Using your Bluetooth Headset with Fedora

by mostro — last modified Mar 22, 2008 06:06 PM — expired

— filed under: Peripheral Solutions, Multimedia Solutions

if you have a bluetooth headset at hand, maybe the one that you use with your cell phone, chances are that you can use it with your PC/Laptop for Skype calls and other applications. This article is based on John Moylan's howto (see references for link).

Applicable to Fedora Versions

Fedora Core 6+

Requirements

A working sound card on your system
A bluetooth headset
In this case, Motorola's H350 and H850 were used. Please check this list for headsets known to work with current drivers.
Bluetooth interface in your PC/Laptop
Bluetooth audio for Linux (BTSCO) available at the Bluetooth alsa project page

Doing the Work

Install bluetooth libraries and utilities. Open a Terminal window and perform the following steps as root :

# yum install bluez-utils bluez-libs gnome-bluetooth bluez-hcidump bluez-libs-devel gnome-bluetooth-libs bluez-gnome

Check if your bluetooth interface is working properly:
```
# hcitool dev
Devices:
        hci0    00:16:41:62:6A:C0
```
The result should display the local configured device and its MAC address.

Install latest ALSA packages and sources::

# alsa-tools alsa-lib alsa-utils alsa-lib-devel

Pair your headset with your machine.
The first step is to put your device into pairing mode. Each model has its own way of doing that so please follow the instructions that came with your own headset.

When done, scan your headset from your machine:
```
# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
        00:1A:0E:14:D2:0D       Motorola H350
```
The result should display the bluetooth device found its MAC address. Having this information we can proceed to connect the headset with your machine:
```
# hcitool cc 00:1A:0E:14:D2:0D
```
When asked to enter the PIN use the one correspondent to your headset. Motorolas use 0000.

Install ALSA drivers and daemons (BTSCO).

You need Automake and your kernel sources:

# yum install automake kernel-devel

Download BTSCO sources:

# cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@bluetooth-alsa.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/bluetooth-alsa login
# cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@bluetooth-alsa.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/bluetooth-alsa co -P btsco

Build and install:

# cd 
# ./bootstrap
# ./configure
# make
# make install
# make maintainer-clean

Now the kernel module:

# cd kernel
# make
# make install
# depmod -e
# make clean

Load the kernel module:

# modprobe snd-bt-sco

Connect btsco to your headset:

# btsco -v 00:1A:0E:14:D2:00
btsco v0.42
Device is 1:0
Voice setting: 0x0060
RFCOMM channel 2 connected
Using interface hci0

You're done! Choose the applications you want to use and configure them.

Applications

There are lots of applications you can use your headset with, let's configure a few well known.

How about Skype? It's nice to phone someone while preparing your next coffee, eh?

Open Skype and go to Tools >> Options >> Sound devices. Choose your recently added "BT Headset" as your in/out/ringing device:

Done.

What about listening to your favorite? Let's configure XMMS.

Open XMMS and go to Options >> Preferences. ALSA should be selected as the output plugin and hit Configure. Select your "BT Headset" as the Audio device to use.

That's it.

More Information

Disclaimer

We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #fedora on irc.freenode.net

Added Reading

John Moylan's Linux and Bluetooth Headset howto
Geento Wiki: HOWTO use a bluetooth headset
Bluetooth ALSA drivers and daemons

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