Bluetooth & Bitpim with LG Phones

[quazi]

For those of you who don't know, Bitpim is a great tool for transferring files back and forth between phones and your PC (ie. backing up contacts and making your own mp3 ringtones). This tutorial will be given for a LG VX-8300 specifically, but it should work with later (maybe some earlier) models.

First, get bitpim from the repositories and make sure that bluetooth utilities are installed:

sudo apt-get install bitpim bluez-utils

Start bluetooth with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth start

In your phone, go under the Main Menu -> Settings & Tools -> Bluetooth. Then, highlight Add New Device and under settings select "discovery mode" (the location and name of this option may vary from model to model. What this option does is enable your phone to be seen by your system for a few minutes.)

Then find out your phone's mac address and connect with the commands:

$ hcitool scan
$ sudo hcitool cc ##:##:##:##:##:##
$ sudo hcitool auth ##:##:##:##:##:##

, where ##:##:##:##:##:## is the mac address of the phone.

This last line may or may not be necessary. When I entered it, I got the output "Not connected." However, I'd already previously connected my phone with the laptop through gnome-bluetooth in a previous failed attempt to get bluetooth working and had already authorized my phone for connection, so I ignored the message.

Now we need to find out what channel to connect rfcomm to, so enter

sdptool browse ##:##:##:##:##:##

and find the section with "Service Name: BT DIAG." Look under "Protocal Descriptor List" and find the Channel number:

Service Name: BT DIAG
Service RecHandle: 0x10005
Service Class ID List:
  "Serial Port" (0x1101)
Protocol Descriptor List:
  "L2CAP" (0x0100)
  "RFCOMM" (0x0003)
    Channel: 16
Language Base Attr List:
  code_ISO639: 0x656e
  encoding:    0x6a
  base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
  "Serial Port" (0x1101)

Here it's 16.

Now run

rfcomm connect 0 ##:##:##:##:##:## ??

where ?? is the channel number.

At this point the phone should be connected via bluetooth with ubuntu and we can run bitpim. Start it up with

bitpim

Click on settings (icon with wrench on screwdriver) and under Com Port select /dev/rfcomm0. If you know your phone type select it under Phone Type. Hit OK and click on the icon with the magnifying glass over the phone to detect your phone. After doing this I get an error message

No phone detected/recognized.  
Run Settings?

After doing this your phone should be connected (regardless of what Bitpim tells you). Try getting your phonebook data from your phone to verify that the connection works.

These directions were adopted from instructions for an LG VX-9800: http://www.quietearth.us/vx9800.htm

[lightenup]

Sweet worked like a champ! Also I would like to add that folks might want to go to the BitPim web site and get the latest version as it adds support for newer phones:

http://www.bitpim.org/#download

You can just download the deb and install it and then run `bitpim` from a console window (ie. lightenup@neutron:~$ bitpim )

[HyperHacker]

I've been trying to get this to work and it just doesn't want to cooperate. When I run "sdptool browse" there is no BT DIAG section. Bitpim shows "This port is active but not available for use" and "It was not possible to open this port."

[asuastrophysics]

i followed the entire guide and it doesnt work. BT DIAG is not in the console.

this is ridiculous. yet another complete waste of my time. in windows, it works immediately without any flaws. in ubuntu, it doesnt work period. what a stupid OS.

im going back to windows. what a waste of half an hour for NOTHING.

there is absolutely no hardware support in linux. period. somebody needs to axe this entire project and do us all a favor.

[quazi]

I tried these instructions in Jaunty and they still work for me (although I need to use an older version of Bitpim than the one in the repos).

My linux machine is broken currently (literally, the video card is fried), so I can't really be of any help. Make sure you follow all instructions correctly and make sure you have the right Mac address. Also what make are your phones?

[agenthex]

I tried this method, and everything worked including the rfcomm command, but when I tried BitPim, it failed to detect my phone. I was finally able to get it working by using the -r (for RAW mode) command with rfcomm.

I had created a blank rfcomm file in /etc/bluetooth/ and edited the rfcomm.conf file to add an entry for my phone.

rfcomm -r connect 4

This established a raw mode connection to my phone and allowed BitPim to finally see it. Thanks to quazi for the first post and the rfcomm man pages for the -r switch.