Bluetooth EEE style

Ok so I've wanted good Bluetooth connectivity for a while now on my Asus EEE.
I spotted these adapters on Ebay for about £4 with delivery you could buy a 100M range USB2 adapter the size of your thumbnail. Perfect mini size for the nature of the EEE.

My experience with Bluetooth on Linux based systems just hasn't come around until now and I've got to say I'm very suprised at the support. I connected it and that was that, it was detected and activated as shown with the commands below.



netphunk@eee:~$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)
netphunk@eee:~$

root@eee:/home/netphunk# hciconfig
hci0: Type: USB
BD Address: 00:15:83:0B:13:C0 ACL MTU: 384:8 SCO MTU: 64:8
UP RUNNING
RX bytes:759 acl:0 sco:0 events:33 errors:0
TX bytes:394 acl:0 sco:0 commands:32 errors:0

root@eee:/home/netphunk#

root@eee:/home/netphunk# hciconfig hci0 up
root@eee:/home/netphunk# hciconfig -a
hci0: Type: USB
BD Address: 00:15:83:0B:13:C0 ACL MTU: 384:8 SCO MTU: 64:8
UP RUNNING
RX bytes:771 acl:0 sco:0 events:35 errors:0
TX bytes:409 acl:0 sco:0 commands:34 errors:0
Features: 0xff 0xff 0x8f 0xfe 0x9b 0xf9 0x00 0x80
Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3
Link policy: RSWITCH HOLD SNIFF PARK
Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT
Name: 'eee-0'
Class: 0x0a010c
Service Classes: Networking, Capturing
Device Class: Computer, Laptop
HCI Ver: 2.0 (0x3) HCI Rev: 0x7a6 LMP Ver: 2.0 (0x3) LMP Subver: 0x7a6
Manufacturer: Cambridge Silicon Radio (10)

root@eee:/home/netphunk#

root@eee:/home/netphunk# hcitool scan
Scanning ...

At this point I was just seeing if the range would pickup any devices in the neighboring houses. :) Now I turn bluetooth to active on my phone.

root@eee:/home/netphunk# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
00:21:FE:**:**:** Bob
root@eee:/home/netphunk#

Its seen! At this point I reactivated gnome bluetooth daemon and used the graphical interface to pair the two devices with a couple of clicks. This has got to be the most impressive Linux driver setup I have come accross. With this ease you wonder why the blocks and troubles with wifi, and graphics related stuff is so bad. Maybe because it is a more profitable market by far?

Overall I think the dongle was worth the price and the people who have made Bluetooth on Linux 2.6.x such a breeze should be rewarded by getting to slap the guys in charge of wifi. :)