More Bluetooth (and gaming) features

In the midst of post-release bug fixing, we've also added a fair number of new features to our stack. As usual, new features span a number of different components, so integrators will have to be careful picking up all the components when, well, integrating.

PS3 clones joypads support

Do you have a PlayStation 3 joypad that feels just a little bit "off"? You can't find the Sony logo anywhere on it? The figures on the face buttons look like barbed wire? And if it were a YouTube video, it would say "No copyright intended"?

Bingo. When plugged in via USB, those devices advertise themselves as SHANWAN or Gasia, and implement the bare minimum to work when plugged into a PlayStation 3 console. But as a Linux computer would behave slightly differently, we need to fix a couple of things.

The first fix was simple, but necessary to be able to do any work: disable the rumble motor that starts as soon as you plug the pad through USB.

Once that's done, we could work around the fact that the device isn't Bluetooth compliant, and hard-code the HID service it's supposed to offer.

Bluetooth LE Battery reporting

Bluetooth Low Energy is the new-fangled (7-year old) protocol for low throughput devices, from a single coin-cell powered sensor, to input devices. What's great is that there's finally a standardised way for devices to export their battery statuses. I've added support for this in BlueZ, which UPower then picks up for desktop integration goodness.

There are a number of Bluetooth LE joypads available for pickup, including a few that should be firmware upgradeable. Look for "Bluetooth 4" as well as "Bluetooth LE" when doing your holiday shopping.

gnome-bluetooth work

Finally, this is the boring part. Benjamin and I reworked code that's internal to gnome-bluetooth, as used in the Settings panel as well as the Shell, to make it use modern facilities like GDBusObjectManager. The overall effect of this is, less code, less brittle and more reactive when Bluetooth adapters come and go, such as when using airplane mode.

Apart from the kernel patch mentioned above (you'll know if you need it :), those features have been integrated in UPower 0.99.7 and in the upcoming BlueZ 5.48. And they will of course be available in Fedora, both in rawhide and as updates to Fedora 27 as soon as the releases have been done and built.

GG!

Bluetooth on Fedora: joypads and (more) security

It's been a while since I posted about Fedora specific Bluetooth enhancements, and even longer that I posted about PlayStation controllers support.

Let's start with the nice feature.

Dual-Shock 3 and 4 support

We've had support for Dual-Shock 3 (aka Sixaxis, aka PlayStation 3 controllers) for a long while, but I've added a long-standing patchset to the Fedora packages that changes the way devices are setup.

The old way was: plug in your joypad via USB, disconnect it, and press the "P" button on the pad. At this point, and since GNOME 3.12, you would have needed the Bluetooth Settings panel opened for a question to pop up about whether the joypad can connect.

This is broken in a number of ways. If you were trying to just charge the joypad, then it would forget its original "console" and you would need to plug it in again. If you didn't have the Bluetooth panel opened when trying to use it wirelessly, then it just wouldn't have worked.

Set up is now simpler. Open the Bluetooth panel, plug in your device, and answer the question. You just want to charge it? Dismiss the query, or simply don't open the Bluetooth panel, it'll work dandily and won't overwrite the joypad's settings.

And finally, we also made sure that it works with PlayStation 4 controllers.

Note that the PlayStation 4 controller has a button combination that allows it to be visible and pairable, except that if the device trying to connect with it doesn't behave in a particular way (probably the same way the 25€ RRP USB adapter does), it just wouldn't work. And it didn't work for me on a number of different devices.

Cable pairing for the win!

And the boring stuff

Hey, do you know what happened last week? There was a security problem in a package that I glance at sideways sometimes! Yes. Again.

A good way to minimise the problems caused by problems like this one is to lock the program down. In much the same way that you'd want to restrict thumbnailers, or even end-user applications, we can forbid certain functionality from being available when launched via systemd.

We've finally done this in recent fprintd and iio-sensor-proxy upstream releases, as well as for bluez in Fedora Rawhide. If testing goes well, we will integrate this in Fedora 27.

Blutella, a Bluetooth speaker receiver

Quite some time ago, I was asked for a way to use the AV amplifier (which has a fair bunch of speakers connected to it) in our living-room that didn't require turning on the TV to choose a source.

I decided to try and solve this problem myself, as an exercise rather than a cost saving measure (there are good-quality Bluetooth receivers available for between 15 and 20€).

