wahlau's online hut

remember my attempt in getting the Sony Ericsson HBH DS 970 to work with my desktop? It was puzzling in February when i first got it, and i gave up trying since then. However since a few days i got a link from thoughtfix, and excitingly got bluetooth stereo working with the n800. yes, i can now start up a music player on the n800, and receive the sound via bluetooth on the DS 970. That is great for me, since i can basically have my handphone paired to the headset, while having the music still sent from the n800 simultaneously. neat.

that brought me to the thought - how about my desktop? has anything changed lately? if it works on the Nokia N800, it should also work on a normal linux installation right? here i went. a night wastedspent. And i got at least a2dp working via bluetooth-alsa.

for you there with a nice bluetooth stereo headset, and wish to use a2dp to stream music from computer to the headset, you can try the following steps. I am using now Ubuntu feisty 7.04, with standard stuffs (i think so). So it should also work for you guys with standard installation.

1. install the right stuffs.
i am a normal user. So i will not compile and do anything manually. That is the reason i went and searched for binaries of bluetooth-alsa. In the project page you only have source, so i went and look for it. The next version of ubuntu already has it in universe, but the the package is not compatible with current ubuntu release (a few dependencies upgrade needed). I do not want to go into gutsy, neither do i want to upgrade packages to testing ones, which might break my beloved working desktop. So, debian repo here i went. 

I learnt something yesterday. If a current package is too new, you can actually went back to previous releases. Sure, somethings might be broken then, but if it works, then at least you don really need to do a dist-upgrade. So i got the bluetooth-alsa package from March. Besides bluetooth-alsa, you need to also download the libsbc0 from debian too. They worked for me, at least. 

if your installation does not have bluez-gnome and other needed bluetooth tools, use apt-get to install them. I did that once dpkg complained about missing packages. i love apt-get and dpkg :)

2. configure a2dp and alsa sound.
assuming you have no problem installing the needed package, you need to now make the right configuration. 2 files are needed at your home directory: .a2dprc and .asoundrc. I got my help and steps from ubuntu forum, so i use the configuration file provided by Roner. However, following are the configuration file for your reference.

.a2dprc

the part XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX you have to change to your bluetooth headset. use hcitools scan to locate it, when you headset is in pairing mode.

.asoundrc

the 2 files are to be saved under your home directory. 

3. Configuring your favourite music player.
since you saved the trouble to configure all your driver, now you need to configure the music player :) look at the list provided at bluetooth-alsa, and follow their steps. i use vlc mainly, so i just do the quicky change to ~/.vlc/vlcrc. 

4. start streaming!
first start a2dpd as root,

sudo a2dpd

then start your favourite music palyer and it should just work(tm).  

Finally....
i also tried to get it working with skype and other software, but i have no time and luck so far. No problem. i still use my handphone, so no rush now. Hope the steps here will be helpful to you guys who wants things working. I believe when the next ubuntu is released, we will have things ready and easier. let's see. 

links: 

1. ubuntu forum guide - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=426828
2. bluetooth alsa page - http://bluetooth-alsa.sourceforge.net/