ToothMote 0.1 review

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With ToothMote application you can control Linux computers using a BlueTooth enabled cell phone. This program provides a basis for

License: LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License)
File size: 0K
Developer: Andy Lowther
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With ToothMote application you can control Linux computers using a BlueTooth enabled cell phone.

This program provides a basis for communicating with a connected cell phone, and then uses a plugin architecture to easily expand the amount of functionality it provides.

Requirements:
A Sony Ericsson cell phone with BlueTooth (I have model T637, but in theory most SE phones should be compatible)
A Linux machine with bluetooth enabled in the kernel (I run Debian unstable with a 2.6 kernel with all bluetooth options built-in)
The bluez-utils package and its requirements (apt-get install bluez-utils on Debian)
A BlueTooth USB dongle (or some other BlueTooth adapter) (I use DLink's DBT-120)

Usage:

The toothmote executable is run from the computer, which then initiates communication with the phone. When toothmote is started, you must already have the phone connected to a device (toothmote assumes /dev/rfcomm0 unless otherwise specified).

If you do not know how to bind the phone to a device, lots of information can be found at the Bluetooth and Linux webpage. Personally, I setup the binding using the commands

hcitool scan (which outputs the hardware address xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx)
rfcomm bind 0 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx 1

The user running toothmote must have access permissions to the device that the phone is bound to. This may require modifying permissions on the device or the users setup. For example, on my Debian machine, I added my user to the "dialout" group, since that group owns /dev/rfcomm0 .

When toothmote starts up, it will load the plugins it finds in your $HOME/.toothmote/plugin/ directory. If it is unable to load any, toothmote will exit.

Once toothmote has started, your phone should have a menu item for it under connectivity -> accessories. Each loaded plugin will then be available to interact with.

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