HOWTO: A quick way to connect to your bluetooth headset

[Chrissss]

Hi!

I think working with a bluetooth Headset is pretty annoying with linux. There's no way to quickly connect to your headset and get a visual feedback that the connection works. So here's a solution for that.

A small script which enables the connection and shows a popup via libnotify on your desktop. It will look like like this.



Please note: This won't help you to solve problems with your BT headset. You need a already configured bluetooth setup for this how-to. So before trying to do this how-to, make sure your setup is OK. For help how to do this, look e.g. here

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothSkype

To get this working make sure libnotify-bin is installed on your system

sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin

After that, you create the script

sudo gedit /usr/local/bin/headsetconnect

and paste this content

#!/bin/bash

# HeadsetConnect 1.0 connect by Chrissss
# you need libnotify-bin to run this script

# Enter the bluetooth address of your headset here
MAC=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

# Localisation
TITLE="Bluetooth"
CONNECTED="Connection to headset established."
ALLREADYCONNECTED="Connection to headset already exists."
FAILED="Connection to headset failed!"
BTLOGO=/usr/share/icons/gnome/48x48/stock/io/stock_bluetooth.png

# Now the magic
PID=`pidof btsco`

if [ ! $PID ]
then
  btsco -v -s -f $MAC
  if [ -e /tmp/bt_headset_connected ]
  then
    notify-send -i $BTLOGO -t 3000 "$TITLE" "$CONNECTED"
  else
    notify-send -i gtk-dialog-warning -t 3000 "$TITLE" "$FAILED"
    killall btsco
  fi
else
  notify-send  -u critical -i gtk-dialog-info -t 3000 "$TITLE" "$ALLREADYCONNEC
fi

Make sure to replace the "xx"s with the correct BT address of your headset. After that make the script executable

sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/headsetconnect

Well, you're done. Call

headsetconnect

out of a terminal window, or even better, put a starter inside the gnome bar.

CU
Christoph

[blanny]

I think the script got cut off. Do you think you could attach it?

blanny

[mikalh]

My new headset's still charging, so I haven't been able to try the script properly yet, but I think the only thing that got cut off was
"$ALLREADYCONNEC
to
"$ALLREADYCONNECTED"

[dave_abrahams]

FYI, this isn't working reliably for me. It's much less slick (e.g. runs in foreground), but a script containing

sudo modprobe snd-bt-sco
dbus-send --system --dest=org.bluez /org/bluez/hci0 org.bluez.Adapter.SetMode string:discoverable
btsco -v  00:03:89:F1:7A:95

does work reliably for me. I'd like to find a way to integrate the two.

[joeashcraft]

How did you find the MAC address of your headset? In the SkypeBluetooth howto it says to use kbluetoothd. I couldn't find that in the repos, and i'm using gnome. any ideas?

[Aetherius]

Didn't know where else to post this but I made something similar. This script will search and display all available bluetooth devices and allow you to pick one. Works great for me, but theres only 3 BT devices in range so it needs some real-world testing.

dependencies:

bluez-utils bluez-btsco zenity

please run

sudo modprobe snd_bt_sco

if you haven't already

#!/bin/bash
killall btsco
zenity --info --text="Click ok to search for your headset. Please ensure that your headset is in 'discoverable' mode."
results=`hcitool scan`
results=${results:13}
declare -a macaddresses
declare -a names
i=1
temp2=""

while [ -n "$results" ]; do
	temp=$results
	macaddresses[$i]=${temp:0:18}
	results=${results:18}
	temp=${results%00:*}
	names[$i]=$temp
	results=${results:${#temp}}
	i=$i+1;
done

if [ 0 -lt ${#macaddresses[@]} ]; then
	address=`zenity --text="Please select your headset from the following list.\
	\nIf your headset does not appear here click cancel." --list --column Address --column Name  ${macaddresses[1]} "${names[1]}"  ${macaddresses[2]} "${names[2]}"  ${macaddresses[3]} "${names[3]}"  ${macaddresses[4]} "${names[4]}"  ${macaddresses[5]} "${names[5]}"  ${macaddresses[6]} "${names[6]}"  ${macaddresses[7]} "${names[7]}"  ${macaddresses[8]} "${names[8]}"  ${macaddresses[9]} "${names[9]}"  ${macaddresses[10]} "${names[10]}" `
	if [ -n "$address" ]; then
		btsco -f -r -s $address
		if [ -a /tmp/bt_headset_connected ]; then
			zenity --info --text="Connection Successful!"
		else
			zenity --warning --text="Something's not right here, check the README and try again."
		fi
	else
		zenity --warning --text="Please ensure you device is discoverable and restart this program to search again."
	fi	
else
	zenity --warning --text="No bluetooth devices detected. Please ensure you device is discoverable and restart this program."
fi

Please criticize comment and bug-report, sorry if I'm stepping on toes Chrissss

[hexo1125]

I installed bluez-utils bluez-btsco zenity already.
However, sudo modprobe btsco returns module not found.
I also tried using module-assistant to search for btsco and cannot find it.

Do I have to build that module somehow?

[Aetherius]

sorry

sudo modprobe snd_bt_sco

my bad :corrected

[hexo1125]

Actually, I also tried snd_bt_sco and still I cannot find the module.
I did a quick google on it and found that

For SCO (two-way voice quality audio) you need a kernel with the emu10k1 driver selected (this is one of the drivers that forces the inclusion of the implementation of "snd_hwdep_new")

It also has somethng to do with ALSA I think.
I'm using edgy with custom compiled 2.6.19 kernel. I might not have selected that.

.. or maybe it's something else...

[glennric]

Actually, I also tried snd_bt_sco and still I cannot find the module.
I did a quick google on it and found that


It also has somethng to do with ALSA I think.
I'm using edgy with custom compiled 2.6.19 kernel. I might not have selected that.

.. or maybe it's something else...

You have to make sure CONFIG_HWDEP_NEW is set (as you mentioned above) and compile the kernel module for your custom kernel. The source for this is included with the sources for btsco in a subdirectory called kernel.