooth.log

I'm getting a variety of error messages including device busy and 
Braille driver not found. See attached log.

I tried these steps to fix the problem (fixing dependencies and 
recompiling) but they didn't work:

# Uninstall brltty as root
sudo su -
cd /home/emma/repos/brltty
make uninstall

# Backup config files
cp -p /etc/brltty.conf /etc/brltty.conf.3Jul22
cp -p /etc/brlapi.key /etc/brlapi.key.3Jul22

# Check I have all dependencies needed to build brltty properly for 
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (found a Debian list in brltty github repo in 
Tools/reqpkgs.debian)
# using technique here 
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-test-for-installed-package-using-shell-script-on-ubuntu-and-debian

# I was missing 28 packages from the Tools/reqpkgs.debian list
# so I installed all of them. Have got everything in reqpkgs.debian now.

# Clean, rebuild and reinstall BRLTTY (I still have the 6.5 release tag 
checked out in github that I've used throughout, haven't pulled your 
latest code at all).

make clean
./autogen
./configure
make install

# Getting an error message when running make install
make[2]: Entering directory '/home/emma/repos/brltty/Bindings/Python'
cd ./../../Programs && make api
make[3]: Entering directory '/home/emma/repos/brltty/Programs'
make[3]: Nothing to be done for 'api'.
make[3]: Leaving directory '/home/emma/repos/brltty/Programs'
set -- --quiet build --build-temp .; \
[ "linux-gnu" != "mingw32" ] || set -- "${@}" --compiler mingw32; \
"/usr/bin/python3" ./setup.py "${@}"
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "./setup.py", line 21, in <module>
     from setuptools import setup, Extension
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'setuptools'
Makefile:79: recipe for target 'brlapi.so' failed
make[2]: *** [brlapi.so] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/emma/repos/brltty/Bindings/Python'
Makefile:764: recipe for target 'all-api-bindings' failed
make[1]: *** [all-api-bindings] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/emma/repos/brltty/Programs'
Makefile:49: recipe for target 'install' failed
make: *** [install] Error 2

# To fix I had to install setuptools for python 3 like this
# (wasn't mentioned in Tools/reqpkgs.debian - should it be?)

sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools

# Make install now succeeding but still got the same problem with 
Bluetooth connectivity described above.

It would be good to get Bluetooth working but if that's not possible at 
least I can use USB and type in US Computer Braille now.

Am wondering how much of this has to do with me being on Ubuntu.

Any advice much appreciated.

Cheers!
Emma
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