Linux and Laptops, PDAs, Mobile (Cell) Phones with Bluetooth(TM)

Bluetooth Stacks

Affix

Affix is a powerful and complete open source Bluetooth Protocol stack for Linux. It will allow you to connect to any Bluetooth enabled devices, like handheld computers, mobile phones, and PCs. Affix supports wide range of Bluetooth hardware, and it allows you to send pictures, business cards, and any other files. Affix has been tested on the i386, ARM, and PowerPC platforms. Affix currently supports the following Bluetooth Profiles: General Access Profile, Service Discovery Profile, Serial Port Profile, DialUp Networking Profile, LAN Access Profile, OBEX Object Push Profile, OBEX File Transfer Profile, and PAN Profile.

BlueZ

BlueZ provides support for core Bluetooth layers and protocols. It is flexible, efficient and modular implementation. See also kernels >= 2.4.6 . There are port for x86 as well as ARM CPUs (e.g. for the SHARP Zaurus).

IBM BlueDrekar

BlueDrekar (TM) protocol driver is IBM's new middleware based on Bluetooth (TM) specifications allowing Bluetooth wireless devices - from phones to household appliances - to reliably communicate with each other.

HCIDump

HCIDump (stands for Hyper Cool Incredible Debugging utility) This release understands all HCI events and commands and has pretty much complete L2CAP parser with PSM tracking (will be used for SDP and RFCOMM parsing). Parser is now separate unified library that can be easily reused by other tools (hcitool, etc). Output was improved and simplified (examples provided below). HCIDump can write/read dumps to/from file. Dump file is platform independent, you can save it on ARM, for example, and later parse on Sparc or x86 and vice versa.

Bluetooth Standard

From Bluetooth - BSIG: "Bluetooth wireless technology is a de facto standard, as well as a specification for small-form factor, low-cost, short range radio links between mobile PCs, mobile phones and other portable devices. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group is an industry group consisting of leaders in the telecommunications and computing industries that are driving development of the technology and bringing it to market.

What will Bluetooth deliver to end users? It will enable users to connect a wide range of computing and telecommunications devices easily and simply, without the need to buy, carry, or connect cables. It delivers opportunities for rapid ad hoc connections, and the possibility of automatic, unconscious, connections between devices. It will virtually eliminate the need to purchase additional or proprietary cabling to connect individual devices. Because Bluetooth can be used for a variety of purposes, it will also potentially replace multiple cable connections via a single radio link."

Applications

T-BEAR

T-BEAR is a Bluetooth environment security auditor. It includes an ncurses-based BT scanner, a Bluetooth DoS proof-of- concept, and a MAC hunter similar to Redfang 2.5. Other tools based on gnuradio are being developed, including a BT 'sniffer'. See here for a list of other BlueTooth scanners.

Harald Scan

Harald Scan is a Bluetooth discovery scanner. It determines Major and Minor device classes according to the Bluetooth SIG specification and attempts to resolve a device's MAC address to the largest known vendor/MAC address list.

ussp-push

ussp-push is a BlueTooth OBEX object pusher for Linux, using the BlueZ BlueTooth stack. It allows sending files to any device listening for OBEX connections.

O4SEND

o4send is an application that scans for Bluetooth OPP devices and sends configured files to them automatically.

Hardware

Laptop Survey

• The new notebook's from Toshiba have builtin Bluetooth. Toshiba uses a USB Bluetooth chip from Silicon Wave, but by default this USB device is not enabled (not plugged in). The control of this device can be done trough the Toshiba BlueTooth driver which is included in the Linux kernel 2.4.x and an extra program which allows to enable this device.

PCMCIA Cards

• AnyCom: Bluetooth card, Linux driver by Marcel Holtmann.
• DigiAnswer PC Card: Linux support mentioned in bluethooth-dev mailing list.
• Nokia Connectivity Card DTL-1: Linux driver by Marcel Holtmann.
• Psion DACOM: Bluetooth card, available in the middle of 2000.
• Socket Bluetooth Card: Linux driver by Marcel Holtmann.
• The Xircom and Sphinx Bluetooth cards with UART interface have reported to work with the version 0.1 of driver. The cards from 3Com, Brain Boxes and COM One did not work. A future version of the driver may include support for them. : Linux driver by Marcel Holtmann.

Test Kit

Jan Beutel has put some design data on the web if you want to build your own sigma-teleca style ericsson application toolkit for testing ericcson rok101007 modules.

RFCOMM Implementation with User Space Serial Ports

This is an implementation of the RFCOMM Layer which makes use of the "User Space Serial Ports" (USSP). It is designed to work with the L2CAP socket interface of the BlueZ Linux Bluetooth stack.

Printing

Bluetooth printing backend for CUPS . At the moment this backend only provides native printing for Bluetooth serial port enabled printers, but for the future the support of Basic Printing (BPP) and Hardcopy Cable Replacement (HCRP) is planned.

Related Topics

• IrDA see the Infrared-HOWTO
• Jean Tourrilhes "The who's who of Wireless LANs under Linux

Other Resources

• Bluetooth Special Interest Group (BSIG).
• The Brainboxes BlueTooth + Linux Howto includes instructions to get the Brainbox 620 PCMCIA card to work at 921600 baud and quick instructions for the USB dongle.
• BlueTooth and GPRS on the COMPAQ iPAQ HOWTO.
• A survey of Bluetooth hardware support for BlueZ by Marcel Holtmann: PCMCIA and Compact Flash cards, USB adapters, serial dongles PDAs and devices.
• Bluetooth Installation HOWTO
• Linux BlueZ Howto
• Affix BlueTooth-HOWTO
• Linux applications for BlueTooth cell phones
• Make your Arch Linux a Bluetooth Access Point.
• How to Built a SelfMade BlueTooth Device

Credits

• Marcel Holtmann.