Monthly Archives: June 2009

The slightly factual story of bluetooth.

A long time ago in a land far far away. Some very strange people decided that they wanted to develop a wireless technology to replace the standard serial cable.

Thus the birth of bluetooth.

Bluetooth was a wireless technology that operated on the 2.4 Ghz range (like your wireles router/ap for your computer). It featured a frequency hopping algorithm so as to avoid collisions and provide some sort of security. The maximum speed was about 1 MBit/s. And range for the average device about 10 metres.

It was touted at the time as the universal standard. The end all and be all of conectivity.

And oddly enough named after an old Danish King Harold Blatand (he united some warring factions)

However it was slow to catch on and few people heard about it, primarly used for redirecting the audio and controls of a cell phone to a headset.

Recently however there have been some further updates to the technology.

Currently in version 3.0. The speed and protocols involved have been improved somewhat.

You can now get blutooth for your computer to comunicate with phones, headsets, printers, mice, keyboards or other computers. The average cell phone can now comunicate with other cellphones in close proximity as well as headsets and computers.  GPS modules have also been known to incorporate bluetooth as a means of retransmitting their data to other devices. The controllers of the newest gaming systems, PS3, Wii, XBox are all bluetooth.

Of course it is not as simple as conecting the two devices and hoping they work.

As with all technology there are protocols and standards that must be followed in order for two devices to communicate. However it is said that bluetooth versions are backwards compatible.

Bluetooth as a general rule is constantly broadcasting their name and address (Hardware address unique to the device). This on some devices such as phones could be disabled.

Because of the simplistic devices in use, two devices are connected by ‘pairing’. Which involves one device searching for another device in the area. When one is found and the user selects it a security code is requested which is used as a password. At this point the two devices are paired together and will begin comunicating. Newer versions of pairing however no-longer require a pin

However my headset has a static code of 0000 which means that anyone could usurp my headset if I were not using it.

A single bluetooth device can comunicate with up to 7 other devices. Or so they say.

Pretty boring no?

bloggitz

so, here  is my first blog from my new toy.

woooo!

finding a keyboard is  hard. oh well.

I got openvpn working.
but i only have access to one computer, but that is all i need i suppose. currently i have the device set up to check my mail. it gets overwelmed by spam.

i can now play civ, doom, and duke3d.

yep.

apparently my phone sucks and wont let me send/receive sms and calls via the n800. but i still have high hopes for data connection.

chocolate bars

svn crashes when i try to update my source. however if i update it in chunks it works.

i should do some testing with the audio recorder.

my bluetooth headset sucks

i still think you should get one

So It Begins (again)

I made the mistake of walking past my former boss’s place of residence.

I happen to live down the street from him, I did know this when I moved in, I simply assumed I could avoid it.

However I got caught.

They want my help.

No surprise.

I suppose I may as well.

Nokia N800

So, now that I have had some time to play with the new tablet I have. I have a few thoughts.

As the device is in fact a small computer running a full (ish) linux operating system virtually any application anyone feels like writing will run on the device. 

I already have web developement tools and remote access utilities installed. However I have been having some troubles getting the vpn to work with my router so to get access to my file servers I need to be at home. I may check out the ssh option.

The device is fairly responsive, once in an application it generally runs smoothly. 

The N800 has a nice sharp 800×480 display that displays more colours than any sane person needs

The N800 does not contain a phone, but easily can be used with Skype, SIP or Google Talk. The built in camera is poor resolution but adiquate for video chatting which is what it was designed for. However the current version of skype does not support video.

With a linux messenger client it is a breeze to connect to MSN, Yahoo, or virtually any other network.

The screen is touch sensitive which will respond to your finger or an included stylus. The buttons are sometimes hard to hit with your finger though.

The N800 can connect through WLAN (802.11b/g)  or bluetooth. I have managed to pair it with my el-cheepo phone. All I need is a data-plan and I could have internet virtualy everywhere.

The video playback fullscreen is clear and does not suffer from stutters, the audio is clear. With a headphone you could use it as a MP3 player.  

I currently have a 16Gb Flash drive with an expansion slot for another card. With 2 32Gb cards I could be at 64Gb.

With a GPS it could act as a navigation unit, however the maps seems lacking in detail. My phone does not act as a gps 🙁

Typeing of course is a pain, so I probably wont be using it for too much word processing. Even reading documents because of the small screen can be a headache. It cannot read my writing.

however it is small. it is nifty, it fits in my pocket and can last for days on a single charge if left to idle. The battery life when in use is only 5 or so hours (twice my other laptops).

All in all it is cool. you should go get one.

I now need a keyboard for it.

The Computational Menagerie

I have once again added to my unique and diverse collection of computers. This time I have added the Nokia n800 Internet Tablet. As the name would imply it is a touchscreen ‘PDA’ type computer. 

I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. But, it compared to a Smartphone is much like the iPod Touch as compared to the iPhone.

So, I shall leave you with this propaganda: