Kubuntu seeing my keyboard & mouse batteries as just the mouse battery

[steve7233]

It keeps telling me my mouse battery was less than 10%. It turns out the mouse is fine it is the keyboard that has a low battery. If I don't use the keyboard for a few minutes then the first key I press triggers the low mouse battery warning but using my mouse with a charged battery doesn't trigger the warning. It may have something to do with having purchased the mouse and keyboard in the past 2 years and the fact that Logitech has an annoying habit of changing the values used by the multi-reciver with every revision of their hardware. It may be that the Ubuntu drivers don't get updated often enough to keep up with Logitech's changes. Is there a workaround I can use until Ubuntu gets this fixed?

Keyboard= Logitech Ergo K860
Mouse = Logitech G602

[rab0171610]

Are they using the same USB dongle or separate USB dongles for each device?

[steve7233]

The same.
Suppose to be able to handle several devices at once. That's why I have a Logitech mouse and a Logitech keyboard so there shouldn't be any conflicts but since I am using Linux...

[claydoh]

It will be entirely on the dongle and its firmware, not really the generic mouse driver in the kernel. As I understand it, the system can only read what the dongle sends, so you may be at the mercy of that dongle, if you are using a single one. Logitech do sometimes update the firmwares via the fwupd utility, and also via Discover, but is not done all the often.
You can check using the command line, if you want to see:
$ fwupdmgr refresh --force && fwupdmgr update


An alternative might be to use Solaar to manage things, which also provides its own battery icon in the systray. It might read both devices better, or confirm that the dongle's firmware is just not going to work the way we'd like.
https://pwr-solaar.github.io/Solaar/
This is in the standard 22.04 repos, with a PPA for a slightly newer version:
https://launchpad.net/~solaar-unifyi.../ubuntu/stable

Using Solaar, it might be worth trying to clear the pairings in the dongle, and re-adding them back.
I have used it in the past to fix odd problems with Logi stuff in the past, via re-pairing.

[rab0171610]

the system can only read what the dongle sends, so you may be at the mercy of that dongle, if you are using a single one

For simplicity and ease of troubleshooting, I no longer use a mouse/keyboard combo that share a dongle. I buy the Logitech keyboard and mouse separately, so that they each have their own dongle. If one stops working or battery gets low, it makes it easier to figure out where the problem is. As Claydoh points out, the information about the battery getting low is probably being reported by the dongle, which may not distinguish which device needs the battery changed in a way that is understood in Kubuntu.

[steve7233]

I got Solaar but what is the command to launch it? I tried solaar but it must be something else.

[steve7233]

Never mind I found it. The keyboard is 20% and the mouse is 50%. I have to wait for Amazon Prime to bring me some more AAA's for the keyboard as all I have are AA batteries. Thanks for yourhelp claydoh.