Printing to C360 using bluetooth and PDA

[Stirton.M]

So here I am, taking another course in the latest wonder machine, the C360.

Thus far, I am suitably impressed with what I have seen on day 1.

We finished the day looking briefly at the the bluetooth capabilities. I surprised our instructor, who could'nt get his device to connect to the training machine until I took a closer look at it and took the assumption that in order to print via blue tooth, it was accessible through the system box area. That much was figured out.

I am bringing my PDA in tomorrow to see if I can get that device to work.

Has anyone else made use of this feature and knows how to get it to work?

My assumption is that you need a program that has a built in print utility in it. Though I could connect my POS blackberry, I could not find any means to print anything I had. Neither could the instructor, who had a much better POS blackberry. (I really do not like these things...would rather have something that had WinCE like my PDA).

Though I am reasonably sure I will figure this out, if any of you has any experience in this, I would like to know your results.

Thanks.

[SmellsHot]

Bluetooth

You must enable your bluetooth settings on your phone....and than once thats on you can tell the machine to add device. It should find your phone(whatever you named it) and than you should be prompted to enter a passcode into your phone...this will appear on the mfp.
I was unable to sync up with several different types of motorola phones...so you might see that......
all you really need is a picture saved on your phone, and it should work like a champ!
Best of luck

[Stirton.M]

Ok...

for the most part, I was able to get my PDA to connect. Unfortunately however, my PDA is using an experimental ROM 6.1 that I installed deliberately in place of the original v5 ROM. This is not really a problem itself, except for the bluetooth is a bit flakey. In short, I did get a connection but the PDA has a bad habit of losing the bluetooth internally and forces me to do a reboot of the device. Minor technical glitch of course. My curiosity goes a bit further, and is a contentious issue with the instructor and myself.

I am of the opinion, based on my PDA, that in order for me to print something from my PDA, I need a print utility. In this case, PrintBoy v7. It contains "drivers" for an assortment of bluetooth printers. Mostly Canon and HP. Nothing from KM, though that is no surprise.

When I install it and configure it, I am assuming that I can use just the generic HP device, I point that towards the bluetooth port, using com4 as the carrier. Dunno if that is at all important or not. Because of the flakiness of the device ROM, I am not certain if it is failing because of that or the configuration I am using.

No matter, the contention I am having with the instructor, is that he is of the opinion that once a connection has been established, all you need to do is send the file. I believe there needs to be a "print driver" of some kind in the device. For example, my POS blackberry, though it can connect to the copier via blue tooth, I am at a loss as to what I need to do from there. I cannot find specifics on how to print anything from it, since "print" is not available in any of the menus. This is true of my PDA or my instructor's more advanced Blackberry. Open a PDF or Tiff, which the documentation for the copier bluetooth says are supported file types, but there doesn't seem to be any means to send the file to print.

We both partially agree that the problem might simply be that our phones and the PDA both are not officially supported devices, such as, none are Ericson. But I am of the belief that so long as you get a connection, you need a print utility in order to send the file.

Also, something of a curiosity we are not fully sure of. When I go into box mode, accessing the PDA box, and do a connect to the user box of my choice, it seems that each time I do this, I get a different security code for bluetooth connections. Is this proper?

[SmellsHot]

Transferring something from your pda to the mfp should be no different than sending a file bluetooth from one pda to another. As for the passcodes, this changes everytime you sync up with the mfp, i think it's more for security purposes but not absolutely sure on that.
Let me know what you else you find out in class.....

[Stirton.M]

Well, silly me.

I was looking in all the wrong places. This was, I humbly must admit, stupid easy.

The process is this. Enable bluetooth on the PDA.

Then from the copier with the bluetooth option installed, go to Box Scan, and select "System" box tab. In there, there should be a button called Mobile/PDA.

The next screen, there are two options. Print Lists and Save in User Box.

saving in user box option that I used, you need a user box already in place. Secure or unsecured, either will work. Of course, make sure you know the password of the box if it is unsecured, else you will not be able to access the data you uploaded.

Regardless, once you select the user box of choice, you are presented with the PIN number. The number is session based, it changes each time you use it, so it is not fixed like say if you add a hands free device to your phone. The machine now waits for the data.

On the PDA, or at least in my case, I used the file browser to find a given file. I tried a PDF, word doc and a text file. For my PDA, I use a stylus. I select the file and hold the pointer momentarily, a popup menu appears and in there, I can select "Send to", which yields more choices as to how I send it. In the case of the PDA, I can send infrared, network wireless, network connected (though USB) or Bluetooth recipient.

I select bluetooth recipient. From there, the PDA does a search for BT devices, finds the copier, (and any other BT device in range). Select the copier and then next. A short talk between the devices and I am presented with the PIN entry. I use the number shown on the display of the copier. Click next and the file is sent. I do not need to open the file in the PDA to send it BT.

You can hear the fans fire up and see the data light, along with the screen showing that it is receiving data from the PDA. The Job List also shows the entry of this event. Eventually the file will be contained in the user box. Enter that box as you normally would to manipulate the data further, such as print it or forward it to email, smb, or fax.

How well did it work?

The PDF gave me a bit of an issue. Page size. For some reason, the page size was 8 1/4 x 11, instead of 8 1/2 x 11. I couldn't get the machine to cooperate and it kept jamming. Of course, being on course, I did not have the luxury of time to screw around with it, so I will be revisiting that eventually. Gotta look at what the actual dimensions of the file I had on the PDA.

The word doc....not entirely sure what happened there. The file did transfer, but what I got was similar to what sometimes happens when you get a PS error...a few lines of binary garbage and a blank page, or many blank pages in this case.

the text file was the only one that I had no issues with. But then, no surprise why.

"Print Lists" as near as I can tell, allows you to directly print the file without saving it to box. According to the user manual on Box operations, I can configure print settings from there. When I try that PDF again, I may try this method to see if I can force a paper size there, where I couldn't do this through the Box saved file.

Hopefully this will aid others in the future who are looking at using this option. It is not covered very well in any of the documentation.