Introducing Blutella

I found this pot of Nutella in my travels (in Europe, smaller quantities are usually in a jar that looks like a mustard glass, with straight sides) and thought it would be a perfect receptacle for a CHIP, to allow streaming via Bluetooth to the amp. I wanted to make a nice how-to for you, dear reader, but best laid plans...

First, the materials:

• a CHIP
• jar of Nutella, and "Burnt umber" acrylic paint
• micro-USB to USB-A and jack 3.5mm to RCA cables
• Some white Sugru, for a nice finish around the cables
• bit of foam, a Stanley knife, a CD marker

That's around 10€ in parts (cables always seem to be expensive), not including our salvaged Nutella jar, and the CHIP itself (9$ + shipping).

You'll start by painting the whole of the jar, on the inside, with the acrylic paint. Allow a couple of days to dry, it'll be quite thick.

So, the plan that went awry. Turns out that the CHIP, with the cables plugged in, doesn't fit inside this 140g jar of Nutella. I also didn't make the holes exactly in the right place. The CHIP is tiny, but not small enough to rotate inside the jar without hitting the side, and the groove to screw the cap also have only one position.

Anyway, I pierced two holes in the lid for the audio jack and the USB charging cable, stuffed the CHIP inside, and forced the lid on so it clipped on the jar's groove.

I had nice photos with foam I cut to hold the CHIP in place, but the finish isn't quite up to my standards. I guess that means I can attempt this again with a bigger jar ;)

The software

After flashing the CHIP with Debian, I logged in, and launched a script which I put together to avoid either long how-tos, or errors when I tried to reproduce the setup after a firmware update and reset.

The script for setting things up is in the CHIP-bluetooth-speaker repository. There are a few bugs due to drivers, and lack of integration, but this blog is the wrong place to track them, so check out the issues list.

Apart from those driver problems, I found the integration between PulseAudio and BlueZ pretty impressive, though I wish there was a way for the speaker to reconnect to the phone I streamed from when turned on again, as Bluetooth speakers and headsets do, removing one step from playing back audio.

Support for "Airplane mode" keys

As we were working on audio jack notifications, and were wondering whether the type of notification we'd pop up in this case could be reused in other cases, I encountered a feature request that could now be solved easily with the rfkill D-Bus service we added to gnome-settings-daemon for the 3.10 release.

If you have keyboard buttons on your laptop to enable or disable Bluetooth, or Airplane mode, you can now use them. Note that the "UWB" toggle key will toggle the whole airplane mode mainly because no in-kernel driver uses it, and nobody remembers what UWB is.

Note that the labels and icons used are still subject to changes. In particular as you can see that the labels are too long for lower resolutions.

Gadget reviews

Not that I'm really running after more gadgets, but sometimes, there is a need that could only be soothed through new hardware.

Bluetooth UE roll

Got this for my wife, to play music when staying out on the quays of the Rhône, playing music in the kitchen (from a phone or computer), or when she's at the photo lab.

It works well with iOS, MacOS X and Linux. It's very easy to use, with whether it's paired, connected completely obvious, and the charging doesn't need specific cables (USB!).

I'll need to borrow it to add battery reporting for those devices though. You can find a full review on Ars Technica.

Sugru (!)

Not a gadget per se, but I bought some, used it to fix up a bunch of cables, repair some knickknacks, and do some DIY. Highly recommended, especially given the current price of their starter packs.

15-pin to USB Joystick adapter

It's apparently from Ckeyin, but you'll find the exact same box from other vendors. Made my old Gravis joystick work, in the hope that I can make it work with DOSBox and my 20-year old copy of X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter.

Microsoft Surface ARC Mouse

That one was given to me, for testing, works well with Linux. Again, we'll need to do some work to report the battery. I only ever use it when travelling, as the batteries last for absolute ages.

Logitech K750 keyboard

Bought this nearly two years ago, and this is one of my best buys. My desk is close to a window, so it's wireless but I never need to change the batteries or think about charging it. GNOME also supports showing the battery status in the Power panel.

Logitech T650 touchpad

Got this one in sale (17€), to replace my Logitech trackball (one of its buttons broke...). It works great, and can even get you shell gestures when run in Wayland. I'm certainly happy to have one less cable running across my desk, and reuses the same dongle as the keyboard above.

If you use more than one devices, you might be interested in this bug to make it easier to support multiple Logitech "Unifying" devices.

ClicLite charger

Got this from a design shop in Berlin. It should probably have been cheaper than what I paid for it, but it's certainly pretty useful. Charges up my phone by about 20%, it's small, and charges up at the same time as my keyboard (above).

