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Asked: 2012-12-31 19:27:22 +0800 CST

How do I pair with a bluetooth mouse via a USB dongle?

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I have a Microsoft Sculpt Touch bluetooth mouse, and a bluetooth/USB dongle.

I have tried to pair with the mouse by going to System Settings > Bluetooth and clicking on the "+" button to add a device. This launches the Bluetooth New Device Setup wizard, which lists the mouse at the Device Search stage.

I can only click "Continue" on the wizard if I select a PIN option (or tell it not to use one). But I always just see:

Connecting to '(null)'...

...followed by:

Setting up '(null)' failed.

How do I connect to and use the mouse?

The dongle is listed by lsusb as:

Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)

After plugging it in, dmesg shows:

[  256.876091] usb 5-1: new full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd
[  257.132851] Bluetooth: Generic Bluetooth USB driver ver 0.6
[  257.135389] usbcore: registered new interface driver btusb

I'm using 12.04 with kernel 3.2.0-35-generic.

12.04

2 Answers

  1. Explicitly set the pin to 0000 or whatever your mouse takes before starting the search, then you should be able to proceed.
    If clicking on the bluetooth icon in the notification bar shows a Bluetooth Mouse, click on that entry, and if it says connected, disconnect it. Disconnect the mouse battery. Then repeat the icon click and click on connect, and repeat once more clicking on connect. Then connect the mouse battery, and it should start the pairing. Sometimes there is a little button on the mouse to for the pairing also, but the battery disconnect seems to work better for me. Confirm that the btusb and bluetooth modules are present when you run 

    lsmod

    When you look at the bluetooth settings, is the mouse connected but not paired? This is what I see with my working bluetooth mouse. Here's a heads up for you, 12.10 has more serious problems with bluetooth mice than 12.04. My working mouse in 12.04 mouse loses its movement info to something in the notification bar, probably the battery indicator which added the bluetooth mouse in 12.10. Never any problems in 12.04, and it still connects just fine in 12.10, just doesn't work until I kill the notification bar. Try removing other usb devices, try another usb port, (change batteries in the mouse?).

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  2. Best Answer

    This was due to (a) really bad BT/wifi drivers for the Realtek 8723BE chipset in my wifi card and (b) the Sculpt mouse's weird power-saving behaviour. The answer is simply: you can't, in this case. I had to buy a different mouse and wait three years for the kernel to support it.

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