CSR launches Music’n'Voice dongle design

CSR Plc, the Cambridge-based provider of personal wireless technology, has launched a USB Bluetooth dongle design, which enables Bluetooth headphones to be used with a PC for VoIP calls and for the wireless streaming of music.

The low cost Music’n'Voice Bluetooth dongle allows users to switch between listening to music and taking a VoIP call.

It is available from CSR and includes bill of materials, reference design and software development kit.

The reference design is a single chip solution which utilises the company’s BlueCore3-Multimedia chip with integrated DSP processor and high-quality codec.

As the design requires few external components, the Music’n'Voice dongle is offered with a very low bill of materials. This allows the product to be bundled with mobile phones or Bluetooth headsets.

The dongle is supplied with software which supports automatic pairing with most Bluetooth headsets.

It can store up to five Bluetooth addresses and there is no need to configure the PC, or install extra software, allowing the dongle to be easily transferred between computers.

When the dongle is inserted into the USB port of a PC, it is recognised as a sound card, and will automatically work with media player software, including Apple iTunes, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer or WinAmp, running on Microsoft Windows 2000, XP or Vista.

It also supports major VoIP providers, including MSN, Skype, Google Talk and Yahoo Talk.