I have an iPod and generally listen to it when I’m getting ready in the mornings, I find it better than listening to a stereo as I moved through several rooms and it can travel with me. One problem is where to put your ‘pod when you’re in various states of dress. So when someone bought me a Motorola S9 headset with accompanying D650 bluetooth transmitter which plugs into the iPod (God knows where they got them, I had immense trouble finding anything about the D650 online, even on Motorola’s site, let alone a set of both to buy).
It’s a good set and they work well (although the headset can be uncomfortable for long use if you don’t get it sitting just right). I also got an iPod remote with built-in radio though and have been finding the radio better to listen to. The problem is you can’t use the bluetooth transmitter and the radio remote at the same time as they both use the iPod dock connector on the bottom. So, I decided to try and find a bluetooth transmitter than would work through a standard 3.5mm headphone socket, I have a pair of wireless RF headphones that do this, so it seemed likely. Well, there aren’t many on the market, but I eventually settled on the as they were a company I knew (better known for bluetooth phone headsets) and I had seen a comment they worked with the S9s. I also ordered a , a bluetooth headphone set which allows you to use any ordinary set of heaphones, partly because it was on a deal if I bought both, partly because I figured if the A120s didn’t work with my S9 I could use it with this and partly because it meant I could use any set of headphones wirelessly.
When the A120s arrived I followed the instructions and tried to pair with my S9 headset, no joy, it just wouldn’t find it. The next day my BT320s arrived, I tried pairing with that, still no joy. I was hectic for a few days so waited for the weekend to try again. Reading the light sequences it appeared the A120s started searching, didn’t find my headphones, but paired with something. I spent an age downloading various bits of bluetooth sniffing software to try and see what it connected to, with no joy. I checked all the bluetooth devices in the house, they could see it, but were not paired with it (I figured something might be hijacking it). So, over to the Jabra support site to check up on the options, nothing in the FAQs, but I found a pairing guide for these two products. Well, that suggested a different way to pair, the manual suggests you press the on button for 1 second to get it to start flashing, this means it’s in pairing mode, these instructions say hold it until the light goes to solid blue (which indicates manual pairing mode according to the manual), but the guide mentions something about a code, how do you type that in on something with no number keys? I tried pressing the on/talk button four times, no joy. Even when I left it alone it would not pair and eventually one or other device would get bored and stop looking. I also tried the BT320s with the Motorola D650, but same result. They worked fine with my phone and PC though. In the end I even sent a support request to Jabra about it, something I don’t normally bother doing because experience has taught me most company’s take longer than an ice age to reply, if they do at all, and you end up dealing with some muppet who is about as useful as a chocolate teapot and never helps fix the problem.
There is a firmware update listed on the BT320s support page, I figured it was worth a go, but you need to connect it to a PC via USB and they use a micro USB port (which no one uses!) and finding a cable to buy was next to impossible. Searching for the cable I stumbled across two different sites with the same suggestion: plug the BT320s into it’s charger, three times, for 4 seconds each time
. This was about switching on certain functionality in the BT320s, I thought it was worth a try, I then followed the earlier instruction about switching it into manual pairing and voila, it worked! I then tried it with the D650 and that also worked.
I still couldn’t get my S9 headset working, but I figured that was better than nothing, at least I could now use it. So I figured I’d write this up so if you’re having problems with the BT320s, try plugging it in three times for four seconds and hopefully that’ll sort your problems, a weird fix, but it works!
