Bluetooth

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To enable the (powered down) bluetooth adapter on openSUSE 13.2:

rfkill unblock bluetooth

blueproximity

tweaking your settings should do the trick. Actually that's why I implemented a kind of testing mode. Open the preferences. Move to the second tab. The last control on that page "Measured atm (at the moment) shows the measured state. You can click on "Reset min/max" and leave the window open. If the window is open BlueProximity enters the simulation state which will not execute the action commands. It still measures the distances (on contrary to the pause mode which will completely disconnect the phone) and shows them at that control. Please note the text below the bar, which states "min" and "max" values - those are the min/max values of the measured distances after you pressed the Reset button last time.


This information should give you a hint which values are to expect while you normally work in front of your computer. Remember to use all "poses" you normally use while using your computer. You should stay in those poses for at least 10 seconds so that the rssi value regulates on the new situation. That should give you realistic values for the locking distance. Use a value of at least 2 above the measured value and see if that already gives a secure setting for the distance.


Also set the unlock distance to a value at least 2 smaller than the lock distance. Normally half of the lock distance gives a good result. You should play with the timer settings too. Don't put your lock timer to a value less than 5, at this moment my values are lock dist=7,dur=10. That is because I found out that sometimes unexpected com problems seem to exist between my phone and my pc - the rssi value drops to an unreasonable 8 but only for 5 seconds, it comes back to normal then which will never result in a value above 6 for longer than 10 seconds. My unlock time is also not set to 0 but to 2, the distance to 4. That way if I come back to my pc, the first of the two seconds below 5 is usually already passed and it takes about a second for me to sit down and once I sit down it unlocks almost immediately.


This should also fix the screensaver problem as there is no immediate unlock possible. Please do note that using a fade out time for you screensaver, it should be set at least one second below the unlock timer so that the unlocking is never done while the locking is still in progress. It once rendered my whole desktop faded to grey which was eyefriendly for that time of the day but it wouldn't help in the office :-)


The battery drain should be unnotable to phones that already had bluetooth activated. The explicit energy drain for an open bluetooth connection is specified to be 1 mW, my nokia has a 700mAh battery so it is ridiculously low in comparison :-) In other words, if you have bluetooth activated already you should not notice any difference at all. And btw, the visibility setting in your phone also has no effect on the battery too. Even though you would need to activate it only once to find your phone. After the mac address is entered you can switch your phone back to invisible if you like. This raises your phone's security a little bit. Hopefully this helps,