Dynex USB Headset and Skype on Fedora 9: Minor Headache

UPDATE: I found a way to control this device from the command line.  Hopefully, I will automate this soon and never worry about it again.

Sorry, no ladies and no gentleman.  I have been away for a long period.  Iwas a little too burnt out at the time to write up some recent developments.  As you can tell, I have returned.

For a period, I really wanted to get a bluetooth USB dongle to and use a bluetooth headset with Skype.  Unfortunately, dear readers (probably reader), I am too cheap to shop anywhere else other than Best Buy.  I was forced to choose the Rocketfish Bluetooth USB dongle.  For lack of a better word, it was a total piece of junk.  It registers as a Human Interface Device (e.g. USB dongle for linking up wireless keyboards and mice), which infuriated me.  If I recall correctly, I used modprobe and eventually had it load as an HCI device (a Bluetooth device in Linux kernel speak).  Unfortunately, it would fault pretty quickly, and I never was able to connect my phone, a Sony Ericsson w580i, or the headset I bought from Best Buy, a Plantronic Bluetooth Headset.  A word comes to mind: pipedream.  I have no idea what I was thinking.  Afer a week or two of fiddling around, I returned those pieces of crap.  I had had enough with poorly implemented piece of trash.  In the meantime, I quickly searched Google on my cell as I found a cheap, generic USB headset at Best Buy, I found a blog that spoke favorable of the Dynex USB headset and how Linux quickly recognized it out of the box.  I did have several minor issues (as alluded to in the title, barely worthy of a headache in my mind), that I felt I ought to recout.

When the USB headset driver is loaded (you will know if it is successful, the Fedora welcome tone is played when it is finished), the mic is muted by default.  It did not occur to me for a long time, as I went directly to configuring it in Skype, that the microphone needed to  be turned on.  This oversight grealy prolonged the time needed to get this device running out of the box.  I tried to find out if I could stop this when the driver loaded.  I will update this if I ever figure out how.  The not so automated way to fix this goes as follows:

1. Press Alt+F2 and input gnome-volume-control or open it with a shortcut.
2. This will bring you to a window similar to the first screenshot below.  Open the menu and select the USB Device 0xd8c:0x0c (Alsa Mixer). The 0x???:ox?? value will vary depending on the brand and model of USB headset.
3. Click the mute/unmute icon at the bottom of the left pane (see the third screenshot).
4. Adjust the volume control and raise it all the way, making your window match the final screenshot.
5. Close the application and enjoy audio capture via USB.

And that’s it.  Now the USB headset works in Skype.  When I find a way to automate this silly procedure, I will write a post about it.

Gnome Volume Control Screenshot 1

Gnome Volume Control Screenshot 2

Gnome Volume Control Screenshot 3