Use your cell phone as a remote control on Ubuntu
Finally 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… 
| Print article | This entry was posted by Andre Noel on April 15, 2008 at 4:39 pm, and is filed under Uncategorized. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 2 years ago
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.
about 2 years ago
Very cool.
Unfortunately, I don’t use internet on my cell phone… It’s very expensive here.
about 2 years ago
Cool stuff! Which USB bluetooth adapter did you get?
about 2 years ago
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!
about 2 years ago
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
about 2 years ago
Randy,
A generic USB bluetooth adapter.
about 2 years ago
Onkar, it’s a nokia 6085.
about 2 years ago
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.