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Well, I’ve tinkered today with the headset and this Bluetooth dongle, and got a little further. Still can’t actually connect to anything, but I am seeing devices pop up in Konqueror under the bluetooth:/ kioslave and hcitool scan actually reports some devices.wander ~ # hcitool scan –flush
Scanning …
20:07:35:xx:xx:xx KF-700
00:1E:E1:xx:xx:xx SGH-A412

I have no idea what the SGH device is … someone’s mobile phone apparently (this dongle has a 100m range). The other device, is my headset. However, hitting the MFB (Mobile Find) button on the headset, does not yield a pin entry request in KDEBluetooth. I’m no closer to actually being able to use this as a means of wireless VoIP.

To reiterate what I have tried:

• Upgraded to latest vanilla kernel: 2.6.25-rc6
• Running latest BlueZ tools in portage: bluez-firmware-1.2 bluez-bluefw-1.0 bluez-libs-3.28 bluez-utils-3.28 bluez-hciemu-1.2
• Using hciconfig to bring the device down, back up, and reset it, enabling various modes (e.g. page scan, inquiry scan, page+inquiry scan)

The following is seen in dmesg when the dongle is plugged in (proceeding text snipped):
[ 2560.963622] usb 5-1: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 3
[ 2561.133938] usb 5-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 2561.151391] usb 5-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0a5c, idProduct=2035
[ 2561.151403] usb 5-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 2561.151409] usb 5-1: Product: BCM2035B
[ 2561.151414] usb 5-1: Manufacturer: Broadcom Corp

And hciconfig shows:
wander ~ # hciconfig
hci0: Type: USB
BD Address: 00:00:00:00:00:00 ACL MTU: 377:10 SCO MTU: 64:8
UP RUNNING PSCAN
RX bytes:982 acl:0 sco:0 events:28 errors:0
TX bytes:610 acl:0 sco:0 commands:28 errors:0

I’m guessing the address is the problem. And this issue seems to rest with the kernel driver itself, hci-usb. I’ve tried forcing bcm203x to take custody of the device, this doesn’t work at all — the device doesn’t even initialise. So clearly hci-usb is responsible for setting things up — but it isn’t. In sysfs:

wander ~ # cat /sys/bus/bluetooth/devices/hci0/address
00:00:00:00:00:00

Allegedly, the BCM2033 works rather well with Linux, and I see no reason why the BCM2035 shouldn’t, when the code is clearly present. I’d say there’s some edge case that isn’t handled. I’ll ask a little later on the BlueZ mailing lists and see what I can come up with … but I’m posting this here for others’ reference. Later down the track I plan to repeat this exercise on the Lemote boxes (and maybe my O2 as well, if I get a USB card for it) — presently though, I’m doing this on my laptop (which is x86-based).

Again, if anyone has an idea what’s going wrong… I’m all ears.

Hi All,

Yes, I’m back from my trip away. It’s always good to get away from technology for a while. In this case, it was camping on a private property, “Lonesome”, just off the Mt. Lindsay road part way between Basket Swamp and Bald Rock National Parks. We last visited this place two years ago for Easter, photos of that visit are viewable here.

This time around, there were two major activities that took place. Saturday the whole group did a walk up to Little Bald Rock, with some walking cross-country back to the road, and the rest of us (me included) taking a more leisurely walk up the granite slabs back to the Bald Rock picnic area carpark.

During the walk, a number of beetles (one pictured left) with brightly coloured abdomens were sighted — we’re not sure what species they are. We saw at least 4 or 5, mostly on the walk back to the cars. The colours seem to be some kind of warning display when the beetle feels threatened (which I certainly would if 8 or so giants just stepped over me). Not pictured in this photo is the orange band around the beetle’s neck — it’s otherwise a plain brown colour all over.

Sunday saw the group splitting up. Some went to Tenterfield to look around town. Others travelled back to Bald Rock National Park to do Bald Rock itself. We decided to go have a look for some mines that we had located the previous trip. Most of the mines had collapsed in, but one, was in quite good condition, and a few adventurous ones (me included) grabbed our torches and (perhaps unwisely) headed inside.

The area had once been a gold mine, but had long since been abandoned. These days, it’s home to a colony of small bats. These flighty mammals did not appreciate our invasion, and quickly started flying about the tunnel, sometimes clobbering us in the process. They’re mighty difficult to capture on camera — they do not like my 1W LED headlamp shone on them, nor do they appreciate the flash of a camera. I did manage to get one photo (right) of a bat, as well as a couple of them in flight.

There were no incidents thankfully and we spent the morning looking for other mine shafts and tunnels. We found numerous shafts, some quite deep, and a couple of collapsed tunnels. The early part of the afternoon was spent bush bashing our way back to the creek, which we followed back to the campsite.  During this time, many of us accumulated many leeches, some of us scoring over a dozen leech bites.  That afternoon was spent ridding ourselves of the blood-thirsty pests.

All in all, it was an enjoyable weekend. I’m yet to put the panoramas together, at the moment I’m getting clothes washed and camping gear put away. The full series of photos taken mostly by myself, can be found on our gallery site, along with other photo sets from past trips.