Alternative to BlueSoleil

[TAKTAK]

Hello guys..

does anyone know of a free alternative to Bluesoleil??
as mine has just spazzed out and decided that it only wants to be in trial mode (and i'm not paying money for it!!)

any ideas?

cheers
TAKTAK

[TAKTAK]

*Bumpity Bumpity Boo*

[MarcLister]

Can you not just use Windows? I had a Bluetooth dongle that used Bluesoleil and what I thought of Bluesoleil is probably filtered.

I bought http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=700261 and I just used the supplied drivers for it and I can control it using Windows.

[aidanjt]

Yeah, the bluetooth stack that comes with Vista is pretty decent.

[TAKTAK]

aah, fairdo's, i'll give vista another chance.

now i've just got to try and find the drivers within all of the bumf on the disc

[aidanjt]

The driver should already be in Vista, or at least available from Windows Updates, most bluetooth dongles have a pretty standard interface. Good luck.

[TAKTAK]

okay, so vista decided to like it this time

the first time i tried it, it didn't work
the second time, it did work

then i had a rebuild

the third time, it didn't work
fourth time, didn't work

just tried again now... and it does work..... (well.... it seems to be)

deary, deary me

[peterb]

I tghink the Blue soleil drivers are pretty much a de facto standard. I had a blue soleil bluetooth USB device - which I plugged into my Linux box - more in hope than expectation - it just worked (and with far less faff than on a Windows installation)

Not much use to you, except that after a Google search, I couldn't find any alternatives (which is probably why you got no response the first time you posted)

[TAKTAK]

righty... i think it's working... i just need to test it now...

does anyone know of a bluetooth remote control app for an LG Viewty (i.e. so i can move the mouse ect)?

Cheers again guys

[directhex]

there are four common bluetooth stacks in use on windows - widcomm (now broadcomm), bluesoleil, and microsoft (plus toshiba, which i've never used). of the three, microsoft's is pretty much the most stable and reliable - however, there's one problem with it. the way bluetooth works, support for a given function (say printing) comes by supporting a given "profile" at both ends - i.e. on both device and computer. microsoft's stack includes only a small number of profiles - however, this is much better on vista than xp, and supports adding extra profiles via add-ons (whilst in xp the functionality cannot be extended, hence complete replacement stacks)

a funny mannerism with bluetooth on windows is the license-everything approach - driver downloads tend to be MAC-locked to only work on specified devices, not due to technological restraintys, but enforced licensing ones. for example, one of the only companies pushing a xp64 stack for their devices a while back was logitech (a widcomm stack, MAC-locked to logitech bluetooth base stations), so it became rather popular to use haxx0ring tools to unlock these licenses (often unreliably, but hey ho). i also had an MSI dongle which was rendered useless on modern windowses due to a lack of MSI-provided driver updates (and the MAC-locking means no generic drivers work).

generally speaking though, for remote control use (which is what it sounds like you want), most of that will be done using the SPP or HID profiles, which should be available in the microsoft stack, even on XP (AVRCP profile is designed specifically for remotes, but is pretty much completely unused, so you shouldn't need support for it).

[TAKTAK]

aye... but i still need an app to map buttons on the phone for blutooth usage...

that or a free version of pinnacle game profiler that allows a 360 controller to have custom button mappings to allow analogues to be mapped as mouse....