First Post - HTC Hermes on WM6.1 as a Bluetooth Modem with a not-so-supported BT adapter
about Ubuntu Linux of course. I’ve been on Ubuntu since their Hedgehog release (5.04) and went through every single release until the current 8.04. It was a fun and exciting path, hurdling the difficulties and scouring the net for workarounds on nitty-gritty issues. Coupled with the time I spent testing a whole load of distros before settling on Ubuntu, that would make it nearly 4 years now.
Some have argued that the time spent on getting Linux to “work like you expect it to” is just not worth it. Well, I think it’s comparable - the time spent formatting Windows when it gets sluggish for no apparent reason other than age, or when it suffers from a serious virus/trojan attack to make you doubt the integrity of the whole filesystem, is probably equal. I used to format and reinstall once per year just to get the “freshness” feeling back in Windows, and it’s a pain reinstalling all the software and restoring the configurations.
I’m a big fan of Ubuntu. I’d probably be a big fan of Debian had I met it first. Ubuntu is NOT the perfect distro - it has its share of annoyances with every release, but never anything too major. For those who’ve yet to give it a shot, do so, but only if you’ve the patience to learn from basic Linux commands, especially in the command line.
Anyway, I spent nearly 3 hours trying to get my spare HTC Hermes (which is installed with CRC’s WM6.1 ROM) to act as a Bluetooth modem so that I can use it on my overseas trips with the local prepaid SIM cards. Well, some research and it seems Bluetooth DUN was taken out in WM6. But well, found this thread and got this file : WM6_DUN. Unzipped, copied to my Hermes, and installed it, followed by a soft reset. That’s all the instructions said… but can’t find any difference in the device - no new shortcut, no new anything in the connections section. No worries, hooked up my BT adapter to try the next steps. Errr, why is the bluetooth address of the adapter 00:00:00:00:00:00? Damn, looks like it’s not a supported adapter, or it might be dependent on the provided windows drivers, kinda like the old “soft modems”? Bloody cheapskate China-made adapters! But I got it for cheap, so there I go. ;p But specifying the device during hcitool works. So I decided to try more things
1. hcitool dev => hci0
2. hcitool -i hci0 scan => found my Hermes
3. sdptool search DUN
- Now that doesn’t turn out well. It just output some useless error code of Inquiry failed and died. I thought it was because it didn’t know where the BT adapter was (since it had no address). Well, didn’t care too much. Specified the bluetooth address of my Hermes to see what happened.
4. sdptool search –btaddr
5. Last step - sudo rfcomm0 bind
- sudo rfcomm0 bind 0
6. rfcomm0 show 0 => bound to channel 4 and clean!
Used one of my previously done wvdial.conf files, modified it to use Starhub’s GPRS node name (shwap), and gave it a shot. It connected! Testing Google, it loaded, albeit slowly. Another text-only page loaded fairly quickly, but only because it had like 3 lines of text only (a under construction filler page). But my only purpose was to get the whole process working, and I did. If anyone is interested, I pieced together a simple bash script to simplify the whole process (Bluetooth_DUN.bsh). It might work with any other Bluetooth DUN device, but I’m not sure. I might give it a shot with my wife’s U700 some other day. Have a look at the script contents to make sure it’s nothing harmful.
So I’m fairly pleased that I don’t have to go out there to buy a fully supported BT adapter. And maybe I don’t have to get a separate WM2K3 device with GPS… perhaps just a BT GPS device separately. Anyway, that’s a separate topic. For those who chance upon this entry, all the best. Feel free to ask if you need help, though I can’t promise I check my own blog very often (as you can see from the frequency of my posts).