Use your cell phone as a remote control on Ubuntu
April 15, 2008 4:39 pm UncategorizedFinally I bought a USB bluetooth adapter to use on my Eee PC.
Sometime ago, I saw some tips on how to use the cell phone as a remote control. As my cell phone has bluetooth, and as I never used it for something useful, I was willing to test this feature.
I heard about amora, but it seems to work on super cell phones (not my case). I didn’t test it, so I don’t know if it will work for me, but before buy this adapter, I saw this post, talking about bluepad. It sounds like a good solution for mortals like me…
So I installed BluePad on Hardy (Ubuntu Beta) on my desktop and on Gutsy (Current Ubuntu) on my Eee PC. In both it works good. On Ubuntu I sent to the cell phone the part that runs on it.
The Gutsy bluetooth support is very good, but on Hardy it’s even better. I’m using bluepad + Ubuntu on class and speeches. Maybe I’ll record bluepad running on my Eee PC and put it on youtube… 
eddie :
Date: April 15, 2008 @ 9:31 pm
I’m going to share my secret with you. There is this sweet Ubuntu package “openssh-server” that makes your console reachable from the outside. I use ADSL and have dynamic IP/no hostname, so I mapped a port in the router (easy task) and installed noip2 (which needs a free account in the noip website).
Then I downloaded midpssh, which is a ssh client for cell phones and installs just like a game. Configured it using my noip account and the remapped router port. Now I can control my computer everywhere using my cell phone. I just get to a terminal screen where I can even control my graphical apps using dcop (e.g. ktorrent using the ktshell script).
I have heard people uses bluetooth device polling to block/unblock screen using hcitool, if you want to try.
Andre Noel :
Date: April 15, 2008 @ 9:45 pm
Very cool.
Unfortunately, I don’t use internet on my cell phone… It’s very expensive here.
Randy :
Date: April 15, 2008 @ 10:11 pm
Cool stuff! Which USB bluetooth adapter did you get?
Accord Tsai :
Date: April 16, 2008 @ 6:10 am
I’ve also found anyremote (http://anyremote.sourceforge.net/) works quite well for me. The GUI is a bit messy, but for the most part it works fine, and it’s even scriptable! I haven’t looked into the scripting, but I think it mainly uses the dcop/dbus family. Works with any phone with JSR-82!
Onkar :
Date: April 16, 2008 @ 7:18 am
You didn’t mention your phone model. I suppose you are not using Sony Ericsson phone, because the feature is in build in the phone. You just need a profile for the application you want to control. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothRemoteControl
Andre Noel :
Date: April 16, 2008 @ 10:13 am
Randy,
A generic USB bluetooth adapter.
Andre Noel :
Date: April 16, 2008 @ 10:13 am
Onkar, it’s a nokia 6085.
/home/stan » Телефонът като дистанционно под Линукс :
Date: April 17, 2008 @ 12:28 pm
[...] Видяно тук. [...]
Andre Noel » Blog Archive » Using Nokia 6110 on Ubuntu :
Date: May 19, 2008 @ 11:27 am
[...] Andre Noel andrenoel at ubuntu dot com « Use your cell phone as a remote control on Ubuntu [...]
me :
Date: May 19, 2008 @ 8:19 pm
Seems to work fine with an n95 - once i got the problems with the server sorted:
Had to upgrade the bluez-utils package that came with hardy to be able to connect, and build from svn for screenshots to work.