"The" Bluetooth Thread

flohack

Hello Guys,

after some long time small update for this thread: As it seems, Bluez and all its problems in 15.04 might persist on 16.04, since it seems it has been backported from xenial to vivid. So we are in very small hope that things will improve. Sorry to not give a better answer at the moment. But we can finally only tell if its like this when 16.04 is out.

In the meanwhile I hacked around a small problem that might affect you also: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/1030/howto-change-the-name-of-your-device-for-bluetooth-pairing - Just to let you know we did not forget about Bluetooth

BR Florian

kugiigi

That's quite a sad news. I thought bluetooth will significantly improve in 16.04 considering that it is the latest LTS release.
Anyway, any chance we get the media controls working soon?
I bought a bluetooth headset a year ago and I've never used its media controls as I use it exclusively with my Ubuntu Phone

flohack

@kugiigi Hmm the latest LTS releases is 18.04

miousername

Hi,
i've a meizu pro 5, bluetooth is working fine with my music app but no with phone app, I hear a lot of noise and I notice that bluetooth speaker controller doesn't come up when I try to adjust volume with the physical buttons during a call. Is it possible that phone app doesn't use the right audio device during bluetooth connection?
thanks

miousername

Hello Guys,

I did some tests about bluetooth and I would to share some results for help in solving this annoying bug.
I have a Meizu pro 5 with 15.04r3and as I said before with Bluetooth Music Player is working fine but calls sound is disturbed.
I realized that:

Music Player comunincates with bluetooth headphone trough a2dp_sink (ACL) protocol;
SCO (HSP/HFP) protocol is not working.

I did some modification to the file:

/etc/pulse/touch.pa

I commented out the load of the two module-null-sink and I modified the module-bluez5-discover
in the following way:

load-module module-bluez5-discover headset=both

With this modification I tryied to reproduce some wav tracks with the tools paplay in this way:

pactl set-card-profile <bluetooth card number> a2sp_sink
paplay -v -d bluez_sink<my bluetooth card macaddres> tracks.wav

Sound it's ok, and with hciconfig I saw ACL TX packtes growing, in this way:

pactl set-card-profile <bluetooth card number> headsset_head_unit
paplay -v -d bluez_sink<my bluetooth card macaddres> tracks.wav

paplay hangs and with hciconfig not packtes are sent. So I apply this patch to broadcom bluetooth chip:

https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/Bluetooth/

hcitool cmd 0x3F 0x01C 0x01 0x02 0x00 0x01 0x01

And I try again to reproduce the track with this command:
pactl set-card-profile <bluetooth card number> headsset_head_unit
paplay -v -d bluez_sink<my bluetooth card macaddres> tracks.wav

Finally it works and with hciconfig I saw TX SCO packets growing.
Then I try to start a Call with telephony-service but not sound!
Can you say me which is the default sink for telephony-service??

Conclusion: I think that the sound it's disturbed because OFONO packets are sent to "bluetooth haedset" with ACL protocol and not SCO protocol as it should.

I hope that this can help you. I continue to debug the problem and I hope to find a solution.

Best Regards

Stefano

@miousername If you can fix that issue, you'll be a genius. Fingers crossed.

mihael

@miousername I'm really, really folowing you on this!

flohack

@miousername Good Job! If you are that far, it would be good if you start also commenting on an issue in our GH tracker. Probably there are a few Bluetooth related issues already opened. Finally, we must identify where to patch and then spin up a package build job to override the defaults in Ubuntu root fs. For this to be successful, it would be nice to know the source package that eventually could fix this.

zx81

I'm trying to pair a meizu pro 5 with the audio system in my vauxhall/opel antara
The phone recognises the system but doesnt bring up a screen to input the pin code generated, it then fails to connect with the audio unit display saying 'connection failed'

matridium

I have been using Ubuntu touch now for a little more than a week as my main phone.
One issue I have been bothered by is the call quality on my end for Bluetooth connections. on my nexus 5 I am able to pair with several devices, such as our 2018 ford explorer, a set of cheap bluetooth headphones, a jabra ear piece and a high end bluetooth headphones set. In every case In, music and podcast sound great. Audio quality is great, volume fine, no strange compression sound that one can hear over Bluetooth running under some protocols. However in every case call quality is so poor its not worth using. The audio is digitized sounding almost as if the caller is using a transformers voice changer toy for Megatron.
Is this just my nexus 5? is it Ubuntu touch? any ideas???

