Pairing bluetooth presenter doesn't work on Mavericks anymore. Did work on SL.

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Level 1

12 points

Pairing bluetooth presenter doesn't work on Mavericks anymore. Did work on SL.

I have a bluetooth remote presenter. It has the usual keys (next, previous, volume, play/pause, start default music player) and it also has a small touchpad / trackpad with left and right buttons, scrolling buttons.

The remote is great and it served me well under Windows and OSX 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. Now since I bought a new machine with Maverics, I can't pair it. The bluetooth utility looks different on Mavericks. Certain things missing, such as making Bluetooth discoverable or not in the way of simplification of things (Thanks Apple, but this wasn't big issue) or oversimplification of things, where there seems to be no access to Bluetooth device details and no way to add device without pairing code.

The remote is recognized as mouse with keyboard, which makes things worse, there is not only no code on the device, even if there is one (or if it would except 0000, 0000000, or similar), I have no way to enter it.

Unfortunately Maverics made things simple but useless for some bluetooth devices. It's unnecessary.

Seems like I will be stuck with Snow Leopard on one of my machines forever.

When I look in console on SL, here is what I see:

2014-06-28 8:23:11.268 AM System Preferences[7658]: [establishKernelConnection] Received an error from IOServiceOpen() - 0x10000003. NULLing out io_service_t.

There is an entry like this every time I try to pair.

The Bluetooth manager window says --

"Pairing failed"

When I go to Options, it shows the field to enter code. No matter what I enter there or if I leave empty, I won't be able to pair.

Otherwise BT works fine on Maverics, I have Apple keyboard, Logitech kayboard, Apple and Logitech trackpad and audio device connected, no issue.

The Remote presenter works also fine and I tried to re-pair it with other non-Mavericks machines and works fine too.

Posted on Jun 28, 2014 5:37 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 28, 2014 5:49 AM in response to polocanada

Go to the website for your device and see if there is a Mavericks compatible driver.

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Answer 2

polocanada Author

Level 1

12 points

Jun 28, 2014 5:53 AM in response to Gary Scotland

There is no driver needed for any other OS, whether it's OSX SL, Win XP, Win 7. It's just like a mouse with keys. The driver doesn't resolve pairing issue. The driver is to enable additional keys, map keys or to make the device behave it is supposed to. But this is issue with BT pairing.

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Answer 3

Jul 1, 2014 12:34 PM in response to polocanada

Hello,

Today I was trying to pair my MacBook Pro with a Microsoft Wireless Mouse 8000, which is a bluetooth mouse with no pairing code. I had used this mouse previously with Snow Leopard with (almost) no problems, but initially I couldn't find a way to pair this mouse in Mavericks, seemingly because the mouse lacks a pairing code and I must always enter one with this version of OS X.

Luckily I found a solution that worked for me. I'm going to post it here in case it helps polocanada or somebody else with a similar problem. In my case it involves using a BootCamp partition with Windows (Win7 in my case) with the Apple BootCamp drivers installed and started as a virtual machine using Parallels, but it may be possible to achieve the same result without a BootCamp partition (check the end of the post for more information)

These are the steps that need to be carried out:

1) Start the BootCamp Windows install using a virtual machine and connect the "Apple USB Bluetooth Host Controller" device to the virtual machine.

If BootCamp drivers were previously installed the Bluetooth device should be seen by Windows without problems.

2) Pair the mouse with the Windows install. This pairs the mouse with the Mac's bluetooth controller, just in the wrong OS.

3) Find out the mouse's Bluetooth ID. For Windows 7, right click the Bluetooth icon located in the task bar and click in Show Bluetooth devices. In the window that opens, right click in your mouse's icon and click Properties. Open the Bluetooth tab and copy somewhere the contents of the Unique Identifier field (six groups of two digits separated by colons). My Windows 7 is in Spanish so the texts may not be exactly the same as posted here in English.

4) Add the mouse's ID to the Mac. Open a terminal window in OSX and enter the following text: (substitute aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff with your mouse's Unique Identifier, changing the colons with hyphens)

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth HIDDevices -array-add "aa-bb-cc-dd-ee-ff"

And enter your account's password when asked.

5) Disconnect the "Apple USB Bluetooth Host Controller" device from the virtual machine. The mouse should "just work" in OS X at this point.

Credit goes to this website. This is where I found the terminal command posted above.

In case you don't have a BootCamp partition with a Windows install or are not able to start the Windows install using a virtual machine, the link in the line above mentions a way to do the process with just terminal commands in the Manual Pairing section, but you still need a way to find out the mouse's Bluetooth ID.

Hope this helps!

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Answer 4

polocanada Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 24, 2015 9:47 PM in response to ronald andres

It turns out the suggestion did resolve it. First it didn't work, I gave up. I tried again after 6 moths and it works.

It is important when adding the device through terminal command that before sending the command the device has attempted to pair. This seemed to work for me.

Previously I noticed if I didn't attempt to pair first and I just went ahead and add the device first and then attempted to pair, it wouldn't connect and it didn't even recognize the device name.

After adding the device through terminal command, the name showed up and the presenter was connected fine..

If it doesn't work at this stage, perhaps try to add the mouse through System Preferences / Mouse.

Thank you!

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Answer 5

Apr 22, 2016 3:08 PM in response to ronald andres

Adding to this as I found this thread through some Google digging.

I picked up a Targus Bluetooth Presenter for Mac today for almost nothing and realized when I got it home that it, too, had the same issues as described above.

I was able to add it to my El Capitan machine using the terminal command listed above - although in El Capitan, it's slightly different now:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist HIDDevices -array-add "xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx"

This added the device successfully and I am now able to use it as a mouse. Likely of note though: I had to attempt to pair it first using Bluetooth Preferences - which gave me the unique ID of the device (I didn't need to get the ID from Windows). Once I wrote to the Bluetooth plist, the ID in Preferences changed to the device name.

Hopefully this info helps others who Google their way to this site.

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