Problem with Noppoo Choc Mini

[megabuster]

Hey,

Recently having some keyboard trouble. I use a mechnical USB noppoo choc mini. The board is super nice, its worked great up until recently. Now my computer is kind of in the process of turning to ****, I'm on a HP laptop that is about 2.5 years old and I'm building a new cpu to replace this shortly.

The keyboard fails to reliably be detected by USB. Sometimes it is plugged in and not detected or responsive at all. Sometimes it works fine (which is becoming what seems increasingly rare.). Sometimes the LED keys illuminate (caps lock, scroll, etc.) but the keyboard is not responsive or detected.

Occasionally the noise for a USB connection comes through when the keyboard is plugged in, but seemingly at random with regard to the above scenarios.

There's actually two very specific scenarios with the LED keys illuminating, either the switch lock (unique to this board) lights up and can be toggled but nothing else works. Or the Scroll Lock, Num lock and Caps Lock all are lit up, and stay that way, but no keys on the board will work.

Now finding specific help is quite hard from the manufacturer. It kind of seems like a driver issue, like it may have become recently corrupted, but I am having trouble finding an appropriate update. All the free driver type scanners available only detect, my laptop keyboard, and a couple other random keyboard titles under the control panel->keyboards section. (full list: standard 101/102-key, microsoft ehome remote control keyboard keys, microsoft ehome MCIR keyboard, microsoft ehome MCIR 109 keyboard)

This may be related to larger issue with this dying laptop. That is sometimes, ANYTHING connected to it, will not re-connect properly. If you unplug headphones while using a youtube video on chrome, you must close chrome on reconnecting the headphones to get any sound. If you unplug the AC adapter it won't work unless the CPU is shutdown and AC is reconnected.

Nonetheless the USB ports seem to work fine, they all operate with my other periphereals, so I don't think they have given out or anything like that.

I've tried other general help areas, but no communities would really be experienced with this specific type of keyboard other than here.

So, any clue?

[blainchen]

Hey megabuster,

Sorry that I can't help you out, but: I'm just experiencing the same issue and trying to work it out.
None of my computers (Mac Book Pro running MacOSX, AMD system running Gentoo, HP Notebook running Windows7, Intel system running WindowsXP) detects this keyboard.
Caps, Num and Scroll Lock are lit. Every other USB or PS/2 keyboard I have is working (And that's a huge pile of keyboards).
I think that's some sort of hardware malfunction of the Noppoo.
If I find something, I will let you know.

[slueth]

Maybe it is installing drivers, sometimes it takes a while. 10 secs?.    Also if you are plugging more then one keyboards might have problems.  Might be a problem with your usb wire or connector on your noppoo.  Do you have any other computers you can connect the noppoo to? Try to find if the problem is the comp or the keyboard.

[SadButTrue]

Mine shipped with a short on the scroll lock led. Simply squeezing the top of the keyboard turned the light on. Maybe your problems are related. You may need to get soldering

[Tony]

I have just bought two Noppoo Choc keyboards and one has similar problems you have described.

I have found a solution that works for me (not every time) but you can try it for yourself.

The main culprit is that the usb human interface drivers are in conflict with other usb hub controller, usb composite device or usb keyboard controllers that have been installed. Noppoo keyboards' trying to emulate 3 keyboards at the same time compounds the problem.

You have to uninstall all of them and to let Windows XP or Windows 7 reinstall all of them, hopefully fix the problem. You can use device manager of Windows to do so, or use this utility to do it faster for you.

This solution involves an attempt to remove old/unused USB device drivers that may be inadverdently causing conflicts with devices currently plugged in.  It's basically an extreme version of the 'uninstall usb hubs in device manager' method.  Download the following programs:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/device_manager_view.html

Run USBDeview and go into the Options menu and check the first three "Display" options.  Next, shift click everything on the list, and uninstall via the File menu.  

If you use Windows 64 bits you must use the 64 bit version of the program.

Vista/Win 7 should autodetect and reinstall any drivers for USB devices plugged in automatically.  If you're on XP you may need to reboot.

If that doesn't work, try DevManView and sort by the "Connected" column - ignore anything that says Yes in that column.  Only uninstall USB related devices that are "No" in the "Connected" column.  Do NOT uninstall any devices like interrupt controllers, ACPI devices, motherboard resources, or 'system' anything, or you will ruin your windows install.

[macro9]

the connection between the usb wire and PCBA board is  loose . just get a new one .
this problem is common on the fisrt batch of mini 84 , in China ,Noppoo will offer you a new usb wire for free to replace the old one .
they fix this problem in the later batch , the white pbt version does not have this problem .