Kendrick pointed me to a cool, inexpensive Bluetooth adapter from AirCable. The one I bought and received today is the AirCable Serial Female. I ordered the wall wart power supply to go with it, especially since it was only $5. There was no shipping cost, but it did take them a week to get my order into the mail. Total cost: $74.

The unit is small and light, about the size of the serial cable end of the Empeg null modem cable. It is a DTE device. It is configured by plugging it into a PC serial port and using a terminal program to send it commands. It can take 5-15V at 50mA over pin 9 for power. It supports the following Bluetooth profiles: SPP (Serial Port Profile), DUN (Dial-up Networking), LAN, OBEX. I've just used the SPP one so far. Most everything is configurable, including the name of the device, pin, etc. Their website has more information on it, including a command reference for the serial interface.

So what can you do with it?

Like mlord wants to do, you can use this as a replacement for your serial cable with your Empeg. I've watched the familiar serial log scroll across my laptop's screen, connected via BT. I had to switch the hardware flow control switch off on the adapter to let me send output, but it works like a charm.

I'm going to add code to Palantir to allow you to send your playlist over BT instead of IrDA.

I'll probably write a remote display and control app for the Palm, over BT.

You can probably pair it with your phone to allow your Empeg Internet access.

Do you have a BT hands-free kit in your car? There might be a way to use the Empeg as a caller-id display.

Let's see what cool projects can come out of this!