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Pairing Motorola H700 And Mac OS X 10.4

Posted by Robert on the 21st of July, 2006 at 8:14 PM GMT0. Permalink.
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When I posted this, I was listening to: Third Eye Blind - Palm Reader

When I decided to drive to Portland I figured it'd be nice to talk to people while I drove 15 hours. I wanted to get a decent headset for my phone, a Motorola Razr V3. Since I hate my phone, I wanted to either get a decent bluetooth kit (to use elsewhere) or a cheap wired kit (that I could toss out later). Bluetooth won out. Since it used the same charger as the Razr (mini-usb), the Motorola H700 was an obvious choice. Finding that I don't really use it for the Razr was a drag. But, I have bluetooth on my Mac...

Preparation

It turns out pairing the H700 with OS X is a bit of a task. To get this done, you'll need the following:

Setting Up

The first thing you need to do is install the Bluetooth Firmware Updater. Download the file from the link above. Once you unzip and mount the file, run the package in the disk image. That will install the installer into /Applications/Utilities. You can use Command+Shift+U from the finder to go there. Find Bluetooth Firmware Updater and run it. Click Update. This takes awhile. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the H700 manual while you wait.

Once the firmware is updated, you may have to restart your Mac.

Pairing the H700 to your Mac

Open System Preferences by clicking the Apple menu and selecting System Preferences.... Once open, go to Bluetooth under Hardware. Click the Setup New Device... button. This will open Bluetooth Setup Assistant. Keep System Preferences open.

In Bluetooth Setup Assistant click the Continue button. Then select the Headset radio button and click Continue. The program will start searching for devices.

Press and hold the call button on your H700 until it turns purple, then open the boom. The Mac will find it. If it doesn't, you are on your own. Click the corresponding item and click through the next screens. The pairing key should be 0000 when you are asked for it.

How to Use the H700 in Mac OS X

By pairing the H700 to your Mac, it acts as a microphone and a speaker. You can use your headset to talk to any program by going to System Preferences, opening Sound, selecting the Input tab, and selecting Motorola H700 from the input sources. If you need to hear from it, select the Output tab and select it from the output sources. The audio out is kind of crappy since it is a small speaker. The microphone is telephone quality.

You'll want to note that well written programs that deal with audio (see Skype and Garage Band below) will have internal preferences to determine audio input. These will override system preferences. So, you don't have to do it through System Preferences unless the program you are using doesn't support internal audio preferences.

The H700 should automatically pair with your Mac when you open the boom. The problem lies in the fact that my Razr wants to automatically pair with the H700, too. The test I ran left my Motorola confused. Eventually, my Mac won the battle for the headset which made my Razr give up on auto-pairing the next time I tried. So, if you plan to use both, you might want to turn bluetooth off on the device you don't want to use the headset with.

Stuff to do with the H700 in Mac OS X

The two things I want to use the H700 for are podcasting and Skype.

Using the H700 in Skype

To set the H700 up in Skype, open the Skype preferences and go to Audio. For Audio output and Audio input select Motorola H700. Since the headset only does basic sound I/O, you won't be able to use all the cool functions, like the pressing call button to hang up. However, you will get nice audio quality and the ability to walk away from your computer.

Update: To note some odd behavior in Skype version 1.5, if you set Skype to use the Motorola H700 and you don't have it turned on, Skype will simply not answer calls. Instead, it dumps the call straight to voicemail. It doesn't fall back to internal audio and microphone if the H700 isn't present. So, make sure that you update your Skype preferences!

Using the H700 for Podcasts

I haven't done extensive research yet, but I ran a quick test in Garage Band. To use the microphone, you have to open the Garage Band preferences, click the Audio/MIDI icon and set the H700 as the Audio Input.

The audio quality, as I mentioned above, is about as good as a analog telephone. It reminded me of playing with Windows Sound Recorder when I was a kid, converting a high quality sound to a low quality sound.

I also turned on the television to see if there were any internal noise canceling features. There aren't.

If you'd like to hear a sample of me saying something like, This is Robert Brodrecht using my Motorola H700 to record in Garage Band, you can download the MPEG-4 file, you can get the version without background noise and the version with background noise. I also did a version with my air conditioner turned off that sounded a little better. However, the track kept skipping. So, I won't post it.

Closing Thoughts on the H700

While it was a neat idea, using the Motorola H700 in Mac OS X has limited uses. It will be fine for Skype calls, but lacks the sound quality needed for podcasting and the like. However, I've found it to be a great hands free device when paired with my Motorola Razr V3.

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. What if I have built-in Bluetooth?

    I'm sorry to say that your guess is as good as mine. My eMac didn't come with an internal module. So, I've only set it up for the D-Link USB module. Until I get a new Mac, I doubt I'll be able to find out. If anyone figures it out, let me know and I'll post a how to here or link to yours.

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