4.2. Verifying Connectivity

bluez-utils, the package you installed earlier, contains a tool called 'hcitool', which is used to query and configure Bluetooth connections. It also allows you to send some special commands to Bluetooth devices.

Let's use 'hcitool' to check our local Bluetooth hardware. In my case, I'm using an AmbiCom CF Bluetooth card in a pcmcia adapter. It looks like the item below in figure 3-1.

Figure 4-1. Ambicom BT2000-CF Adapter

This card uses the OX16C950 UART (technical PDF for this chipset can be found here) and requires the bt950_cs driver, which isn't included in the stock Linux kernel sources. I had to get it from this page and build it myself. The install went seamlessly, as expected.

The only catch in my case, was that I had to actually create the bt950.conf file and put it into /etc/pcmcia. Putting the bt950_cs entries in /etc/pcmcia/config wasn't enough to get the card recognized. Your results may differ, depending on your Bluetooth hardware.

Inserting this card in my Linux machine, produces the following positive info in the system logs:

Nov 29 17:24:18 wrath cardmgr[356]: socket 0: AmbiCom BT2000E Bluetooth Card Nov 29 17:24:19 wrath cardmgr[356]: executing: 'modprobe bt950_cs' Nov 29 17:24:20 wrath hcid[389]: HCI dev 0 registered Nov 29 17:24:20 wrath hcid[389]: HCI dev 0 up Nov 29 17:24:20 wrath hcid[389]: Starting security manager 0

From here, I can now use 'hcitool' to check that this card is indeed seen and accessible via the OS, as follows (note that running this as a user will produce different results. The output below shows what the 'root' user would see when running the command):

wrath:~# hciconfig dev hci0: Type: PCCARD BD Address: 00:10:7A:4C:43:B4 ACL MTU: 672:8 SCO MTU: 64:0 UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN RX bytes:2137 acl:45 sco:0 events:91 errors:0 TX bytes:1238 acl:37 sco:0 commands:26 errors:0

We now see that my card is seen with the Bluetooth address of 00:10:7A:4C:43:B4 and the virtual device of hci0. So far, so good.

Since we haven't yet connected the Palm to the desktop machine, I can't do much more to query the connection, but we know that the card is seen, recognized, and accessible via the BlueZ utilities at this point. Once we set up the Palm side and make the initial connection, we will be able to use 'hcitool' again to query much more useful information about the device, signal strength, and more.