HOWTO: Bluetooth (Page 1 of 2)

I was able to get bluetooth to recognize and pair with a Sony Ericsson HBH-DS220 headset, but my current challenge is to get the music players on my #! desktop (I've tried amarok, gxine and vlc so far) to recognize it as an available audio device.  The Volume Control GUI only sees a USB microphone - not the headset.  I'm thinking I might have to change something in my udev configuration, but was wondering if anyone else had encountered this before.  Thanks in advance!

We probably should sticky it for a while as well

I finally got my bluetooth headset to work with vlc! (Running cruncheee on an eee-901) Recipe in three simple steps (provided of course that you have bluetooth up and running according to the initial post by Nik_Doof):

1. Pair the headset with your laptop using the bluetooth-applet.

2. In ~/.asoundrc add:

pcm.bluetooth {
   type bluetooth
}

3. In ~/.config/vlc/vlcrc, uncomment and change the alsadev parameter to:

# string (ALSA Device Name)
alsadev=bluetooth

Voila! I think these are the absolute minimum changes needed. Start vlc and play a video or some music! (You might need to do a logout/login first for the .asoundrc change to take hold. This is still pretty much like magic to me...)

Sources: http://wiki.bluez.org/wiki/HOWTO/AudioDevices and http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/teach-it/bl … u-hh-24028

Thank you for the informative reply!  Following the instructions in the above link I was able to get my Sony Ericsson HBH-DS220 working perfectly under Ubuntu 8.10.  Crunchbang doesn't have the same GNOME GUI for sound configuration, so I'll have to figure out a different way to get it working there (my preference).

Thanks again!

Added the bluetooth applet on my eee 901, and it works with my Sony Ericsson W890i except a few things.

1) Nothing happens if I press "Browse files on device". I guess since this is a Gnome applet it wants to use the Nautilus filemanager. Can I make it use pcmanfm instead?

2) I can send files from my eee to my phone, but not the other way around. In fact, my phone can't find or connect to the eee. It does register the eee when I added the phone through bluetooth-applet, but still can't make a connection. As I'm more likely to send files from my phone, this is rather annoying... it worked on the default Xandros install, so I guess there's some software missing?

Edit: Ok, got sending from phone working. I installed the package "obexpushd" and added it to the autostart script (on its own line)

Last edited by san (2009-02-28 23:09:16)

Thanks, will definitely check blueman out.

Edit: Installed blueman. Not sure I like it more, since right now I don't need the more advanced features, and the notification can be a little annoying. I don't need to run obexpushd with blueman, though, but that's not the biggest problem. Filebrowsing is still not possible with pcmanfm, unfortunately, since it can't use the obex:// protocol.

Last edited by san (2009-03-01 01:23:35)

if you don't mind pulling in a bunch of kde dep's you could install dolphin...or there are some posts on here on how to use nautilus without it taking over the desktop. heres howto for nautilus http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … r-openbox/

edit: also if you want to use nautilus you'll need to move /usr/bin/crunchbang/nautilus to /usr/bin/crunchbang/nautilus.bak or launch it as /usr/bin/nautilus

Last edited by iggykoopa (2009-03-01 02:17:52)

Thank you Corenominal! Actually I already did, before reading your reminder... A reminder, I just wrote, since I'm a moron: I realized too late that the link was already there (in iggykoopa's post) — this is why I deleted my redundant query, hoping that no one read it yet. See my thread at Ubuntu Forums.

So, thanks again, and sorry for your unnecessary extra trouble in helping the idiot that I am!

P.S. See also this post at UF, w/ scrots.

Last edited by Piraja (2009-03-01 15:34:11)

I never use smilies, but there are exceptions that prove the rule
Now playing: Last.fm

Which app doesn't? I eventually switched to blueman and I'm happier with it.

I never use smilies, but there are exceptions that prove the rule
Now playing: Last.fm

has anyone gotten a bluetooth headset to work with skype?

Ok, here's what I did so far.

- Installed blueman to replace bluetooth (I like the interface better)
- Paired the bluetooth headset (Platronics Voyager Pro) to the pc through blueman
- Connected the headset service through blueman
- Created the file in ~/.asoundrc
pcm.bluetooth {
   type bluetooth
}
- Rebooted, just in case that would help

What do I still have to do to get the bluetooth headset to show up in the Volume Control GUI.  I've seen the Volume Control GUI work when I attach my USB speakers, but the same is not happening for the bluetooth headset, so what steps have I missed?