Page 99 - Hacking Roomba

80 Part I — Interfacing

On Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and earlier, you can only input numeric passkeys. The best solution
is the upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4 or higher. If you cannot upgrade, see the BlueSMiRF datasheet
for how to change the passkey it uses by default to be a numeric one.

FIGURE 4-13: Typing in the BlueSMiRF passkey

The Mac OS X Bluetooth Setup Assistant then gets a little confused because it does not find a
GUI setup agent for serial ports. This is fine; just ignore it and click Continue. In contrast, the
Windows pairing just does its job without the somewhat confusing message.
At this point, setup is done and you can go back to the known Bluetooth device list and see the
BlueSMiRF (or BlueRadios). The screen should look similar to the one in Figure 4-14.

Creating Bluetooth Virtual Serial Port

Select the newly paired BlueSMiRF from the device list and click Edit Serial Ports. You should
see a window similar to Figure 4-15. If you do not see the same info, change it so it matches.
In Mac OS X, all serial port devices have unique names. For virtual serial ports, the name is
constructed from the device type. So in the example BlueRadios-COM0-1, the device type
is BlueRadios-COM0 and it’s the first one of that type. (COM0 is the first serial channel for
BlueRadios; apparently there can be others.) Click OK and the virtual serial port is ready to use.

In Windows, you’ll have to go through the extra step of binding the virtual serial port to a COM
port (like COM7 or another unused port). The Bluetooth software for your adapter should help
with this. Whichever COM port it is, remember it, because you’ll need to know it later.