1810T: How do I disable power management on Bluetooth; keep Bluetooth fully powered?

Hello,

My Bluetooth keyboard goes to sleep after a period of idle and it takes 15 seconds for the Acer Aspire 1810T to wake up and notice the Bluetooth keypresses.

However, I found out my Bluetooth keyboard works reliably when I have a second Bluetooth device connected and active at the time (such as either a headset or bluetooth tethering to a cellphone as modem), the computer doesn't have a 15 second lag in noticing the Bluetooth keyboard again - the keyboard works almost right away even after being unused for sometime.

So that means the culprit is in the power management on the Acer Bluetooth module. Is there a way to force the Bluetooth module to never go to sleep? Any checkbox somewhere, a register setting? Even going as far to purchase a different Bluetooth driver? Or any other option? Sometimes the sleep is useful, but it definitely isn't useful with the Bluetooth keyboard. This problem does not happen if I use an external Bluetooth dongle.

(Side note: With BatteryBar Pro, I notice that power consumption falls suddenly whenever the Bluetooth module goes to sleep when the keyboard goes idle for more than 30 seconds, and at this point, it has difficulty 'waking up' when I start typing on the Bluetooth keyboard. But the problem also still happens when the laptop is plugged in!)

Any solution?

 

When my BT mouse goes to sleep after a little while, it takes a lot of moving and time to wake up again. But if I touch the scroll wheel, it wakes up at once. I now do this automatically and dont even notice it anymore. Maybe there is a key on your keyboard that behaves similarly?

 

Hmm....just started njoticing this as well and its a PITA at times. I use BT keyboard and mouse and it seems to go to sleep after about ten minutes of non use. Or...if it sleeps and I start it again no BT. I have been turning the switch on and off from underneath....

Needless, a BT expert who could assist would be appreciated.

Ideally, it would nice to have BT just when plugged in and not when on bat power...

 

go into device manager, right click on bluetooth and display property. select power management tab (most right) and untick 1st box. that should help, i think

 

Tx...should have known that...

 

That fixed my problem. The keyboard works perfectly....thanks!

I'll take slight extra battery drain anytime -- I'll sacrifice 30 minutes out of 8 hours of battery life for 100% reliably functioning Bluetooth devices! I like to tether to my cellphone, use a headset (for Sprint Captioned Telephone as I am deaf), and use a Stowaway Bluetoot external keyboard as a second keyboard (for chat, and for remote control for this laptop). Soon I'll also get a Bluetooth mouse, so that'll make 4 Bluetooth devices. The Bluetooth module now mandates almost 0.1 to 0.5 extra watts at all times now, but it's actually not too bad, because my Bluetooth devices respond nearly instantly even if they've been set aside for a while.

If I want to save power, I'll turn it off manually via the switch underneath the front the laptop -- rather than letting the laptop automatically put the Bluetooth to sleep (causing major annoying Bluetooth reconnection delays)

My BatteryBar power tests measured the Bluetooth idling as a 0.5 watt power increment, but the extra power usage seems to fluctuate between 0.1 and 0.5 watts, with surges of power whenever something is being transmitted (i.e. live headset, live typing).

Ideal Bluetooth sleep mode would have been a 2 second reconnect delay rather than a 15 second reconnect delay (which is what most Bluetooth dongles is dsigned to behave), but I'm happy to turn off Bluetooth power management, as the 63 watt hour battery is more than voluminous to allow me to have always-on Bluetooth. That worked.

 

It appears that 1810tray can be configured to turn on/off BT this way. Basically you create a power plan that runs when on battery power and on AC power. Then add a custom device on/off to the list