Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Adding cheap internal bluetooth to your desktop

I originally got the idea from pages like this and this showing how to add internal usb bluetooth adapters to laptops, and it got me thinking about that nice open usb header I had left on my HP Pavillion a6600f's motherboard.

Walmart sold a really tiny and cheap bluetooth adapter by IOGear that worked well for the space I had available inside the case. All I had to do was find a female usb-a to motherboard header (I actually got mine from my local Microcenter) to connect the usb device inside the case. I ran into a problem once I finally found the cable though, the empty pin was on the wrong side of the connector and couldn't plug into to my motherboard so I had to grab a flat head screw driver and carefully pry the wires out of the end so I could rearrange them the right way. All that was left to do was grab a twisty tie and secure the end of the usb cable with the bluetooth adapter on the inside of the case behind the front usb and headphone jacks. Windows recognized the adapter right away and my bluetooth mouse still worked from the same distance, quite a nice way of keeping usb ports open and hiding the bright blue glow from my bluetooth adapter.

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