Bluesmirf problems

Hi guys, im hoping someone can help me out here.

i have just received my 3rd bluesmirf, i had to keep sending it back because i couldnt connect to it, and even this one - 3rd one - doesnt work.

i use windows bluetooth manager to “add” my bluesmirf and type in the passkey. once it is added, windows assigns the bluesmirf a incomming and outgoing com ports.

then heres the problem. a minute or so after i have added them, when i try to connect, the outgoing com port has disappeared (it no longer appears in the services in the bluetooth manager).

the way i try to connect to the devices is using a custom java program i wrote in ‘processing’ (see www.processing.org). it works because i tried it with my other bluesmirfs, but this one, it will not work because its outgoing com port dissapeared.

firstly i thought it was me, but i have 2 other bluesmirf devices which work fine, it is just this one that doesnt work. and its been replaced 3 times. did they change the production line of bluesmirfs recently or something.

in terms of appearance, the bluesmirf that doesn work has a piece of blue plastic backing up the top, whereas the old bluesmirfs i had were green plastic up the top.

can anyone recommend a program that ‘assigns’ com ports to such bluetooth devices but does not connect them. because i need the computer to have preassigned outgoing ports, and then i use my java program to ‘connect’ to the bluesmirfs (which are connected to a microcontroller)

this is kinda a major hasle because i live in australia and it takes alot of time to send them back and forth.

I don’t know of anything for windows, but this is quite easy to do in Linux using the BlueZ stack. If you have a Linux box handy, or don’t mind switching platforms (don’t worry, it’ll run java), have a look in /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf config file.

its alright, i was able to solve the problem using toshiba bluetooth stack, see here http://www.mitchellpage.com.au/research/?p=263 for details and links