Features/Bluetooth

Summary

Bluetooth enhancements support the following use cases. Additional use cases can be found on O'Reilly's website .

Owner

• Name: BastienNocera

Current status

• Targeted release:
• Last updated: 2009-07-04
• Percentage of completion: ?

Bluetooth enhancements in Fedora are currently in development.

the CUPS backend work is available in Fedora 8 and rawhide.

gnome-phone-manager and its gnokii backend are getting enhanced (see below).

Bemused support is in Totem SVN (see below).

Bluetooth support for the Palm is available in rawhide.

gnome-obex-send was replaced by bluetooth-sendto in rawhide (see below). gnome-obex-server was replaced by gnome-user-share in rawhide (see below).

ObexFTP file sharing and ObexPush file reception were added to gnome-user-share (see below).

GVFS ObexFTP browsing is upstream (see below).

PS3 Remote support is now in Fedora 9.

Wacom tablet support is in Fedora 11.

Preliminary (technology preview) support for audio devices is in Fedora 11.

Usage cases/rationale, Scope and Implementation details

Sending files to a mobile phone/Palm

• Earl downloaded a ringtone on a website, and wants to use it as the default ring on his mobile.
• Catalina received an e-mail from her boyfriend with a picture attachment and wants to set the background picture on her phone.
• Darnell browsed the web to find a map of that office he has an appointment at and wants to send the map to his Palm.

Possible solutions:

• gnome-obex-send (needs to use services exported by bluez's HCID, needs integration in bluez-gnome )
• nautilus-sendto (needs GUI love)
• an evolution extension that would allow sending some (restricted) file types to remote devices
• an epiphany/firefox extension or a screenshooter enhancement to allow image web clippings

gnome-obex-send was deprecated in favour of bluez-gnome's bluetooth-sendto, which uses the results of the Google Summer of Code project, and is available in rawhide (Fedora 9 Alpha and above).

Receiving files from remote Bluetooth devices

• Randy received some funny movie from his friend on his mobile and wants to watch it on his computer.
• Somebody sent Darnel a vCard via Bluetooth, and he wants to have it added to his address book automatically

Possible solutions:

• gnome-obex-server (needs to use services exported by bluez's HCID, needs integration in bluez-gnome )
• Evolution-provided vCard importer

gnome-user-share 0.22 now has ObexFTP and ObexPush support. gnome-obex-server is now deprecated.

Browsing files on a remote device

• Catalina took loads of pictures with her mobile phone on an evening out, and wants to see the pictures on her computer, removing the bad-looking ones, and uploading the ones she likes on flickr.

Possible solutions:

• Browse device menu item is in Fedora 8

Rawhide's nautilus uses GVFS, support will be in gvfs 0.1.9.

Stand-alone Bluetooth printing

• Same as above, and she wants to print those pictures to a Bluetooth printer that was lent to her.

Possible solutions:

• Bluetooth CUPS backend , already packaged in bluez-utils-cups
• Integration with system-config-printer
• Integration in the bluetooth-preferences

bluez-utils-cups in rawhide and upstream has support for discovery and automated driver selection, using system-config-printer.

Sharing a local printer over Bluetooth

• Same as above, but Catalina had to give back the Bluetooth printer. But her computer has a printer attached and Bluetooth, and she wants to print some pictures directly from her mobile.

Possible solutions:

• Add a service to BlueZ's hcid to share some specific local printers over Bluetooth
• May need to implement Basic Printing Profile ?

Remote controls

• Darnell is travelling, and plugged his laptop into the TV in his hotel room, but he doesn't want to get up to choose another film, so wants to use his mobile phone, or his Palm as a remote control.

Possible solutions, for Sony Ericsson phones:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothRemoteControl
• Needs X to be able to handle the remote device without merging the keypresses to the core device (Google SoC happening )

Possible solutions, for other phones:

• Bemused (or Remuco) clients on the phones/PDAs, http://bemused.sf.net or http://remuco.sf.net
• Bemused support in Rhythmbox and Totem

Totem has a Bemused server available as a plugin , but the Bemused protocol is sub-par. Should look into Remuco later on.

Support for the PS3 Blu-Ray remote is now in Fedora 9. See below for details.

Mobile phone SMS/Call related items

Initiating/answering a call from your mobile phone

Sending receiving text messages from your mobile

Setting time and date on the mobile

• Randy sits all day in front of his computer in his office, and wants to see on the big computer screen when people call him, and be able to send and receive text messages, faxes and receive phone calls without using the hard-to-use phone UI and keyboard.

Possible solutions:

• gnome-phone-manager
• gnokii (backend)
• evolution integration (calling/sending message to specific contact)
• faxing

The AT driver (used by most phones) in gnokii got enhanced to support SMS and call notifications, and fixes for battery status.

gnome-phone-manager 's backend support SMS, and call notifications, as well as battery reporting.

Battery reporting to the user should be implemented in gnome-power-manager .

PIM (appointments, contacts) synchronisation (Phone/Palm)

• Darnell's Palm has all his details, but he wants to synchronise the data with his computer and phones, in case he loses one of them while travelling.

Possible solutions:

• gnokii
• Conduit
• gnome-phone-manager
• SyncML backend for Conduit

gnome-phone-manager knows how to talk to phones, and should allow to get/set PIM data through its D-Bus API.

There's also ways to access the full calendar and addressbooks on a few phones, using either the FBS UUID (example command ), or a PBAP server (implemented in obex-data-server ).

gnome-pilot 2.0.16 has Bluetooth synchronisation builtin.

Keyboards, mice

• When he's home, Darnell wants to use a real size keyboard and mouse with his laptop, rather than rely on his trackpad and small keyboard.
• Randy wants to unclutter his office desk, and junks out his USB keyboard and mouse in order to use Bluetooth keyboard and mouse instead.

Possible solutions:

• X hotplug support
• bluez's hcid and input services interface (Sixaxis PS3 controller , HCI proxy dongles not supportable out-of-the-box, missing hardware docs)
• Might need better integration in GDM/GNOME itself

sixaxis support is in the development repository for in Fedora 12.

Dial-up, 3G, Networking over Bluetooth

• Darnell is on the move again, and wants to check his e-mail out on his laptop, but the seedy hotel doesn't have any wireless connection. So he wants to use his phone's internet connection instead (using either DUN or PAN).

Possible solutions:

• PAN support in in Fedora 12
• DUN support requires ModemManager changes (see upstream bug)

Handsfree headsets (phone use) and Headphones (Music)

• Randy wants to use his Bluetooth headset when answering phone calls on his mobile, or in Ekiga when he's sitting at his office desk.
• Catalina downloaded some music on her computer, and wants to use her Bluetooth headset to listen to "Jump around" while she dances around in her room.

Possible solutions:

• bluez' audio service
• integration in PulseAudio (see PulseAudio integration )
• integration in the gnome-bluetooth preferences/device manager

Preliminary support is in Fedora 11.

GPS

• Darnell is running away again, and needs to find his hideout. But he's only got the coords.

Possible solutions:

• GPSd
• GPSdrive
• Gypsy
• Some Google Maps integration?
• ...

Gypsy and Geoclue are in Fedora 10. Geoclue support for Firefox is [1].

Documentation

The documentation for features/use cases where the process differs from previous releases is available here.

Release Notes

FIXME

Comments and Discussion

See Talk:Features/Bluetooth

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