Watching and Listening to Podcasts on a Motorola Razr
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/20/2007 - 11:00
Recently, Kim and I upgraded our cellphones to Motorola Razrs and I’ve been kicking around different ways to take advantage of the increased functionality. My latest project was to set up my cellphone as a podcast client.
Why would I want to do that? Perhaps the prime reason is that there are various shows on the radio that I would normally miss. By using my cellphone as a podcast client, I can store those shows on my cellphone and listen to them wherever and whenever I want. Details below the fold.
The Motorola Razr that I have came with 50 megabytes of memory. You can download MP3s into that memory with the right tools, and you can add additional memory. Since the Razr uses Bluetooth, I got the Anycom USB 250
The next step was to find a command line interface to be able to copy files from the PC to the phone. The Bluetooth adapter uses OBEX File Transfer Protocol. I searched for various tools to use OBEX from a command line in Microsoft Windows with no luck.
Then I found a tip provided by Mikko Ohtamaa over on NewLC. The bluetooth adapter allows you to copy files using fsquirt, Microsoft’s BlueTooth File Transfer Wizard. The problem is that fsquirt doesn’t take any useful parameters. Instead, Mikko suggests using Runmenu, a handy little tool to run explorer commands from a command line.
In the example that he provided, he ran the command
C:\project\...\runmenu>runmenu /wait:window /exec:"Send To\Bluetooth device" c:\lines.txt.
In my case, it didn’t like the command, and it took me a little exploring to get it to work. First, I found that I needed to run the command from the directory that runmenu was in, or have runmenu added to the path. For some reason trying to run runmenu with the full path as part of the command caused it to malfunction.
Using runmenu /list c:, I found that I needed Send To\Bluetooth\Other... Note, if you don’t specify the c:, runmenu complains. When I ran using Bluetooth\Other, I received the option of sending the file to my phone, or my wife’s phone. Once I had run using my phone, runmenu /list c: added Send To\Bluetooth\Aldon as an option and I could send MP3s directly to my phone.
I then created a command file that would take the filename as the first parameter, handle the path stuff, and send the file to my phone:
PATH=%PATH%;c:\program files\runmenu\
runmenu /wait:window /exec:"Send To\Bluetooth\Aldon" "%1"
Initially, I didn’t have the %1 in quotes and it gagged because my file name had spaces in the path.
Finally, I set up Juice Receiver. It is the latest version of the old iPodder program I’ve used for years. I clicked on File… Preferences.. and clicked on the “Run this command after each download”.
The command I ended up using was
C:\"Program Files"\runmenu\sendaldon.cmd "%f"
Juice needed the full path for the command and the quotes around Program Files, and the filename parameter. With this in place, I subscribed to a feed, and it automatically downloaded to my cellphone.
Well, almost. As I noted above, my cellphone only has 50 Meg for filespace right now. I’ve used up the available filespace, so I needed to delete some files before it started working. Once I had enough space, it worked nicely.
With this working, the next step will be to buy a San Disk microSD 2 Gig card
Another project will be to see if there are any video podcasts I can subscribe to. I tried Rocketboom’s 3gp feed, but the Razr said it didn’t support the format.
It took a little bit of work to figure out how to set this up, but once it is figured out, it is pretty straightforward. Perhaps there is an easier way to set up a Motorola Razr as a podcast player. If anyone knows of a better way, let me know. Until then, I’ll listen to Podcasts on my Razr and help my friends set up their Razr’s as podcast players, but I expect a lot of people aren’t at the point of using their phones as podcast players, and if they are might not be up for the effort.
