Nick Glover

My friend just got me one of the official PS3 Wireless Keypads. At first, I thought it would be only marginally useful, but as it turns out, it has its own battery and connects via bluetooth rather than through the controller’s connection. So that got me thinking about whether I could connect it to my phone or other bluetooth things. I couldn’t get it working on my phone, but it works almost exactly like I would expect it to on my computer (a Macbook Pro). Why is this useful? My brother was just talking to me about how he wanted to find a small, wireless keyboard he could use to control a media center PC from the couch. The PS3 Wireless Keypad not only gives you that (and smaller than any other keyboard), but it also gives you a touchpad to move the mouse around if necessary. On top of all that, it’s also only $50, which is a lot cheaper than other bluetooth keyboard/mouse combos. Here’s how to set it up (sorry, I don’t have a Windows computer with bluetooth, but I imagine the procedure is similar):

1. If you don’t already have the bluetooth icon in your menu bar, open system preferences and click “Bluetooth.” If it is in the menu bar, just click the icon and select “Open Bluetooth Preferences…” You can see that I’ve already set up my keypad in this screenshot.

2. If it isn’t already on, turn on the bluetooth connection by checking the “On” box. Then click the little + sign under the list of devices.

3. On the screen that pops up, click “Continue.” On the next screen, select “Keyboard” and hit “Continue.”

4. Hold the blue button (on the left shoulder) on the PS3 keypad and turn it on. Keep holding the button until lights start flashing. It will then show up on the list of devices on the computer’s setup assistant. Select it and click “Continue.” It will give you this screen telling you to input some numbers (your numbers will probably be different):

5. A new window will pop up telling you it can’t figure out what keyboard your using.

You will notice at this point that when you try to move your mouse to the new window, your trackpad no longer works. Click the touchpad on/off button on the PS3 keypad. Ta-da! It works! Just like on the PS3, the left and right arrows operate as your left and right mouse buttons.

6. It’s going to tell you to push the key to the right of your left shift key on the keypad. I think the keypad isn’t in the special Apple list of keypads or something because it can’t seem to figure it out, but I might just be too impatient to wait.

7. Like I said, it doesn’t seem to be able to figure it out, so just push a key on your normal keyboard and it will give you the option to skip this step. Click “Skip.”

8. It will then have you select the language of your keypad. For me, this was “ANSI” for United States. Select it and click “Done.”

9. That window will close and you’ll see the bluetooth setup assistant again. You can just hit “Quit.” Your keypad is all set up!

You’ll notice that not all of the button work quite like they do on the PS3. For instance, hitting the blue button and then the comma key doesn’t give you an apostraphe. All the letters work, though, and so does the touchpad, so even with a couple buttons being off and not having a ctrl, option, apple, or windows key, it could still be pretty useful as a small, relatively cheap media center controller. If I were only going to use it for that and not for PS3, I might saw off some of the extra plastic to make it lie flatter.