Dell S2340T

Bought about 2 years ago, to replace the monitor I had in an all-in-one (Lenovo all-in-ones, never buy that junk).

Nowadays, the resolution would probably be considered a bit on the low side, and the touchscreen mesh would show for hardcore photography work. It's good enough for videos though and the speaker reaches my sitting position.

It's only been possible to use the USB cable for graphics for a couple of months, and it's probably not what you want to lower CPU usage on your machine, but it works for Fedora with this RPM I made. Talk to me if you can help get it into RPMFusion.

Shame about the huge power brick, but a little bonus for the builtin Ethernet adapter.

Surface 3

This is probably the biggest ticket item. Again, I didn't pay full price for it, thanks to coupons, rewards, and all. The work to getting Linux and GNOME to play well with it is still ongoing, and rather slow.

I won't comment too much on Windows either, but rather as what it should be like once Linux runs on it.

I really enjoy the industrial design, maybe even the slanted edges, but one as to wonder why they made the USB power adapter not sit flush with the edge when plugged in.

I've used it a couple of times (under Windows, sigh) to read Pocket as I do on my iPad 1 (yes, the first one), or stream videos to the TV using Flash, without the tablet getting hot, or too slow either. I also like the fact that there's a real USB(-A) port that's separate from the charging port. The micro SD card port is nicely placed under the kickstand, hard enough to reach to avoid it escaping the tablet when lugged around.

The keyboard, given the thickness of it, and the constraints of using it as a cover, is good enough for light use, when travelling for example, and the layout isn't as awful as on, say, a Thinkpad Carbon X1 2nd generation. The touchpad is a bit on the small side though it would have been hard to make it any bigger given the cover's dimensions.

I would however recommend getting a Surface Pro if you want things to work right now (or at least soon). The one-before-last version, the Surface Pro 3, is probably a good target.

Bluetooth panel redesign

Another week, another panel refresh.

Rather than the 2-pane approach, and a separate setup interface we used to have, we've gone for a single pane device list, as you've probably seen on your smartphone.

We also do away with the "Discoverable" switch (your computer will be visible when this panel is opened, invisible if not), and nearby devices will show up at the bottom of the list. Simply click on one to set it up.

Clicking on an already setup device will bring up the properties, allowing you to connect to the device if necessary, or link to related preferences.

Finally, the biggest part of the work was making sure that the new setup mechanism worked at least as well as the stand-alone wizard. This means that I got 17 of my most representative devices out, and set up every single one of them. Edge case.

There's a good chance that we'll make some additional, minor, adjustments to the wording, spacing and behaviour of this panel before the GNOME 3.12 release. I'd particularly like to make clicking on a device connect to it if already setup and offer some other way of accessing properties.

Bluetooth file sharing (ObexPush) in GNOME 3.10

As you might remember, GNOME 3.10 switched to using BlueZ 5.x as its Bluetooth backend.

Switching to BlueZ 5.x meant that the old obex-data-server (which was used in both the gvfs ObexFTP backend, and gnome-user-share) couldn't be used anymore. The previously stand-alone obexd was to be used.

Its API is quite different, and it obviously didn't get much testing apart from its target use case, the single-user phone case.

I fixed a number of bugs this week-end, which should make Obex Push server-side (sending files from your phone to your computer) work as expected.

Distributors' homework

First, distributors will need to do a bit of work for you:
- Ship and apply this (not yet upstreamed) patch if you don't have a systemd-based session, so that obexd can be started via D-Bus.
- And ship this patch to have obexd write to the user's cache dir by default.

With both of those patches to BlueZ and gnome-user-share 3.10.1, you should be golden.

Note that the first patch is also required if you want to send files using bluetooth-sendto.

ObexFTP

You'll notice that we didn't mention ObexFTP yet, but we'll do, one last time. ObexFTP support client side hasn't seen any updates for a couple of years, and the server side support for it in obexd didn't match our expectations (such as the inability to kill existing, already made connections).

So ObexFTP support was never finished porting and re-enabled in gnome-user-share. And given that apart from computers and very few phones, the client side support was lacking, we decided to kill the support for it in gnome-user-share.

TL;DR

ObexPush server support is fixed in gnome-user-share 3.10.1, and ObexFTP server support is gone.

GNOME 3.10 is coming!

The new release is coming! As has been the case for the past couple of releases, I've mostly been shepherding great work by other contributors, and I'll detail my limited contributions beyond mere bug fixing.

