OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => General Support and Discussion => Zaurus General Forums => Archived Forums => Accessories => Topic started by: zbones on January 07, 2004, 07:47:13 pm
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HI,
I am after a bluetooth card and spotted this on EBAY.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...6&category=3730 (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2777746736&category=3730)
Does anybody know what card this is, and will it work on a C760?
or this one?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...5&category=3730 (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2777676825&category=3730)
Everybody raves about the socket card and I would buy one, but the last post I saw concerning them said that the new revision (G) does not work, and you have to get a revision F card.
Does this still apply? I think it may be hard to find a revision (F) card now.
Peter.
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It looks as if it\'ll use the BlueZ drivers with the prism chipset. http://bluez.sourceforge.net/download/zaurus/ (http://bluez.sourceforge.net/download/zaurus/)
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I\'ve seen a few of the latter card on the US eBay site as well, and since my experiment with the AmbiCom BT2000-CF card has had a sad ending thus far, I might try it out.
However, I\'d hate to order it and find out that it doesn\'t work as expected/hoped...
Are there any cards <in stores/on sale now> that defn work with the 5500?
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I\'ve got the second one [http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2777676825&category=3730 ] and though it\'s id is present in the bluetooth.conf (commented out as poorly recognized card) I\'ve not been able
to configure it.
(the drivers loads fine but hcid shows no mac address and I\'m unable to attach it to a serial)
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It looks as if it\'ll use the BlueZ drivers with the prism chipset.http://bluez.sourceforge.net/download/zaurus/
Erm, the prism chipset is a WiFi chipset. Nothing to do with Bluetooth.
Also the packages and instructions at the BlueZ Sourceforge site are out of date and incomplete. They\'re also only for the SL-5500 2.x ROM which has an older kernel.
The latest BlueZ stuff is at:
http://community.zaurus.com/projects/bluez (http://community.zaurus.com/projects/bluez)
...with my latest howto at:
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/modules.php...ename=Bluetooth (http://www.zaurususergroup.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpWiki&file=index&pagename=Bluetooth)
I wouldn\'t go for either of these cards. Unless you know what chipset they use, you cannot guarentee compatibility and there are a lot more Bluetooth chipsets than WiFi.
A lot of cards coming out now (like Socket, Bluetake, etc) use the CSR UART based chipset, which is a pain to get working with the BlueZ drivers since they have to get binded as a serial card first (although they do work).
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hmm, the second card as no id or vendor except Generic,
though a I got a manfid of 0x0279, 0x950b which seems to indicate a CSR UART chipset.
I binded it to btuart_cs driver but I am unable attach it to a serial with hciattach thereafter.
Also Billionton Bluetooth Card is reported as not working though with a CSR chipset here:
* http://www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth/devices.html (http://www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth/devices.html).
My conclusion is at all CSR based card are not equal.
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The list at Marcel Holtmann\'s site is a little out of date or rather it reflects the fact that you have to jump through several hoops to get some of these cards working every time you use them.
The way most of these awkward CSR UART based cards can be made to work is described half way through this DevNet thread: http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?...?showtopic=5175 (http://www.zaurus.com/dev/board/index.php?showtopic=5175)
If you search the DevNet boards for Billionton I think you may find someone got it working in this way.
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Thanks, I now see that there is much more to be tried : affix drivers other bluetooth drivers .....
I will try to report my success/ failure if I find the time to try all this (and if i didn\'t sell this card to a win ce user to buy a card with better support...)
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OK, as nobody has said \"yes I have one of these and it works out of the box\" I will forget about going for a cheap solution.
I really like the socket cards, but as I can only get a \"g\" card I don\'t want to be typeing stuff into the console every time I need to use it.
The \"blue monkey\" I can get for about £50, but if it locks up on suspend, then it is not what I am looking for.
Another solution is this http://www.shirtpocket.co.uk/cat/product_i.../products_id/87 (http://www.shirtpocket.co.uk/cat/product_info.php/cPath/22_47/products_id/87) but after reading the 6 page thread on sharp/dev I am unsure if it will do what I want. Althought most problems dicussed there are from people trying to get syncing working. This works for me with my wireless card, it\'s just phone connection I want.
