Portable speaker for NextUp Talker

[Corneliussen]

Hi, I have been using the NextUp Talker when I see my doctor, using a set of portable speakers that I think are not very portable. Somewhere - now I do not recall where - I have read a suggestion to use the new Motorola T305 which is a handsfree Bluetooth speaker (and microfone) for car-use. Any idea what driver might be necessary and how to configure this combination? I have managet to pair the laptop with the Motorola, but I'm at a loss how to direct the output from NT to the USB-Bluetooth on the laptop. All suggestions will be tried.
Ove

[Jim Bretti]

Hello Ove,

I was able to get NextUp Talker to send audio to my bluetooth hands free device, which is probably the same thing you need to do. After pairing the handsfree with my laptop, I displayed my bluetooth settings, right clicked on the handsfree device displayed there, and selected "Connect" to establish a connection.

Once connected, I used the "Select Audio Device" menu option (under the NextUp Talker Options menu) and was able to pick the bluetooth device as my NextUp Talker audio device.

Can you try that with your Motorola device and see if you have any luck?

[Corneliussen]

Hi Ken, you got it exactly right about what I want. However, after pairing my Motorola handsfree with the laptop, there appears in the "Networks Connections" a Bluetooth-icon, but a right-click only brings up a new window (Bluetooth Personal Area Network Devices)showing no devices, and trying to add with the wizzard shows no devices available despite the Motoroloa being in visible mood. This place does not show my phone either, but the Nokia suite works!
The "Control Panel/Bluetooth Devices" shows my mobile phone (Phones and modems)and the Motorola handsfree (Audio devices), both as pass key enabled. However, there is no way to select "Connect" (nor for the phone). This is where it seems that my problem starts going around. Did I mention that I use Windows XP SP2?
Any suggestions are welcomed.
Ove

[Jim Bretti]

Do you have a bluetooth icon in your system tray where you can enable/disable the bluetooth radio? If you have an icon like that, right click, and see if you can get to a bluetooth settings panel. Basically there should be some way to find a display of your paired devices.

If you don't see this icon, try clicking the Start button, click "All Programs", and see if you can find Bluetooth settings there.

[Corneliussen]

Jim, there is no Bluetooth icon in the system tray. The only other place I can find is in the Device Manager. That has a section for Bluetooth Radios, with 2 entries: Generic Bluetooth Radio and Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator. I did manage to change that to my Dongle's software, but that did not change anything and I could no longer connect my phone, so I went back to the above.
Ove

[Jim Bretti]

I checked around some and it looks like the problem might be with the Microsoft bluetooth stack. I have the Toshiba stack on the laptop where I have this working, but ran into the same problems you're seeing on another machine with the MS stack.

The only way I could get the handsfree device working on this other machine was to replace the MS stack with the (widcomm) stack that came with the usb dongle I have.

Here are two links I found to be helpful:

Getting Your Bluetooth Headset to Work in XP

Bluetooth PC Headsets

It would be great if this worked with the Microsoft stack but I don't know how to do it.

[Corneliussen]

Hi Jim, I do appreciate your efforts I too have come to the point that I believe it is the Microsoft stack that does not work.
I have been to the first link you gave me, and tried it. It is nicely detailed, but stops when it ask me to connect my Bluetooth device. I connect the Dongle, and it says that it cannot find any Bluetooth device and ends the installation. This happens both to the Toshiba and the Widcomm. I did manage to install the stach that came with the dongle (have it on the HD) but it did not work with the phone nor anything else.
Both the Toshiba and the Widcom were trying to be installed directly from download as they recommend - I was not able to save them to disk. Could it be differet if somehow I got the widcom into my HD and tried to install from there?
Ove

[Jim Bretti]

I had the same problem with messages saying the bluetooth device could not be found. In my case, I was getting through the install and not seeing the error until I actually tried going to my bluetooth places to add devices. The second link I gave talks about this error and how to fix it by updating the device driver for 'Generic Bluetooth Radio'.

Does that help at all?

[Corneliussen]

Ken, I had read that too, but when I follow the instructions, there is no alternative driver (or stack?) to install.
It is becoming clear that my present dongle is the problem and the solution will be to buy a new USB dongle which is headset-compatible, and comes with a driver (preferably the widcom?) What more should I look for?
Thank you for your efforts!
Ove

[Jim Bretti]

Try the first link again, Getting Your Bluetooth Headset to Work in XP and go to page 2 where it talks about installing the driver from device manager. Are you able to get to Figure 7 of that page, click "Have Disk" and at that point specify the driver location on the software disk that came with your dongle?

Before buying something else, it might be worth checking with the manufacturer to see if they can help, you may already have the widcomm stack on the disk.

[Corneliussen]

Jim, IT TALKS!
Finally, it works with the Motorola as speaker for my NextUp Talker
However, now I cannot (yet) connect/syncronize my Nokia mobile with bluetooth, but at the worst, this can be done by cable.
I have learned a few things with all this. I discovered, that the installation of the stack is one thing, and then there is the installation of the dongle's own program! That I never did before; I thought the installation of the dongle was all. The installation of the dongle was in two parts. First part went fine, and it asked me to do a restart. After restarting, nothing more happened until I while looking for the program, happened to click a Bluetooth-icon in the Control Panel, and the installation continued with the configuration. Here I selected that I would use the Bluetooth for Filetransfer, syncronize with mobile phone and Headset.
Also, I have discovered that the driver for my dongle ( Conceptronic) actually is a widcomm. I noticed that the files were from 2003, so I let Windows search for a newer version. Guess what? The XP reinstalled the Windows stack! However, now I know the routine for updating the driver What gave me some trouble with the My Bluetooth Places, was that it showed no devices - nothing! However, a click on the View devices in range brought up a new window with the headset, and after a while and some attempts (right click on the icon), also appeared the option "Connect Headset". In my case, the Motorola gave a signal as if it recieved an incoming call, and had to be acknowledged by pressing the connect button on the Motorola.
I am very pleased, and in no small way thanks to you Jim!
Ove