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Hack 19 Controlling XMMS with Bluetooth

Use your Bluetooth device to control your music
remotely under Linux.

If you have a mobile Bluetooth device
that you'd like to use to control
XMMS in Linux, you may be in
luck. There are actually a couple of applications out there that use
a

WAP-like
serial interface to
Ericsson's T-series phones (including the T68i and
the T39m) to configure them for use as XMMS remote controls.

The first of the two is a standalone Ruby-based application called
bluexmms, which is available from
http://linuxbrit.co.uk/bluexmms/.
Make sure
your phone is paired ([Hack #16]) with the
Bluetooth interface on your computer. Install
bluexmms, and then use
rfcomm to bind an RFCOMM device to channel 2 on
the T68i, which is (oddly) the T68's
"generic telephony" service.

Next, run bluexmms /dev/rfcomm1 on your device,
substituting the name of the RFCOMM device you just created. You
should now be able to go to Accessories/XMMS
Remote on your phone's menu, and voila!

A second, but very similar approach, involves an
XMMS plugin called
btexmms, which can be downloaded from
http://www.lyola.com/bte/. Build and install the
plugin, and create an RFCOMM device on channel 2, as just described.
Then, go into the XMMS preferences menu, and under Effects
General Plugins, enable
and configure the BTE Control plugin. Set the device to whatever
RFCOMM device you created for this purpose, and save your changes.
Now you should be able to access the remote control from
Accessories/XMMS Remote, as described above.

If you don't have an Ericsson T-series phone, you
might try Bemused, which runs on SymbianOS
devices, like the Nokia 3650/7650 and the Ericsson P800. Unlike the
T68 apps just listed, which rely on the computer to establish a
connection to the phone, Bemused instead uses a client that initiates
the connection from your phone to a server running on your computer.

You can get the Bemused server and client from http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~ashley/bemused/.
First, unpack bemused.zip and upload and install
the .sis file on your phone. Then download
bemusedlinuxserver.tar.gz, and build and install
it on your computer. You'll need to
advertise
Bluetooth serial port services on your laptop by running
sdptool add --channel=10 SP, and then edit and
configure /etc/bemused.conf appropriately. The
Bemused README suggests using Bluetooth channel 10 on your computer,
but any unused channel will do. Start X11, if you
haven't already. Run
bemusedserverlinux from the command line. At this
point, you should be able to fire up the Bemused application on your
phone and have the full power of XMMS at your fingertips, from clear
across the room.

If you don't have one of these devices,
don't fretnearly every Bluetooth device these
days implements some kind of serial communications layer. Using
examples from the projects just listed, you can probably create an
XMMS remote control for your own phone or PDA. The hackability
quotient of Bluetooth for this particular kind of application is
pretty high.

Clearly, if you've made it this far,
you're probably thinking that, with a wireless
remote control for XMMS, you could plug a dedicated MP3 server
running Linux into the hi-fi amplifier in your living room and never
need a monitor or a keyboard for it. Or maybe you're
considering plugging a low-power FM transmitter into your sound card,
so you can listen to your music collection from any radio in the
house. And you're absolutely right. With Bluetooth,
you can do all of this, and probably more. Let the
rockin' out commence!

Schuyler Erle