Bluetooth on Ubuntu

Introduction

Bluetooth is finally emerging as a robust and widely supported local area communications technology for short-distance wireless data transfer. Bluetooth is being used for communications with cellphones, cameras, headsets and microphones, keyboards, mice, PDA's and storage devices.

Devices

Most of the newer laptops come with Bluetooth support built right in. If you are using a desktop or do not have bluetooth support built in, you can use a USB Bluetooth dongle to get bluetooth support.

A list of Bluetooth devices supported under Linux is listed [http://www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth/features.html here]. If your device has an HCI version listed, it should work under Linux.

Installation and Configuration

Open up a terminal window, and install the requisite packages and their dependencies.

sudo apt-get install bluez-utils

Then, connect your Bluetooth device if you are using one. Then restart the Bluetooth services by doing

sudo /etc/init.d/bluez-utils restart

Verify that your bluetooth device has been detected, and the appropriate modules loaded by viewing the lsusb (in case of usb device) output.

lsusb output:

Device 005: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)

Also, view the output of the command hcitool dev which will give you a listing of bluetooth devices on your computer.

hcitool output:

Devices:
        hci0    00:11:95:00:1A:CF

Your bluetooth device will have a different id. If you get all zeros, then try restarting the bluez-utils service and try again.

Setup Devices

Find Device Addresses

To connect to a Bluetooth device, you will need to find the address of the device. Make the device discoverable (look for a "Connect" button on many keyboards and mice or look in the device's manual) and then search for the device with this command:

sudo hidd --search

Each device should have its own address in a aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff format.

Connect Devices for Current Session Only

To temporarily connect to a device, use this command where 'aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff' is the address of the device you want to connect to:

sudo hidd --connect aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff

Your device should now be connected for the current session.

Connect Devices at Startup

To connect the device at startup every time, use the following commands to edit the configuration file:

sudo cp /etc/default/bluez-utils /etc/default/bluez-utils_backup
sudo nano /etc/default/bluez-utils

Look for the following line:

HIDD_ENABLED=0

Change it to:

HIDD_ENABLED=1

Next, look in the same file for a line similar to:

HIDD_OPTIONS="--connect AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF --server"

Add additional "connect" arguments for each device that you want connected at startup so that it looks like this:

HIDD_OPTIONS="--connect AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF --connect AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF --connect AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF --server"

Save the file.

Finally, add HIDP to /etc/modules:

echo hidp | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

Your Bluetooth devices should now be connected at startup.

CategoryDocumentation CategoryCleanup