Wayland support

I've done some work on enabling clutter-gtk applications to be able to run on  Wayland though the harder work of implementing sub-surfaces is still pending.

Giovanni has done incredible work on mutter to start moving some of the X11 dependent code inside the compositor, which should allow you to run a (cut down) Wayland session using gnome-shell.

This also means that Thomas Wood's redesigned Displays panel has Wayland support. A perfect storm of changes for one of the only panels that received little attention since the GNOME 2.x days.

The new displays panel with a TV that claims to be oh so small

Date & Time redesign

Zeeshan, through his work on Geoclue2, and Kalev, through his Summer of Code project, have completely redesigned the Date & Time panel. Aside from being easier to setup, it means that we can finally implement the automatic timezone switching depending on your location.

The new Date & Time panel

BlueZ 5 support

GNOME is the first major desktop to ship with BlueZ 5 support, thanks to work by Gustavo Padovan and Emilio Pozuelo Monfort.

The older version was not supported anymore, and the new version allows us to support things like "Just Works" pairing, better support of audio devices (though the PulseAudio 5.x release to support this is only coming shortly after GNOME 3.10) and a much better architecture for a more stable operation.

GNOME 3.12 should see a redesigned Bluetooth panel, to match current best practices on other platforms (such as merging the management and pairing wizard UIs into one).

Bluetooth devices in use

Miscellaneous

Intuos 4 OLEDs

OLED support for Wacom Intuos 4 tablets (as seen above, thanks Przemo), media keys support for MPRIS applications such as Spotify (thanks to Michael Wood and Lars Uebernickel), updated UI for the Universal Access panel (the ever present Matthias Clasen), support for many more fingerprint readers in libfprint (thanks Vasily Khoruzhick).

Redesigned Universal Access panel

And to my contributions

More work on Videos. Totem 3.10 is still based on the same interface as in GNOME 3.8, but some work has been on the master branch towards the new UI, with some of the features getting backported. We have:

• new session management for when Totem crashes
• support for chapters within files (such as Matroska videos)
• Wayland bug fixes in GTK+, clutter and the combined clutter-gtk
• a completed GDBus port
• Working overlaid controls (though their behaviour isn't quite up to scratch)
• Remote files support in Grilo, including support for Recent files
• Started work on merging the various sidebars within the main view (which included landing GtkSearchBar in GTK+)
• libquvi 0.9 support

On top of which you'll find the usual mix of bug fixes, small features, itch scratching, and swamp-draining in finger-pointing fests.

I also spent quite a bit of time on a side project that didn't come to fruition at this time, but I hope to be able to post some details soon.

Bluetooth panel merged

The Bluetooth panel was the last bad citizen in getting merged into gnome-control-center itself. It's now been integrated into gnome-control-center itself, using a very cleaned up libgnome-bluetooth.

Ready for GNOME 3.4! Please report any breakage.

Pretty, oh so pretty

There was a tiny problem with the Bluetooth panel has it was implemented in GNOME 3. There wasn't a way to rename the Bluetooth adapter. Well, there was a way, but it wasn't implemented, but it was there, in our minds.

We started by adding support to the Info panel to set a machine's pretty hostname, as implemented by systemd. Looks simple enough.

The next step was to make bluetoothd know about this file, and use it to name Bluetooth adapters, instead of crappy hostnames. And voila.

Implemented as it should be.

If you have applications where using a device's name (as opposed to the user's name) makes sense, please look into using the machine's pretty hostname.

If you want to test all this, packages will soon be trickling into Fedora 16 (aka Rawhide). All the patches are upstream, though the bluez patches are still pending.

Bluetooth panel

Nearly implemented in one evening (Friday evening, before the UI freeze), and a day (well, a long day, it's 4:30 AM).

The only thing not implemented is the hardest part, the "active" button, which needs to take into account whether there are Bluetooth devices at all, if one is the default and powered, and handle hardware killswitches as well as software ones (software-based airplane modes for example).

Yay, I can wiggle my mouse

As per usual, refer to the design documents for more information on the changes made.

Bluetooth in gnome-shell

Even though I'm still gnome-shell impaired (waiting on 3D support landing for my Radeon video card), I helped out Giovanni Campagna into getting Bluetooth support in the gnome-shell.

My work was to review Giovanni's code for gnome-bluetooth, and making sure that the gnome-shell behaviour matched that of the existing GNOME Bluetooth applet.

