Wireless Hacks

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 ...