Re: Mobile Broadband Status of Bluetooth DUN

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Thu, 2011-01-06 at 04:55 +0000, Jonathan Pritchard wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I really love the new mobile broadband status feature you have for these
> sort of modems, showing the connection type and strength. I was just
> wondering if it's also possible to have this data supplied when
> connected through Bluetooth DUN to a mobile phone's modem for example?
> And also whether it's on the roadmap to implement this?

It's not usually possible, and it depends on the specific phone itself.
Most phones only provide a single DUN channel, which is used for data
(PPP) when connected.  Clearly it can't be used for status info at the
same time.

Some phones provide additional rfcomm serial channels (not DUN channels)
that *may* support AT commands at the same time as the DUN channel is
active, but whether that's the case depends on the phone itself.

I don't have a roadmap for adding support for that  mainly because I
haven't investigated how  much work it would  take to do so.  That
doesn't mean somebody else can't look into that too :)  First step would
be to start an rfcomm connection to any non-DUN serial channel (using
rfcomm connect hci0 <bdaddr> <channel #>) then start up minicom or
screen and try to talk to the device with something like AT+CREG? and
see what it reports.  If you get something back, then maybe it can be
used alongside DUN.

Dan