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March 18, 2006

Into the blue [technical article]

A few days ago I got my bluetooth headset (logitech mobile express) I purchased from amazon so I could get started with VoIP. Too bad things didn't go as smooth as expected.

At the beginning everything looked quite good. After charging the headset I plugged in an usb bluetooth dongle I borrowed from a friend (thanks!) and as expected Windows XP immediately installed the driver. Few seconds later, both devices were paired and I thought I was ready to go.

Far from it! The headset did work with my cell, but not with my computer. After some time I figured out that Microsofts Bluetooth drivers just cover the basic features such as file transfer but not audio transfer (hands-free / headset profile). It's nice to be used to have Microsoft drivers for everything, but I don't take it for granted. Anyway, a warning message would have been nice...

My problems just started. I needed a new driver for the stick, but I neither had them on CD nor could I download them because I did not the dongle manufacturer. The only thing I was able to find out was the chip manufacturer: CSR. Too bad the CSR website only offered stuff for developers and I really didn't feel like writing my own bluetooth drivers now. It happens that there is a widely used driver named WIDCOMM, which is not freely availibe though and all manufacturers keep their hands gripped tight around it due to license policy. I ended the day writing a mail to the logitech support.

Next day after talking to the friend who lend me the dongle (his words: "it's windows, it's gotta work") I felt motivated enough again to give it another try. And I did find a solution: Use alternate drivers. The first one I tried was from 3COM. Didn't work out though. I tried finding drivers on the MSI website, but I wasn't lucky again. At last I found suiteable drivers at Acer's (WIDCOMM). The procedure was the same for every driver I tried: Manipulate the .ini file so the device identification (VID & PID number) matched the one I needed (I got this number from the windows device manager), then install the driver. The installation procedure itself was book of records worthy. Never before had I had to click away so many unsigned driver warnings (at least 15!). Anyway, it worked and thats all that counts.

So, after at least 1 & 1/2 hours of hard work I had succeeded. Although it made me feel good (and certainly enlarged my e-penis) I don't think experiences like this will help make bluetooth more popular. How can linux users take this every day?

By the way, I got a mail from logitech support that evening quite exactly 24h after my request (so far I'm highly pleased with them). They told me that the microsoft bluetooth stack does not implement the hands-free / headset profile and that I should use the original manufacturer drivers ;)