H500 problems

24Oct07

I’ve had one little problem with Ubuntu over the last day or two. I’ve installed twinkle to let me make VOIP calls via my Engin account (works perfectly, btw) but because the Dell 9400 doesn’t have a built-in microphone (what were you thinking, Dell??) I need an external microphone of some sort.

I figured the neatest solution would be to use the Motorola H500 bluetooth headset that came with my SLVR. It doesn’t want to play nicely, however. I know it works with the Dell, because WinXP talks to it just fine. Ubuntu doesn’t want to know about it though.

I spent a good few hours trawling through online bluetooth FAQs and forums and it kind of talks (hcitool scan finds it, for example) but I just can’t get it to pair up nicely to the point where it’s available as an audio device. One problem, I think, is that there’s a lot of confusion out on the tubes about different versions of Ubuntu and what works with each version. I believe that support for bluetooth in 7.10 is a lot better than earlier versions, so now that the upgrade is done I might have more success.

Filed under: BlueTooth, BrokenStuff   |  2 Comments