A lot of to-and-fro, but the gnome-bluetooth changes are now in, and waiting on sub-menu fixes for gnome-shell itself. Owen was kind enough to provide me with a screenshot for your enjoyment.

Bluetooth in the shell

This wasn't my first interaction with Giovanni, as, in another long-winded bug, we hashed out the volume control shell icon. This work is already merged, and lives in gnome-shell.

Geek hardware, for a change

Wireless router

Urgh. After having been fighting with my ISP about connectivity problems, they announced that the problem I was plagued with (a bug in a Motorola UBR on their network) was fixed. I was still getting dropped connections though. Turns out the software on the provided D-Link DIR-615 is DIRe (see what I did there).

Here comes DD-WRT. I followed the instructions from this forum post (just the “How do I install DD-WRT?” part), with a firmware grabbed from the DD-WRT website itself.

After the initial setup, I also switched off 802.11B support, as the last device I have to require this is a Nintendo DS that doesn't even do WPA.

New phone

I got a new phone on Friday, and managed to steer clear of iTunes for now. First off, I exported all the contacts from my old Sony Ericsson phone using obexftp:

obexftp -v -b 00:11:22:33:44:55 -U synch -S -g telecom/pb.vcf

This will give you a pb.vcf file with all your contacts.

With the new device still missing a micro-SIM, I fixed a bunch of nautilus-ideviceinfo bugs. With the micro-SIM inserted, I activated the phone with Free Software. After setting up a minimal network, I sent my pb.vcf file to the new phone via e-mail, and reinserted all the contacts.

Still plenty more integration to be done, though a visit to jailbreakme.com will make this easier.

GUADEC slides

Got back from GUADEC on Saturday, and spent most of the week-end recovering. Probably a good thing, as I have loads of things on my TODO list, for either the Board, GNOME or Fedora.

Geoclue talk

As per usual when I make slides, I end up going through them quickly, but the Q&A session was long enough for me to go into more details.

Bluetooth talk

No slides, for a change. I hope the videos will be available online soon.

Hardware enablement

Patches flying, and the results are nearly there.

Driver for the Apple Infra-red Receiver should soon be upstream (and a patch not to break LIRC setups), along with support for the Intuos 4 wireless tablet.

Ross merged patches in Gypsy which should allow for crappy serial GPSes to work, as well as the one on the Nokia N810 (and N900?), and the (even) crappy(er) ones that require a closed-source daemon and write to a FIFO.

Get Moblin, get GNOME

If you were to install the new Moblin 2.1 somewhere, you'd be getting a gnome-bluetooth powered Bluetooth panel.

All the code lives upstream in the gnome-bluetooth module on master.

Bug fixing galore!

In the past couple of weeks, we've been hard at work fixing bugs for the next Fedora release, Fedora 12.

We've had new releases for Totem - with loads of warnings, crashers, and behavioural bugs fixed -, for gnome-bluetooth - with upstream fixes for some killswitch handling problems -.

I've also helped out fixing bluriness in gnome-settings-daemon, and made gnome-power-manager use the same OSD code as the volume pop-ups.

As a relief from all the bug fixing, I've started working on a Bluetooth input setup helper, which will help you set up a mouse and keyboard on Bluetooth should you find yourself without any connected to your computer. This should be helpful to users of Logitech, or Dell branded dongles.

nautilus-sendto plugin API

As promised in the nautilus-sendto module proposal, I fixed up the plugin API, wrote API docs, and exported the plugin functionality.

I've already patched Empathy to carry its own nautilus-sendto plugin, and will be moving the Pidgin and Bluetooth plugins in the near future.

«Todos es mejor con Bluetooth»

Ladies and gents. Tomorrow, the great Bluetooth presentation! Come and join in the chuckles. A superb presentation that the New York Times calls «Inexplicably enticing», an anonymous KDE developer say it's «Dumbed down, and not Cross-desktop und so weiter».

Where: Palacio de la Música
When: 12:00 to 12:30
Who: Y.T.
What: ¡la mejor presentación de Bluetooth en el mundo!

Secure Simple Pairing support, now in Fedora 11

I updated gnome-bluetooth in Fedora 11, and that new version supports Secure Simple Pairing, an easier pairing mode for Bluetooth 2.1 devices.

The update currently lives in the updates-testing repository, but will be in the normal updates when we've had enough good feedback about it.

If you have Bluetooth devices in your possession that don't work as expected with your systems, and fancied a bit of playful testing, find me at GCDS, and we'll try and fix that.