Troubleshooting FAQs

The RGB indicators are very helpful to determine the cause of connection issues. Please see "BT and USB indicators" section in the Glove80 User Guide.

To activate the RGB indicators, tap the MoErgo key (also known as the Magic key) on the left side.

The RGB indicators can tell you :

• Which device Glove80 is currently sending the keystrokes to
• Which of the Bluetooth Profiles are paired, and which of the Bluetooth Profiles are connected

To debug a connection issue, try the following steps:

• Use the RGB indicator to determine which device (i.e. USB or Bluetooth Profile) Glove80 is sending the keystrokes to. Look for the thumb key with a white LED.
• If the device Glove80 is sending keystrokes to is different from the device you want, try switching to that device as described in "Selecting BT Profile and USB-connected device" section of the Glove80 User Guide.
• Check the RGB indicator color of the device you want to send the keystrokes to. The color should give you a good idea why Glove80 is not sending keystrokes to the device you want to send to.
• If Glove80 indicates that the desired device is not paired, then try pairing procedure as described in "Pairing with a BLE host" section in the Glove80 User Guide.
• If Glove80 indicates that the desired device is paired but not connected, then it is possible that the other side has Bluetooth turned off or otherwise lost the Bluetooth pairing information. Try the "Troubleshooting" subsection of the "Pairing with a BLE host" section in the Glove80 User Guide.
  

NOTE: If you are dual-booting with multiple OSes, very specific setup configurations are required. Please see ZMK documentation for more details.

Is your left half of Glove80 connected to a USB charger/power brick?

Some chargers & power bricks pretend to be a USB host device. If your Glove80 has selected to use USB as the primary output device, then the Glove80 could be tricked into sending the keystrokes to the charger/power brick instead. To check if this is indeed the situation, please disconnect the USB charger/power brick and type on Glove80. If this is indeed the cause, to fix this problem, switch Glove80 to output to the BT Profile of the host device you want to connect to.

If the above procedure does not fix the problem, please see the previous FAQ entry titled "Glove80 is not sending keystrokes. How do I fix this?"

A successful pairing requires both the host device and Glove80 to recognize the pairing.

If you have previously paired the said host and the said Glove80, and subsequently removed the pairing from one side, attempts to pair again will fail.

To successfully pair, you need to remove the pairing information from both sides before attempting again.

To do so, please refer to the section titled "Unpairing from a BLE host" in the Glove80 User Guide.

After unpairing on both the host and the Glove80, try pairing again.

Please try the following steps:

1. Is the right half powered on?
Check that the power button on the right half is pressed in.

2. Is the right half out of battery?
Try plugging in the right half to a charger, and try again.

3. If you have recently updated the firmware, did you upload the same firmware to both halves?

If you are not sure, please reload the firmware to both halves again.

Occasionally the two halves may fail to establish a connection when you power on the right side. This is rare, but it may happen.

4. Power off the right half and power on again. See if that fixes the problem. If not try again a couple more times.

If not, there may be an extremely rare chance that one of the two halves has lost the Bluetooth pairing information with the other half.

5. Attempt re-pairing the left and right half according to the "Configuration factory reset and re-pairing left and right halves" section in the Glove80 User Guide. Please note that this will wipe off all the configuration information stored, including BT profiles.

Tap the MoErgo key (also known as "Magic Key"). If some RGB indicators turn on, it means that the battery is running low.

When the battery runs low, the Glove80 automatically switches off RGB to conserve battery power.

If no RGB indicators turn on when you tap the MoErgo key, the battery may be completely depleted or the power may be switched off.

1. First check that your particular Glove80 has RGB LEDs on the right half. The "Standard Edition" Glove80s in the Kickstarter/Backerkit campaigns do not have RGB LEDs on the right half.

2. Try typing on the right half, to check that it is not a connection problem between the left half and the right half.

3. When the battery runs low, the Glove80 automatically switches off RGB to conserve battery power. One way to test this is to plug the right half into a USB charger. If the RGB LED comes back, then the battery is running low.

4. Try switching off and on the RGB light pattern a couple of times. ZMK does not sync the RGB pattern between left and right when you power on the right half.

There are two ways. One way requires a correctly functioning ZMK firmware.

In this FAQ we document the fall-back mechanism which works even if the ZMK firmware is not functioning.

Click herefor an illustration and instructions.

Before Ventura v13.1, due to an issue with Ventura v13.0 and beta versions, it is not possible to simply copy the Glove80 UF2 firmware file to the finder to update the Glove80 firmware.

This problem has been resolved by Apple on macOS Ventura v13.1. We recommend that you upgrade to Ventura v13.1+.

ZMK currently does not provide this capability.

If you are unsure what version you are running, the best solution is to generate the latest version with the Glove80 Layout Editor and flash two Glove80 halves.

This is a timing issue between the bootloader and Windows. Effectively the Glove80 bootloader processes the new firmware and reboots too quickly for Windows to receive the completion acknowledgment.

This is okay and nothing needs to be done. The firmware has been flashed successfully, and Glove80 should work as normal after it has finished rebooting.

ZMK has known limitations with these indicators over a Bluetooth connection on certain operating systems.

However these indicators should work if the Glove80 is connected to the host device via a USB cable.

Design is all about finding a reasonable compromise between all the conflicting design goals.

Our first versions had 82 keys. One of our key objectives is to be able to easily bring the ergonomics of concave key well with us to meetings and on the road. We decided to remove the two keys so that we can reduce the height by 10 to 12mm, which makes a big difference in portability.

However we recognize that some people want to have F11 and F12 on the primary layer (by default they are on a secondary layer). F11 and F12 keycaps are included in the Glove80 box (if you chose labeled keycaps). So if you want to have physical F11 and F12 keys, please remap the keys using the Glove80 Layout Editor and replace the keycaps.

Unlike many other keyboards, Glove80 is designed to facilitate the easy interchange of keycaps. Every key uses the same keycap profile.

With 80 full-sized keys, Glove80 has more accessible keys (with minimal hand movement) than any other ergonomic keyboard (contoured or not) on the market.

ZMK is a powerful firmware, but as a result, it can be somewhat complicated.

On the Glove80 Discord server there are the #glove80-zmk channel for ZMK-related discussions and #glove80-layout-editor-and-keymaps channel for keymap/layout-related discussions.

The best place to start learning ZMK is with their excellent documentation at https://zmk.dev/docs.

ZMK has an active community on the ZMK Discord server. This is a great place for technical discussion around ZMK.

If you are looking to compile ZMK firmware without using the Glove80 Layout Editor, Glove80's ZMK configuration GitHub repository is at https://github.com/moergo-sc/glove80-zmk-config

If you are planning to modify the ZMK firmware source code, the official Glove80 ZMK distribution is at https://github.com/moergo-sc/zmk