Zuber (shirtpocket) sells this in the UK, so anybody using it? what phone are you using?
Can I rephrase my question?
I am looking for a bluetooth/phone partner pair (in the uk) that will allow me to connect to a Modem. I don\'t want to pay the wopping £1 per meg data rates from the phone companies but want to connect to a standard isp type modem (freeserve etc) or if needs be I can set up my own modem on my home line to act as my own isp.
I don\'t have a bluetooth phone and I am open to suggestions, I don\'t need/want a camera phone but I like the look of the ericson t610.
It would be fantastic if I can use the zaurus to create a text message to send to the phone (in my pocket), there are programs to do this but may only work with nokia phones and certain bluetooth cards.
Anybody in the UK with the above working then what are you using to achive this (hardware wise), and if you can also point me to a vendor selling the kit the I would be eternally grateful.
I want to get this working on my c760, the 5500 does not have the rsolution to make it worthwile.
Hopefully someone can help.
Peter.
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I have a t616 with a bluemonkey on a 5500 with affix and it\'s tight once you feel it out. I havn\'t seen the suspend problem, but I don\'t suspend my Z. Only issue is that t616 seem to usually keep the bluetooth connection open extra long after you break the conection with the Z, where you then need to power the t616 on and off to clear the connection. Here are some details on my config:
http://www.tekprosystems.com/zaurus/616tgprs.htm (http://www.tekprosystems.com/zaurus/616tgprs.htm)
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Well, I\'m in the states and I have a t610 and an unlimited data plan with tmobile ($20/month), and I\'m very happy with the performance of my laptop with the service via IRDA or BT. Fast enough and accessible almost everywhere! I can keep a IRDA internet connection with moderate browsing (and constant data updates) and my phone battery lasts about 2.5-3.5 hours.
I bought a AmbiCom BT2000-CF, which is the most readily available card in the states considering it is carried in all the Circuit Cities and Best Buys around me for ~ $69. I\'ve been trying to get it to work for sometime, but haven\'t had success yet:
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...viewtopic&t=981 (https://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=981)
FYI - As some may know, there are two BT2000-CF cards out. They don\'t say which card they are (!!!), but the cards in stores now are the BT-2000-CF © cards. I think that it is a fair assumption to say that most people that have gotten the BT2000-CF card working are using the BT2000-CF (E) version, which were sold up to this past summer it seems.
I just talked to AmbiCom tech support, who are pretty helpful, and they\'re very interested in finding out more about why their card isnt\' working with the Z. They have a 5600 on hand, and I told them to start banging around with it and then to post their successful results on these boards!! At any rate, they affirmed that the chipset in the BT2000-CF changed between the E and C versions, and they are going to allow me to return my BT2000-CF © for the older version, some of which they still have at their warehouse.
From all accounts (on Zaurus DevNet), the old card is fairly plug n play. What I hope is that after I receieve the old card and it works easily (PLEASE?!), AmbiCom either a) gets the new card working with their 5600 (doubtful to me), or allow the sale of their old cards by direct order at a good price. At any rate, I\'ll update with any news. They\'re pretty accessible in case anyone wants to call - AmbiCom.com -] Support -] Contact Us
Tumnus - Thanks for the great help with BT! I\'d really like to get the current version of the BT2000-CF working, so please check out my BT post referenced above when you have a chance and let me know if there is anything that you\'d recommend me trying.
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Soycap,
Thanks for the reply, I checked your page out and it looks like you are using a gprs service.
Do you know if this setup will allow you to dial up to a modem by supplying a phone number?
This is something I will need to do.
n8a, thanks for your reply, I hope you get it working fully.
When you do please post back and let us know.
Peter.
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I am looking for a bluetooth/phone partner pair (in the uk) that will allow me to connect to a Modem. I don\'t want to pay the wopping £1 per meg data rates from the phone companies but want to connect to a standard isp type modem (freeserve etc) or if needs be I can set up my own modem on my home line to act as my own isp.
