The Syncing Apple An Exploration of Technology and Devices

Bluetooth PANs and Nokia 770

In playing with the Nokia 700, it seems silly that Nokia has limited the device to two connectivity realms - wifi and bluetooth phones. There is another type of bluetooth access- via a PAN, or Personal Area Network. I'm only just starting to see what the 770 can do with BT, but already I've found that it's too dumb to connect to a PAN with the Hildon-based Connection Manager. I've tried connecting to my Belkin F8T030 BT Access Point, to no avail. The 770 reports that there are no useful profiles on the device (which it sees). I don't think the Connection Manager is looking for a PAN BT profile.

Why BT (which is pretty slow) when you have wifi? Well, because you may not have wifi. There are restricted areas where wifi is not allowed, but a grey area exists with a BT PAN. With the limited range of BT PANs, you have security via proximity. Just kidding. But there are places where I'd like to use it since there is no wifi.

My Belkin has been without a PAN till just now however- I've had it a few years and while it's nice html administration menu has always had an Upgrade Firmware button, every depression of the button has resulted in it reporting that it can't find the website- which is hardwired in as www.belkin.com. I read about two things that changed all this: Belkin had released a firmware update in Nov 2005 which included PAN profiles, and that to get the F8T030 to successfully update you need to use the IP address for Belkin, and not the host name.

I quickly dug up the right ip address, clicked on the upgrade button, stopped the pathetic attempt to reach Belkin home and pasted in the ip. Here is what I saw in the URL field:

http://192.168.251.11/run_prog.cgi?command=download
&insert=yes&UPGRADE=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.belkin.com
%2Ffirmware%2Fbluetooth%2Ff8t030%2Fflash.bin&
nextpage=upgradeok.shtml

After jamming in 205.166.232.45 it worked.

Now I've got to get the 770 to connect to the PAN by hand. I think its possible, since the 770 seems to have most of the Linux Bluez stack in place. More to come as I work at this.

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth PAN, Nokia 770

[UPDATE] I just came across an great 770 Bluetooth hacking site - Collin R. Mulliner - he has a great blog, some 770/BT projects and a few pieces of software for the 770. Nice resource.