blueman
build for Arch switched from depending on bluez4
to bluez
(which is to say, bluez5
). If you missed my previous post, I already had gotten my bluetooth headphones working pretty well with bluez4
, ALSA and blueman
. This new update broke my setup, and sent me on my way to new adventures in bluezland(TM)
.I haven't gotten much to work yet. I'm sorry. But as I get things working I'll update this post. This is what I've done:
Tue Nov 5 11:51:07 CST 2013
I updated my system and everything was "broken". I sent a few bug reports, posted a few things on Arch forums, the usual. There are a few problems, and I'll describe them as best I can. First off,
bluez5
dropped ALSA
support, so I had to install pulseaudio-git
from the AUR
, since the official repo version of pulseaudio
does not yet have bluez5
support. Then there's the issue that blueman-manager
and blueman-applet
won't work anymore, they just error out with a dbus
error that seems to indicate (to my limited knowledge) that they were not properly updated to the new bluez5
API. So I turned to knowledge gleaned from recent edits of the Arch Wiki and tried to use the new command like tool that comes with bluez5
, bluetoothctl
. At first, this looks awesome. It has its own little shell, color output and everything. The main problem is that it doesn't really work. I can't use it to pair my headphones, and I can't use it to connect to them. The errors a terse, to say the least. So I looked for another alternative and tried using gnome-bluetooth
, which is what most people use, I think. The problem with gnome-bluetooth
is that, unless you're running gnome, it doesn't come with a system tray applet anymore, so there is no way to connect to your device. This is what I ended up doing: 1. install gnome-bluetooth
; 2. run bluetoothctl
and remove your device from the list, if it is there; 4. install and run pulseaudio
; 3. run bluetooth-wizard
and pair with your device, it will also autoconnect and it should now work (test with running speaker-test). The one issue I ran into is turning the headphones off and back on. They will not automatically reconnect they way they did under blueman
. Instead, it seems to work to go into bluetoothctl
and manually connect (see image).
The other problem is a lack of control over the bitpool rate (maybe there's a way, but I don't know it yet) so every once in a while the sound gets chopped up and dropped.
Mon Nov 18 13:26:28 CST 2013 I managed to figure out how to only use
bluetoothctl
for pairing and connecting, so that I don't have to rely on gnome-bluetooth
any longer. The trick was to turn the agent on before trying to pair. Note that tab completion works inside bluetoothctl
, so all these calls are pretty easy to make.
# bluetoothctl [bluetooth]# power on Changing power on succeeded [bluetooth]# agent on Agent registered [bluetooth]# scan on Discovery started [CHG] Controller 00:13:46:4D:6A:C6 Discovering: yes [NEW] Device 00:1D:BA:29:50:D3 DR-BT50 [bluetooth]# pair 00:1D:BA:29:50:D3 Attempting to pair with 00:1D:BA:29:50:D3 [CHG] Device 00:1D:BA:29:50:D3 Connected: yes [CHG] Device 00:1D:BA:29:50:D3 Paired: yes Pairing successful [CHG] Device 00:1D:BA:29:50:D3 Connected: no [bluetooth]# connect 00:1D:BA:29:50:D3 Attempting to connect to 00:1D:BA:29:50:D3 [CHG] Device 00:1D:BA:29:50:D3 Connected: yes Connection successful [bluetooth]# scan off Discovery stopped [CHG] Controller 00:13:46:4D:6A:C6 Discovering: no [bluetooth]# exit