I will look at the Bluemonkey card again this weekend. My wife wants to start using it to browse the web on her lunch break and I don\'t want \'support calls\'
As for dialup ISPs, you might want to ask your operator. Many dialup ISPs now use the FRIACO system which reroutes the connection onto BT\'s IP network at the exchange to make it cheaper for them. Of course this requires you to dialup from a BT landline, but it might not be obvious from the area code if it uses this.
Orange used to have their own ISP and had an Orange mobile number you could dial to get access (and use your free minutes ). I used to use that but they shut that down, although your operator may still have a recommendation of who to use.
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zbones,
If you do want to take a closer look at the Aircable have a read on our FAQ.
http://www.shirtpocket.co.uk/spforum/index...php?showtopic=6 (http://www.shirtpocket.co.uk/spforum/index.php?showtopic=6)
I use it with a T68i and can connect for dial up no problem with O2 and Orange.
Also tested with O2 GPRS but too expensive for me.
Problem I do have is the pairing get confused sometimes. I think it is the T68i as it has a rather old firmware. It sometimes deletes the pairing when I try to connect & sometimes fails if it is paired.
I used to have some trouble with the pairing getting deleted with my Palm TT as well, hence I suspect the phone. Also, I can\'t see how the Zaurus would have permision to delete pairing on the phone side. Particularly when it is trying to connect.
Easy solution was not to pair it. Just set discoverable and then accept. Works everytime like clockwork.
Will be getting firmware update soon and see what difference that makes.
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Thanks for the replies, at the moment it looks like either the blue monkey or the aircable.
They both cost about the same and have pro\'s and cons.
The cf card would be more versatile, could be used in almost any cf machine, but would use my cf slot up.
I tend to prefer the aircable at the moment, but this would only be usefull on a zaurus, and may not connect to bluetooth laptops etc.
I will pay a visit to my local phone shop tomorrow or Monday. The last shop I went to only succeeded in me giving the reps a demo of my zaurus, and them trying to sell me some mega expensive data package as they thought I must be loaded to have such a smart device.
It seems the phone people don\'t want you to connect to a modem, they just want to sell you data packages, most that I have spoken to said it\'s impossible, I know this is untrue.
I think at the moment I will probably get the connection (aircable or bluetooth cf) and then go back to the shop and only get a phone that will connect, If it can also connect via IR that is a backup, and a bonus.
I will leave it another week while I look for other alternatives before making a choice, in the meantime any more recomendations would prove usefull.
Peter.
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I will pay a visit to my local phone shop tomorrow or Monday.
It seems the phone people don\'t want you to connect to a modem, they just want to sell you data packages, most that I have spoken to said it\'s impossible, I know this is untrue.
The phone shops won\'t know any ISPs and they\'ll try and rip you off on Bluetooth devices. Which operator are you with? Try calling their customer services, they may well have the info on the ISP at least and you could try connecting via IR before going for Bluetooth. When I was trying to get HCSCD working before going for GPRS I got through to a 3rd level support guy at Orange that was in the process of getting a SL-5500 himself
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Peter - i\'d suggest that you try calling sales for t-mobile/at&t/etc. in england and tell them that you\'re interested in that functionality - dialing THROUGH the phone as a modem to reach your ISP. before joining t-mobile, i talked to sales and asked several questions about their data package - bits/second, full offered functionality, etc., and when they couldn\'t answer me they\'d transfer me to technical people who could. some of the techs were really good and knew exactly what i was getting at. same thing at at&t here in the states.
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OK, I will ring a few providers tommorrow.
I am currently using a two year old sony J70 on vodaphone pay as you go, so I need a new phone anyway!
As far as ISP\'s go, I use cable at home, and NTL do provide a free (for cable subscribers) dial up account. how that works I am not too bothered about, as long as I can connect to a modem I can connect to my work modem, and if needs be, I can plug my old dialup modem into my phone line and dial my home number to get a connection . I would just pay for the phone calls then, and it would be safer for VNC, as I would not need to open up my firewall to allow incoming internet connections.
Wouldn\'t it be great if somebody did a 802.11b enabled phone!!
Peter.
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Do you know if this setup will allow you to dial up to a modem by supplying a phone number?
This is something I will need to do.