matridium

OK...
So Bluetooth working correctly will make or break it for me to use touch as my OS.
Two days ago I was pulled over and was given a $206.00 fine for talking on my phone. this is 4x more than the cost of my nexus 5!!!
I can use earbuds, they work great... But strange thing is I can't plug into my aux in my car, I get a similar result as I do with Bluetooth. I'm starting to think this is a specific problem with the phone I have, not Ubuntu, or a problem with nexus 5 only... Does anyone else have issues with call quality while on Bluetooth in nexus 5??

hummlbach

@matridium just have a look at the 7th and 8th post in this thread to find someone else having problems with bluetooth on the nexus 5... The thread as a hole shows, that Ubuntu touch has some fundamental issues with bluetooth (i.e. audio quality on calls). You may check wether the problem is with you phone by flashing android or lineage os... But I doubt it is... Unfortunately...

matridium

Yup did that this morning, I flashed back to stock and BT works fine, switch back to UBuntu, and same issue as before... Bummer...:( I hope this is something that can be fixed. My Xperia X compact runs fine on Sailfish X, and bluetooth is great on it. I'm just not that into Sailfish.

floop2

[xenial] Nexus 5 (r387) bluetooth shows connection to Bose Sound Link II speaker. Speaker does not acknowledge connection, which it does when connected to from Android device. Does Bluetooth work with audio devices (headphones/speakers)? Is this a bug which should be raised in 16.04 Backlog or 16.04 OTA-4/5? Thanks

tomoqv

Update from Pro 5 with xenial (r96):
Bluetooth connection to Volvo Car works and music streaming did work. Once. 2nd time no sound from the car system. Phone connected. Initiating call from phone or car kit works, but there is no sound. After a brief noice, the audio goes quiet. Hanging up, phone book, etc. accessible from the car kit, but no sound. It seems to me this may be an issue with the phone app. I have had similar issues connecting my phone to BT headset or speaker before. Just noice, no audio from the phone call.

So, bluetooth connection appears to work as expected, but audio routing has issues. I will test it further, but it is encouraging to see my phone connect to the car kit when I get into the car, that hasn't happened since my Bq Aquaris E4.5 with Canonical's image on it.

Lakotaubp

@fourloop My nexus does connect to my Bose mini speaker but it has taken two or three attempts sometimes for it to work correctly even once after the handshake beep. Have just restarted from the speaker end.

CiberSheep

Hyundai i20 and bq E5 audio works (music or in a call), car buttons «hangup» and «call» works (but I didn't try to access to my contacts).

nogoogle

I tried to pair my Nexus 5 with my car's (Subaru Forester) audio system via Bluetooth. The phone detects the audio system but there is no dialog box to enter the PIN from the audio system in the Bluetooth setup. The audio system thus refuses the connection request. Is there any work-around for this ?
Thanks.

Marathon2422

My 2 cents worth about bluetooth
I feel that Bluetooth being in good working order is of utmost importance,once 16.04 is funtioning well.
My thoughts are that when UBports gets onto Librem 5, and the bluetooth is at this standard, UBports will be dropped like a hot brick,in favor of the alternatives.

I used to drive a lot, with 2 headsets both bluetooth, one ,(set via bluetooth settings in the phone ) for calls and the other for Music
The one I used for calls was the type truckers use because the mike would only pick up your voice and no background sounds.
Just some food for thought, when you guys are thinking about bluetooth.

tomoqv

@Marathon2422
I can't agree more! Bluetooth has been unreliable ever since the launch of Ubuntu Touch. BLE devices never worked well and last time I tested with a BLE keyboard I couldn't bring the OSK back after disconnecting the KB. Car kits, as I stated above, has not worked for me since my Bq E4.5. While it connects fine, there is no audio or mic routed through the phone app. My Pebble Round watch connects, but the BT connection is not recognized by the Rockwork app.

Many smartphone users today, rely on bluetooth for handsfree phone callls, external speakers, smart watches, mice and keyboards, so I believe it is essential this works flawlessly in Ubuntu Touch too.