A while ago, I bought this Bluetooth headset from Motorola, to be able to talk handsfree with my GSM. Since both work perfectly together, I was very much interested whether it also could cooperate with my Bluetooth USB dongle. After Googling for some time, I found this site, which contains a driver for ALSA to use a Bluetooth headset as input/output device. Using the patch for Linux 2.6.7 (also mentioned on the same site), I was able to get a working connection between my headset and my computer! Here's a tiny HowTo on how I did it:
Mini how to get a bluetooth headset working with Linux
- First, I re-compiled my Linux kernel, after patching it with the
snd-bt-scopatch from Niko Berger (see [2]). I simply followed the README found on that page for that. - After loading the
snd-bt-scomodule and verifying that it was loaded correctly, I tried to compile thebtscouser-space program. However, this failed miserably on my Debian machine. As it turned out, Debian contains a glitch in its kernel-headers, causing some packages to fail, as it did with this package. After some fiddeling around, it turned out that a small patch was needed in order to get it compile correctly:
[localhost:~/btsco-0.3]$ patch -p1 < btsco-0.3.1.debian.patch patching file btsco.c [localhost:~/btsco-0.3]$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/btsco \ --with-alsa-prefix=/usr/lib/alsa --with-alsa-inc-prefix=/usr/include/alsa \ --with-kernel=2.6.7 ... [localhost:~/btsco-0.3]$ make && make install
- Simply running
btscowith the address of my headset and its channel was enough to get it up and running!
[localhost:~/btsco-0.3]$ /opt/btsco/bin/btsco 00:07:A4:01:1F:76 1 Device is 0:0 Voice setting: 0x0060 RFCOMM channel connected
- If running
btscofails with the message: ``The voice setting must be 0x060'', you should run the following command:hciconfig hci0 voice 0x0060and try to re-runbtsco. - Now, push the “connect” button of your headset, and run
aplay:
[localhost:~/btsco-0.3]$ aplay -D plughw:Headset /home/jawi/test.wav
- Unfortunately,
aplaydoes have some problems(?) with converting the audio to the proper rates of my headset, making all audio sound like “The Smurfs” :-S. Recorded samples of my headset are played correctly. - MPlayer, the mediaplayer for Linux, also supports alsa as audio-device, so you can listen to your favourite movies/music on your Bluetooth headset (albeit in mono).