I think you will if you don\'t have some type of instant on service like GPRS. I\'m sure it can be done through ppp once you get the devices to pair with each other, but I don\'t have the details on it.
If you havn\'t used bluetooth before, you\'ll get a better feel for it once you get a card to play with.
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Ok, I\'ve fixed the issues with the Bluemonkey card. I\'ll have to upload the latest BlueZ ipks to the ZUG Downloads section as the DevNet Community site is down at the moment.
It seems quite solid now. Haven\'t had a single lockup even though I was doing quite a lot of ejecting etc while trying to get my wife\'s Philips Fisio 820 (horrible phone) connected via GPRS, but that was more pppd problems than anything. Bluetooth part works fine.
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If you havn\'t used bluetooth before, you\'ll get a better feel for it once you get a card to play with.
This is indeed true, however I can not afford to risk buying a bt solution that doesn\'t work for me. I also cannot afford to sign up a 12 month contract at £25 per month for a phone that will not work for me.
it\'s a \"catch 22\" situation :cry:
This is why I wanted to try and find working solutions, buy the same hardware, and hopefully it will work.
We have a working solution with the aircable and t68i, but my local shops do not stock the phone, and there are potential issues at the moment.
Ok, I\'ve fixed the issues with the Bluemonkey card
Thanks tumnus, so it looks like the bluemonkey card is working with affix, and BlueZ. So I think this is a good bet.
Also the god of Bluez, owns one, so it cannot be a bad choice .
I pray that they haven\'t changed the chipset recently
The phone choice is not too scary, I will have 14 days to exchange it with carphone wharehouse. Also Soycap reports it as working with an se t616 (which I cannot seem to find in the uk), and lots of people have reported the se t610 as working with other bt cards.
I can get the t610 free, with a 12 mnth contract, it is a good size and has one of the best talk/standby times on the market.
I also like the 2yr old se J70 I currently own, I have had no issues with it, but it has no ir/bt.
I think I have made my choice :?
I will order the cf card first, and take it from there.
I got kinda giddy when I found that bt do a \"free call home\" package for up to 1000 mins a month on the t610. My home isp idea seemed perfect for this :twisted: .
Sadly, after reading the small print, it is only for \"quick\" calls, quick is defined as \"up to 2 mins\", barely enough time to connect to the modem :evil:
Thanks to all who have posted. and here\'s hoping for a smooth connection when the hardware arrives.
Peter[/quote]
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We have a working solution with the aircable and t68i, but my local shops do not stock the phone.
Consider the T610/616 in place of the T68i. It may cost a bit more, but it is an incredible phone and should work esentially the same as far as bluetooth goes.
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I need to read more closely... and more often:
Also Soycap reports it as working with an se t616 (which I cannot seem to find in the uk), and lots of people have reported the se t610 as working with other bt cards.
I can get the t610 free, with a 12 mnth contract, it is a good size and has one of the best talk/standby times on the market.
FREE! Just go get it then. Even if you can\'t get bluetooth to work, the phone still rocks. It actually makes a better PIM than the Z for my purposes and enables me to focuse me Z exploits on more interesting projects
I think the only difference between the 610 and 616 is that are configured for different reigonal frequencies:
http://www.mobiledia.com/forum/topic2822.html (http://www.mobiledia.com/forum/topic2822.html)
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I went into carphone warhouse this afternoon and left with the t610.
The phone was free, but you have to sign up for a 12 month contract.
The good news is that they are doing the vodaphone gprs data packs for half price for a year if you buy one now.
I ordered the bluemonkey card from expansys too, it should arrive on Tuesday, so I will let you know how I get on.
Thanks to all for the advice.
Peter
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Just so you know, the Bluemonkey fixes can now be found in the latest BlueZ driver package from here: http://community.zaurus.com/projects/bluez (http://community.zaurus.com/projects/bluez) (hopefully I did not forget anything)
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Just so you know, the Bluemonkey fixes can now be found in the latest BlueZ driver package
Many thanks,
I loo forward to trying thus out.
Peter
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Well, I got the bluemonkey card the other day, and within 10 mins I had the phone paired and the two devices talking using the cacko rom on my 760.
