Petar Tahchiev's Blog

December 2007 Archives

JavaPolis rules again

I just got back from Antwerp, Belgium, where I attended this year's JavaPolis conference. It was awesome, and I am really sorry I didn't make it till the end, but I had to be back in Düsseldorf and finish some stuff at work. I got the chance to meet lots of interesting people - I had a dinner with all the JUG leaders, Java Champions, and James Gosling. I also shared my lunch with Vincent Massol, a really good friend of mine and also an open-source celebrity ;-). I also met in person with Peter Pilgrim, Vincent Brabant, Stephen Colebourne, Michael Van Riper and of course Aaron Houston, who was so nice to invite me on a dinner with Nichole Scott and Michael van Riper. Some pictured from the square after the dinner can be found here. I also met Raffaella Sanna and Antonio Pintus from Sardegna Java User Group - you guys rock!

I have to say that I really had a great time and I am looking forward to the next JavaPolis, but before that, I want to visit the ApacheCON in Amsterdam and the Jazoon in Zurich. So hope to see you all somewhere there.

Bluetooth remote control

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.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.