Bluetooth Scan finds nothing?

[Bowtie_Productions]

I have a pair of Bluetooth headphones that would be nice to use for the Gameshell, but I go into Bluetooth and press the button to scan and it just scans seemingly endlessly, finding nothing/ I have tried while connected to both Wifi and USB Ethernet. Is there any way to make this work? If not, I have wired headphones I can use but Bluetooth would be nicer.

[podmaz]

Have you ever tried to search answer befor creating new thread?!

[Bowtie_Productions]

I did. Unless I looked wrong, nothing came up.

[guu]

bluetooth headphones are not available for gameshell

only mouse,keyboard ,all small data transfer devices

[Bowtie_Productions]

Dang. Any word on when or if that feature will exist?

[guu]

maybe in the next version of gameshell

[podmaz]

Blockquote
are you sure? Search results for 'bluetooth' - clockworkpi

[javelinface]

Actually, asking about Bluetooth audio now is actually something that could very well be applicable now, given the recent advances. A lot has changed since the posts relating to Bluetooth quotes as a search query.

Now with this;

@Joao_Manoel

Bluetooth with bluez server.

we may very well be able to do more with the Bluetooth stack, possibly incorporating something like this:

GitHub - arkq/bluez-alsa: Bluetooth Audio ALSA Backend

I’m curious to see if this goes further.

[Joao_Manoel]

I managed to get audio over Bluetooth working with pulseaudio. The problem is that it is stuttering and the sound comes out unstable. I didn’t put much effort on it anyway. If one want to try, can start from here:

How To Connect Bluetooth Headset Or Speaker To Raspberry Pi 3

https://wiki.debian.org/BluetoothUser/a2dp

https://wiki.debian.org/BluetoothUser

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bluetooth_headset

Remember to add the user to the bluetooth group, and don’t run pulseaudio as root.

I don’t like pulseaudio because it gets more processing power than just alsa. I won’t work on it for now. It is open if someone wants to help

@guu

bluetooth headphones are not available for gameshell

only mouse,keyboard ,all small data transfer devices

Why you say this? Does the BT interface have some speed limitation that cannot handle audio well? I managed to get audio, but somehow stuttering.

The Bluetooth module is the bcm43430, the same that Raspberry Pi3 has. I don’t know if there is another way to connect it to the SOC instead of SDIO, but If they get sound over bluetooth we should get as well, no?

To be honest I just tried the BT sound quickly with my Debian image because you said “not available”, or impossible… I like these words. Now you need to give me a hardware limitation for this not work, and I believe on you

[guu]

lol, great work
I am very sorry if I give any misleading advices
the way I see is that the bluetooth on gameshell we managed is just a serial port

so I think, I thought, that the speed of the data transfer can not handle the audio well

[Joao_Manoel]

Hi @guu,

didn’t want to say that, your help is very valuable . I’m just curious and you are probably correct about the speed limit.

I don’t know, but maybe there is a way to get audio working properly if we can change the speed. In the datasheet of the AP6212 we see that the BT can transfer data up to 4Mbps using UART http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/images/5/57/AP6212_V1.1_09022014.pdf

This is probably enough for audio, but I don’t know, and I have no experience with it. The problem (I think) is that with the binary we have to upload the firmware (brcm_patchran_plus) we don’t specify the speed, maybe there is a way to increase it with another firmware loader or an argument.

The Rpi3 uses another method to load the firmware, and I couldn’t make it work with our firmware using their utility.

Unfortunately, I cannot work on it at the moment and I don’t see it as important as getting the HDMI audio working with my image. Bluetooth audio will always consume processing power that is very limited on the Gameshell. It would be great to listen to music, not for gaming, but it would be nice to have it anyway.

[javelinface]

Somewhat related, but I know that for my raspberry pi 3 that issue set up to stream my Vita to my TV, I need to have an external USB Bluetooth dongle attached despite it having Bluetooth onboard.

I can’t recall if it was a bus speed limitation issue, or just an outdated A2DP profile or something.

Regardless! If that is at all a solution of sorts, perhaps having an option to use a USB Bluetooth dongle could bring some light to audio; both sending and receiving. (Over Bluetooth)

[Joao_Manoel]

I managed to make it . I’m still testing with my image, the thing is just increasing the baudrate.

@Joao_Manoel

The thing was that after all the learning about how everything was working and the BT<->SOC connection, I was convinced that there is no hardware limitation to have higher baudrates and make sound over BT possible. I managed to use a kernel driver to upload the BT firmware to the chip which is better than using the utility brcm_patchram_plus we have actually. The only thing that was bothering me was that I couldn’t increase the baudrate no matter what I tried: new brcm_patchram_plus compiled, original, hciattach utility, kernel driver, different UART configuration new kernel patches to change clock speeds …

I finally found (trial and error) that our BT chip works only with 3 different baudrates: 115200 bps, 500000 bps, and 1.5 Mbps. The 115200 bps is the default and it is what we have normally. 115200 bps is not enough for smooth audio over BT (the audio is stuttering), but 500000 bps, and 1.5 Mbps are enough. I’m actually testing 1.5 Mbps with audio and it is working perfectly. I had problems getting a stable connection when trying brcm_patchram_plus and 1.5 Mbps, but using the kernel driver seems to be working fine.