Belkin bluetooth keypad

My keypad has been working for a year and then suddenly stopped.

Here's how I fixed it, removing any previous pairing...

1. Power off on the keypad (hold down the power until it goes out)

2. New batteries (although they weren't indicated as low)

3. Open Bluetooth preferences

4. Delete the entry for YourType Wireless KeyPad

5. Power on and hold down the power until the green light flashes

6. Keypad should be discovered by the Mac

7. Click PAIR and your are offered you a pairing number to type in

All seems fine again now, which is just as well because I use this thing a lot.

That's amazing, I have been hassling our IT support who have been unable to fix for two weeks. I followed your instructions including changing the batteries and it now works perfectly - thank you! Like you the batteries were already new and I exchanged them for exactly the same brand but it worked so who cares why!!

That's amazing, I have been hassling our IT support who have been unable to fix for two weeks. I followed your instructions including changing the batteries and it now works perfectly - thank you! Like you the batteries were already new and I exchanged them for exactly the same brand but it worked so who cares why!!

I'll just toss in my two cents, and perhaps be able to clear up some of the confusion. I have the Belkin keypad with Mavericks on my iMac, and it's been working great for several months on the original batteries. Today I got the same behavior as most of you did: I wake up the keypad by hitting any key or tapping the power button, the green LED comes on, they keypad connects, and 3-5 seconds later it disconnects. I repeat the procedure, same results, ad infinitum.

So I change the batteries for a fresh pair, and use my Fluke digital multimeter to measure the voltages:

Old pair: 1.986 volts

New pair: 3.212 volts

I think it's a glaring design flaw that the Belkin keypad does not send its battery level to the computer, and even worse, has absolutely no indication to the user that the batteries need to be changed (for example, the LED could blink ten times in rapid succession when you hit any key to try to wake it up). Instead, the keypad rather stupidly tries to connect and actually succeeds, but now the power drain of its electronics drops the low battery voltage even lower, and it disconnects. Now that the Bluetooth radio is off, the battery voltage creeps up a little bit, allowing you to reconnect again. A recipe for user frustration.

I recommend following andrewdotn's advice and not use rechargeable batteries; regardless of the brand or quality, they're all 1.2V and a pair supplies only 2.4V. It won't be long before the rechargeable pair drops to around 2.0V and the silly connect/disconnect cycle begins.

If your batteries are indeed good, it's wise to remove them, wait 15 seconds, and re-insert them. This reset's the keypad's electronics, which may have become locked up (even though that's unlikely).

Just because your batteries are "fresh" doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get the full 3V. I have had several brand-name rogue batteries that were half-dead right out of the package. Because they are connected in series, the half-dead battery's high internal resistance will "throttle" the series and result in a total voltage of around 2V, which is insufficient for reliable operation. If you're having trouble, measure the voltage if you can, otherwise, put the pair into an AA flashlight or anything else that uses two AA batteries and see how well it works.

Hopefully, this might help salvage a few keypads that have been deemed "broken."

As jberdych says above its almost certainly a battery power problem. I've had the same troubles as everyone else and kept replacing batteries to no avail. I have a box of 100 new AA batteries and kept changing them and after about 20 batteries, supposedly new, the numeric keyboard jumped into life and paired straight away. Whether this happy state of event continues is another story but make sure you have fully charged new batteries and not cheap rubbish ones.....

ajpegg, your instructions are what FINALLY helped me! For my situation it seemed to be a combination of batteries not working (I started with the batteries included with the keypad, then replaced with 3 or 4 other sets) and the Quick Start instructions being nonsensical. Anyone from Apple following these posts? How about Belkin? Anyone home?

Anyway, your instruction #s 3 - 6 were spot-on. THANK YOU for posting!

In case anyone else has this issue. Here's what worked for me (after hours of frustration). Afterward I also state why I think it worked.

a) Remove the batteries.

b) Leave the device without batteries for 10 minutes.

c) Without replacing the batteries press and hold the power button on the keypad. Do the same with some keys afterward.

d) Delete any existing keypad pairing in your bluetooth preferences.

e) Replace the batteries and hold the keypad's power button until it flashes (I think it flashes once and took longer than I expected it to).

f) Select the PAIR button in your Mac preferences when the device appears.

g) Keypad should now work.

The reason I suspect that the above works is I suspect that there is a capacitor inside the keypad holding charge, and this is keeping some state alive inside the keypad. If you remove the batteries, then either the time spent without the batteries (10 minutes for me) or pressing and holding the power button while the batteries are out results in a sufficient discharge for the device to lose it's state. Now, placing the batteries in should bring it up completely fresh and so when you pair it with your Mac again (after deleting the previous pair while the batteries were out) everything should be like when it was brand new again.

I'm really only speculating about the reasons but the above procedure has brought it back from the dead with good batteries and bad twice now.

P.S. Before this, the device would pair successfully, but none of the keys worked at all. This is what made me speculate that the device's own internal memory may be corrupt.

I tried EVERYTHING on this post, and it only works when i reboot the iMac. but it is a hit and miss. something to do with it powering down (power saver?) and when i wake it up to reconnect, most of the time it doesn't reconnect. help any hope out there?

I had the same issues, tried the same fixes, got the same issues back again.

I removed the rechargeable batteries, then. I put in a couple of non rechargeable batteries and it works properly now, w/o any further issue.

I hope this will help with someone else.

Thank you! I didn't have to replace the batteries, either. Upon your suggestion, I just removed them and put them back in. It worked. I can use my keyboard.

ajpegg: Thank you.

These instructions worked, I don't know why and I had doubts myself but it's all good on my end now.

I bought this directly from Apple since they have the latest model number on the keypad. I had originally purchased from another source but kept getting bad keypads that wouldn't stay connected.

It must be a battery thing. I had all the lights on the key pad indicating function, and my MacBook reported it was connected. However the keystrokes did nothing. I put in new batteries and viola! everything is working again. Maybe the unit is just missing a low battery detection system, but still always has enough juice to blink the lights and establish the BT connection?

In summary grab a new set of batteries before you drive back to the store. I think I will also be removing the batteries from my unit when I'm not using it. Then I'm sure to prevent bleeding power down on my batteries.

Reading to your post, SMC and NVRAM felt unrelated. Went to change the batteries first (regardless the fact that the current batteries were fully charged)... it did work. All fine. Cheers.

You're a solid person for coming back and answering your question.. This helped me a ton. Thanks!

download the keyboard maestro and then you can follow the tutorial on how to remap any of the keys you have. not only for the Belkin keypad

http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/