⚡ wirelessly share your wired keyboard and mouse between multiple devices with a pi zero

notes for self:

• web server
  • allows for config at runtime
    • pairing/(dis-)connecting bt devices
    • later: configuring which hid devices to use
    • later: toggle power to devices
      • can i do this?? would be neat if i could...
      • for this to work optimally the pi would basically need to always be on, but my kb + mouse have leds that are annoying at night
      • would be sick if i could turn peripherals off after an hr or 2 of inactivity
  • persist in sqlite db w/ sqlalchemy (? is that rly necessary... i kinda wanna just pickle a dict and call it a day, wont be storing too much anyway 🙈)
• frontend
  • i want to have a physical interface ideally
  • i have small oled display + encoder and other hw for control which i could run off the zero
  • i also have an esp32 devkit, maybe i run interface off of that (for no reason, would just be fun to play with)
    • can i just pull 5v off of the pi onto the esp32? idk investigate later ig
• the interesting stuffs
  • using evdev to read keystrokes and eventually mouse movements which we'll forward over bt to host devices, seems simple enough
  • using google/bumble for bluetooth stuff and im honestly in way over my head, will need to do some more reading lol
  • going to use the normal linux bluetooth stack instead (bluez)
• useful links... people seem to have done similar ish stuff before:
  • https://github.com/4ndrej/hidclient/tree/master
    • written in c :/
  • https://impythonist.wordpress.com/2014/02/01/emulate-a-bluetooth-keyboard-with-the-raspberry-pi/
    • python 2.7, old, has dead links to code :/
  • https://github.com/AnesBenmerzoug/Bluetooth_HID (⭐)
    • has a good amount of code I can steal for mouse AND keyboard
  • https://gist.github.com/ukBaz/a47e71e7b87fbc851b27cde7d1c0fcf0
    • similar to above, but has good explanations too
  • https://novelbits.io/bluetooth-hid-devices-an-intro/
    • good reference, more specific to bt hid
  • https://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Wireless/Bluetooth/RN-HID-User-Guide-v1.0r.pdf
    • more specifics on bt hid
  • looking through these links and it looks like this will be really easy if i just want to copy code and get this working...
  • https://www.bluetooth.com/bluetooth-resources/bluetooth-for-linux/ (⭐)
    • guide specific to dev with bluez, contains a pretty good overview of bluetooth specifics too
    • https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/The-Bluetooth-LE-Primer-V1.1.0.pdf