Hey everybody,

I had lots of questions about my cell-phone bluetooth remote control when I was on the OpenFest and ApacheCON conferences. Before I explain what I was using to turn my Sony Ericsson GSM into a bluetooth remote control, I want to say that I have done this a lot of time ago and I don't remember much of it.

Actually it is pretty simple, and I haven't invented anything new. First of all you will have to have your Linux kernel with a bluetooth support enabled. Next get the Linux bluetooth daemon installed. Here is the man page of the sdpd. It is also a good idea to have the hcitool installed, too.

The hcitool allows you to scan for bluetooth devices in range. You will need the bluez-utils package, which includes the hidd daemon. After that follow this:

• Start the bluetooth connection of your phone.
• Start the daemons that are needed:
  # sdpd
  # hcid
  
• Use hcitool to scan for your device, and if you are lucky enough, you will get something like this:

  # hcitool scan
  Scanning ...
          00:12:EE:9E:11:23       K700i
  

  
  Remember the BD Address, because we will use it later.
• Now start the actual application that is the mouse and keyboard.

  $ hidd --connect 00:12:EE:9E:11:23
  

  
  Then follow the instructions and once it is started you can use joystick to move the mouse and the 'Yes' & 'No' buttons as a left and right mouse buttons My presentations were in a PDF format, and KPDF accepts right and left mouse clicks as forward and backward slides, so it was pretty easy.

All what is left is to make it automated, by creating a simple script to start the daemons and connect to your phone:

#! /usr/bin/env bash

sdpd
hcid
#This is the K700i phone
hidd --connect 00:12:EE:9E:11:23

I have tested this to work on SonyEricsson K700i, and if anyone knows it is working on some other phone, you can post a comment.