Trouble was that it connected fine, but the only thing I could do was nslookup, nothing else worked, no web pages nothing.
I made two calls to vodaphone, and was given several connect strings to type etc but still no dice. I got the usual expected response when I told them what device it was. \"so what version of pocket PC are you running then?\" etc.... I eventually said, \"look forget about what machine I am using, just tell me what connect strings to use.\"
The problem turned out to be that they kept telling me to use either *99***1# or +CGDCONT=1,\"IP\",\"internet\".
I eventually worked it out myself, my phone came with vodaphone live already setup to use gprs, I had been connecting to that, which is not the internet, so could not \"see\" the real internet.
Anyway, the connection I had added was CID 2, so here are the settings I used to get it all working.
I am just listing what I changed from the default..
Account tab: username \"web\" password \"web\" phone \"\"*99***2#\" or replace 2 with whatever your cid was.
modem: init string \"AT&Z\", BT DUN, picked up from the search box.
If I use the cf icon to eject the bluemonkey card, the light on the card comes on, and the zaurus crashes, needing me to remove the battery to power back up. This happens whether I have been using it or not :shock:
Anyway, I found two simple ways round that, do not use the cf icon to eject the card, simply pull it out or suspend the zaurus and pull the card out while it\'s suspended. These both work fine, everytime.
I did try to install all the latest packages from tumnus, but as the old ones are already installed on the rom, the software installer did not show them as available for removal so I simply installed the new packages over the top. This didn\'t work and it refused to connect after that, the error was \"failed to open /dev/rfcomm0: host is down\".
At this point I did my first nand restore, as I wanted to test this out anyway.
So it all works fine, apart from the eject bit which has a work around.
Dialup to freeserve works fine too, but is a lot slower than gprs. But could work out cheaper if using free minutes or downloading large files.
Thanks to all who helped me get this far.
So All I need to know, is what program is used from the task bar icon to eject the card? and what do I need to put in there to stop it from locking up, or which package on your site contains just the eject fix, so I can manually install it.
Tumnus, I was a bit gutted at first to find that you have got the socket \"G\" rev working as it is a smaller card. However, now I have used it, the bluemonkey does not stick out very far at all (only 1cm), and the activity light is a big plus. When you also consider that this card is £40 cheaper, this to me makes it a better choice than the socket card.
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Dunno why the BlueZ packages did not install properly. That\'s the problem with all these different ROMs
Anyway, the susp-resume packages should have installed OK, otherwise I would have thought you would get lockups with the Bluemonkey card on a suspend or resume.
The fix for the ejecting lockup is in /etc/pcmcia/bluetooth in the main BlueZ driver package. You should be able to just unpack the BlueZ ipk and copy the fixed bluetooth script over the existing one.
I think I\'ve got the Socket G card working, but no one has responded yet to say \"yes, it works out of the box.\" That activity light on the Bluemonkey card is quite handy though as you said.
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Tumnus,
I extracted the bluetooth file, copied it to my zaurus and acording to diff the only change was the addition of a \"sleep 1\" command.
Just in case it did work I tried it and it still locks ejecting the card.
I then installed just the new bluez package over the top of the existing suff, and bingo, it worked this time and eject is also working.
I had to delete the phone pairing and remove/replace the battery in the phone first.
One minor point, cardctl status shows the card as \"ready\" and it never seems to suspend the card. Is this deliberate/necessary? will it be consuming power when I am not using bluetooth but the card is inserted?
Peter.
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Weird...
Is the light on the card on all the time? With mine it is off when not using it in the Zaurus but when I use it in my WinXP laptop the light is always on, so I was assuming that it is at least in some kind of low power standby mode.
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The light is off, the card doesn\'t get warm and it doesn\'t seem to be discoverable in this state.
I just presumed it was suspended untill I used cardctl.
I guess I was expecting it to suspend the card when you close the connection, like wifi does. You can manually suspend the card, but you need to do a manual resume of the card before trying to connect.
I guess you are probably right, and the card is in it\'s own \"suspended\" mode.
It\'s not a problem, just wondered if they all do that.
By the way, many thanks for your help and advice. It is very much appreciated.
Peter.