I have heard the dongle that comes with Spark Fun’s Blue SMiRF has issues with drivers. My question is what brand is Jim using in the tutorial? any one know?
What’s the recommended dongle to use where drivers are not an issue?
The original tutorial for the BRAT was a cakewalk. Then we received a forum post from Tiberius (I think) saying he had trouble. Then we received another forum post saying it was so easy. So there may have been a problem that has been corrected already. The best thing to do is to write sparkfun and find out if it’s a problem or not. I’m getting conflicting reports. I looked for them but they are not in the wireless communication section of the forum. 
I believe these are the threads you’re looking for.
The problem post…
lynxmotion.net/phpbb/viewtop … fun+driver
The no problem post received after the above.
lynxmotion.net/viewtopic.php?p=31380#31380
I guess the best way is to see for my self by trying it out. Even if it proves to be difficult with the drivers, I am prepaired to face the possiblty of having to ditch the dongle that comes with it and replace it with another one. Not a big deal to me personally.
I wonder if they are shipping two different brands of dongles? Like an alt part number? This could be a reason why person “A” has no probples while person “B” has driver issues. It would be interesting to know what brand dongle came with your Blue SMiRF compared to what Tiberius had.
I looked for the dongle, but James is at school and I can’t find it. 
Here is the tutorial for the BRAT. There is a picture of it there and screen caps of the software. I hope this helps…
lynxmotion.com/images/html/build117.htm
I might have just gotten a bad driver version shipped to me, because that was ultimately the problem, only made worse by the fact that my particular dongle was coming up as “unlicensed hardware” when I was trying to get new drivers, and such, wouldn’t allow me to install them.
Problem could’ve been easily fixed by a newer driver revision on the discs that ship with them.
Thanks Tiberius,
Although you had a bad experience, it made you a stonger man! 
Fortunately for me, trouble shooting various PC/network problems is what I do for a living 
I looked at the blutooth dongle in the bluesmirf tutorial and it is not the one they sent me when I ordered the blue smirf and dongle. Mine is a solid black dongle with just a bloothtooth symbol at one end and the word blutooth at the other. I am having the same issue with the drivers and blusoleil program. Bluesmirf works but I can’t establish a connection.
This is the same dongle I was given, and I had the same problems. First of all, you can’t use the Bluesoleil program/drivers with it, it uses a different chipset.
What you need to get is new drivers for your dongle, it uses a Broadcom chipset and “Widcomm” software. I want to say the exact chipset is the BCM1000-BTW, but I’m at work so I can’t verify, though it should show you when you go to install the drivers.
Driver/software page is here:
broadcom.com/products/bluetooth_update.php
Let me know if that works for you
I had to go through a good amount of trouble to hack the drivers, since the update site wouldnt validate my hardware, however I might be able to provide you with those drivers if you’re still having trouble.
If all else fails, you can pick up a new/different dongle at your local electronics store (I paid $20 for a spare one from Fry’s and it worked without a single hitch)
ZachbotConnor, I would also complain to Sparkfun about your problem. They shouldn’t be sending out dongles with bogus drivers. They need to either provide dongles that work out of the box, or at the very least, provide links to sites that have driver software that will work with the various dongles they sell.
I was at their site the other day, and they mention there are two types of dongles they sell and that there is no guarantee which ones you will wind up with.
I posted on their forums about this and received no reply unfortunately.
I just posted on their forums as well. I think if we band together, we might get them to resolve this issue.
EDIT
I was looking for alternatives and found this one for $16+ at newegg
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/33-340-002-04.jpg
Or this one for just $10
They have a bunch to choose from @ all different price ranges.