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The Bluez, Pt. 1: Connectivity

For the past few weeks I’ve been watching a lot of movies and television shows on my computer.  And if I wanted to watch with headphones I’d feel chained to the computer, without any freedom to move about while continuing to listen.

So I’m chillin at home and I’m staring at these bluetooth headphones that I bought for the ladyfriend’s new Sony NWZ-A829BLK.  Strangely enough the thought never occurred to me to connect them to my computer

Linux users like me will know that while support for bluetooth on Linux has been out for quite a while, it’s a bit buggy and tricky as shit…as shit.  So I take a deep breath, read a few positive reviews about the D-Link DBT-120 on Linux, and whip out the plastic.

It arrived via UPS yesterday and I spent all night working on it.  I’m running a “WinBlowz” XP and Ubuntu Gutsy dual-boot, so I tried the device on XP first.  Obviously, any idiot can pop in the installation CD and click away from there.  The utility that came with it worked on the fly not only with headphones, but also allowed file transfers with my Blackberry Pearl.

To get it working on Linux, I used two sources and a tiny bit of guesswork:

• Ubuntu Wiki article on the D-Link DBT-122 (It seemed to have worked for my DBT-120).
• FOSSwire (To get A2DP working).
  
  • UPDATE: FOSSwire notes that the above instructions are not supported in Ubuntu 8.10.  They have provided these instructions instead, which I have tested and confirmed to work on Ubuntu 8.10:  Better Bluetooth Audio.

Well it worked in Linux with limited results.  I’m able to send files from my computer to my phone.  The bluetooth headphones work, but only with gstreamer-based applications like Rhythmbox.  I’ll continue to tinker with it over time, but I’m positive that future updates of these libraries will improve connectivity.

UPDATE:  File transfers with the Blackberry Pearl work both ways in Linux!

Tags: a2dp, bluetooth, linux, netflix, rhythmbox, winblowz, windows xp