
So here I was, surrounded by dozens of possible gadgets, books, and other odds-and-ends to buy for myself for the holidays (I'm very hard to shop for, I either already
have what most people will buy me [in duplicate], or whatever they're going to get me, is obsoleted by something I have, or doesn't work with whatever I have already in-place).
I went out to my local Cingular store (I'm already a customer), to see if they had the
Motorola V3 Razr for my wife. Indeed they did, at $549.00/USD with a 1-year plan. EEP! Ok, maybe I can wait to get her a new flipphone. Almost $600 for a phone + service, she would castrate me for even thinking of such a purchase.
But, while I was there, I picked up a
Motorola HS820 Bluetooth headset. Only 17g of weight. It really has to be held to be believed. It has 1hr more of standby time than the last version. It also had a $30.00 rebate, which basically cut the price in half. Not a bad deal.
I also snatched up a
Jabra EarWave Boom headset for the wife to use with our 5.8Ghz system at home while carrying the baby and talking to "The Grandmothers™" With our phones, it gets hard to have to crank your head to one shoulder to hold the phone, and juggle a 5-month-old baby in the other arm, and concentrate. Being able to go handsfree, is really a godsend when you're dealing with a squirming little lifeform.
Besides, this is
my house we're talking about. We
must have all of the modern conveniences that technology allows us! <grin>
But enough about that... there's a lot more gadgets I picked up. Maybe later on I'll write up some articles about those, and all of the books I bought for myself to read for Christmas. Lots of good stuff to be had.
I get home, and tear into the HS820 package, and charge it up. The unit comes with a split cable to charge the headset and phone. Unfortunately, my phone (a
Nokia 3600) doesn't have the kind of connection that this cable would work with. Oh well, I labeled it and put it away into storage in the "Box-o-Cables™". (My next post will concern this very item)
After the mandatory 2+ hour charging time, I tried to pair it with the devices I have here, so I could play with it. I've got Bluetooth everywhere here now. My wife thinks I'm going to grow tumors all over my head from the amount of RF and wireless leeching out of our house.
The directions said to hold the MFB (Multi-Function-Button) for 5 seconds, until it rapidly blinks, to initiate "discovery", so I could pair it with my phone, PDA, and laptop.
The directions were wrong. I almost returned it as defective, until I did a quick google, and found a post in Hungarian (which I had to translate) that said you have to hold the button for
10 seconds, until it glows
solid. That worked. I quickly paired it up with my Nokia, and PDA.
ObHack: My T2 and T3 have the latest Phone Update patches installed on them, but neither of these support the Nokia 3600. They support the 3650, but not the 3600. A little digging into the binary, revealed that it was doing string matching on the response code coming back from the phone at connect time, and seeing 3600 when it expected 3650, the Palm(s) would just fail to connect. A few bits twiddled with my trusty editor on the binary, and I was good to go. I now have a phone profile that works perfectly with the Nokia 3600!
My laptop has Bluetooth as well (in fact, I
wrote the HOWTO on how to sync your Palm device with Bluetooth under Linux), and I can sync my Palm and dial my phone from the laptop, thanks to
BlueZ.
But I can't get the Palm to transfer audio from the headset to the phone!!! I can connect the headset to the Palm, and it claims "connected" as an Audio device (though, I can't use the headset for
actual audio on the Palm, because Palm lacks the profile to redirect it to the headset).
If I have the headset paired with the Palm, and dial a contact, it never transfers the headset and call to the phone. The phone itself will begin dialing, and will take the call, but not through the headset.
If I pair the headset with the phone, and try to dial the phone over Bluetooth from the PDA, the PDA will fail to find/connect to the phone. This might be because the phone is taking the one connection it has, to the headset.
Has anyone had any luck getting their Palm to use any of the following (
Note: MobileRead has a bug with numbered lists, grr!):
- A Bluetooth headset as an audio device, to listen/record voice memos, or listen to music, or just plain audio at [all]
- Dialing a phone, using Bluetooth, and then transfer the Bluetooth headset connection from the Palm to the phone itself
- Pair a Bluetooth headset to a Bluetooth-enabled phone, and still allow a Palm device to dial the phone, using Bluetooth
I'd be interested in hearing any experiences with any of the above.
My next goal is to get the HS820 to work as a wireless mic for my laptop, for an ad-hoc wireless microphone for local speaking engagements that don't carry their own sound system.