[Sussex] Bluetooth....

[Karl E. Jorgensen]

On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 10:18:11PM +0000, Richie Jarvis wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I am currently running Fedora Core 3 on my laptop, and want to get my 
> bluetooth Jabra 250 headset.  I have a bluetooth dongle, which is 
> recognised by the system, and I have managed to get the headset to 
> appear in the Gnome bluetooth manager:
> 
> Bluetooth: Core ver 2.7
> NET: Registered protocol family 31
> Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
> Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
> Bluetooth: HCI USB driver ver 2.7
> usbcore: registered new driver hci_usb
> hci_cmd_task: hci0 command tx timeout
> hci_cmd_task: hci0 command tx timeout
> Bluetooth: L2CAP ver 2.6
> Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
> Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.3
> Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
> Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized

So far, so good!

> The jabra appears fine in the manager, but nothing happens when 
> clicked.  The device has gone from pairing mode to standby mode - just 
> wondering what the next stage in the connection is?  There doesn't seem 
> to be alot of information on google that I can find (probably searching 
> wrong!)

I use the bluetooth alsa driver, which turns the headset (or is it
headpiece?) into a sound card:
    http://bluetooth-alsa.sourceforge.net/

The recipe basically is:
    $ CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous at cvs.sf.net:/cvsroot/bluetooth-alsa
    $ cvs login
    $ cvs co bt
... compile until executable and read documentation to taste.

The key is to modprobe the snd-bt-sco kernel module. This will make
another ALSA sound "card" available.

However: for data to pass to/from the bluetooth headset, you need to
keep the "btsco" program running:

    $ btsco ${bluetoothaddress} 2

while this is running you can play:

    $ aplay -D plughw:Headset somefile.wav

(you may want to check the volume first!!)

... and you can record yourself sneezing:

    $ arecord -D plughw:Headset sneeze.wav

As it turns out, having stubbles can really cause a lot of unnecessary
noise on it :-) 

Or you can just muck about:

    $ arecord -D plughw:Headset  - | aplay -D plughw:PCI - &
    $ arecord -D plughw:PCI  - | aplay -D plughw:Headset - &

and play with the mixer settings until you avoid squealing.

Downsides:
- while the bluetooth connection is active (i.e. btsco is running) you
  will suffer from some low-level noise in the headset
- if btsco is not running, any app trying to play/record will *hang*

> I notice Karl and Steve seemed to have it working - whats the secret 
> fellas??

No secret - just geeky fun :-)

PS: If you're into BlueTooth and MythTV,  then you might find this
interesting:
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/mythtv-plugin/

Hope this helps
-- 
Karl E. Jørgensen
karl at jorgensen.com   http://karl.jorgensen.com
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