Beagle Bone Black and Bluetooth - Where am I going wrong?

General Discussion
1

Hi,
I am encountering an issue with Bluetooth on my Beagle Bone Black, where the system doesn’t detect other devices and is not visible to other Bluetooth devices. I am using a TP-Link UB500 Bluetooth USB adapter, which is recognized by the system, but the device doesn’t discover anything or other devices aren’t discovering this.

My device is running 5.10.168-ti-r71 kernel & BeagleBoard.org Debian Bullseye IoT Image 2023-09-02.

debian@BeagleBone:~$ lsusb
	Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2357:0604 TP-Link TP-Link Bluetooth USB Adapter
	Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

debian@BeagleBone:~$ dmesg | grep -i bluetooth
	[ 2376.172712] usb 1-1: Product: TP-Link Bluetooth USB Adapter
	[ 2376.902936] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
	[ 2376.905660] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
	[ 2376.905698] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
	[ 2376.905714] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
	[ 2376.905794] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
	[ 2377.926307] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
	[ 2377.926330] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: proto

debian@BeagleBone:~$ hciconfig
	hci0:   Type: Primary  Bus: USB
    BD Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX  ACL MTU: 1021:6  SCO MTU: 255:12
    UP RUNNING
    RX bytes:762 acl:0 sco:0 events:56 errors:0
    TX bytes:2706 acl:0 sco:0 commands:56 errors:0

debian@BeagleBone:~$ lsmod | grep btusb
	btusb                  57344  0
	btrtl                  24576  1 btusb
	btbcm                  16384  1 btusb
	btintel                24576  1 btusb
	bluetooth             520192  28 btrtl,btintel,bnep,btbcm,btusb

debian@BeagleBone:~$ journalctl -u bluetooth
	-- Journal begins at Sat 2024-09-21 11:00:56 UTC, ends at Wed 2025-01-15 05:17:01 UTC. --
	Jan 15 05:05:06 BeagleBone systemd[1]: Starting Bluetooth service...
	Jan 15 05:05:07 BeagleBone bluetoothd[4379]: Bluetooth daemon 5.55
	Jan 15 05:05:07 BeagleBone systemd[1]: Started Bluetooth service.
	Jan 15 05:05:07 BeagleBone bluetoothd[4379]: Starting SDP server
	Jan 15 05:05:07 BeagleBone bluetoothd[4379]: Bluetooth management interface 1.18 initialized
	Jan 15 05:05:07 BeagleBone bluetoothd[4379]: profiles/sap/server.c:sap_server_register() Sap driver initialization failed.
	Jan 15 05:05:07 BeagleBone bluetoothd[4379]: sap-server: Operation not permitted (1)

Also, according to TPLink website, the UB500 is compatible only with Windows OS, will this be a reason for the dongle to not function properly ? Even though the system detects the device and the Bluetooth stack seems to be working fine, could it be missing the necessary support to make the device function correctly on Linux?

Thanks.

2

Hey There,

I have noticed since the Wifi and Bluetooth adapters, usually USB, use a lot of power to perform the actions listed…

  1. I do not think it is a Linux issue
  2. Maybe use your barrel jack of about 2.0 to 2.5A at 5v might work
  3. I have used Wifi only usb dongles with Linux on the BBB but there was always some catch

The catch was the power consumption of the dongle and the BBB only supplying so many mA on the USB port. This might be something to look into…

Seth

P.S. I am not going to get the UB500 but I can look around here and see if I have a Bluetooth adapter for USB use. Also, I had used a powered USB Hub too. That is another way around the power consumption issues.

3

Hello, thank you.
I used a barrel jack to power my BBB I tried 5v@2A and 5v@2.5A still it didnt work, it’s same as before. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to a powered USB hub right now.

Ab

4

any idea ? anyone ?

5

from TP-Link website:
Supported Operating System – Windows 11/10/8.1/7
have you found some where that indicated it supports linux?

and googies AI
Yes, the TP-Link UB500 Bluetooth dongle supports Linux. However, TP-Link doesn’t guarantee that the driver will work on all Linux systems

A guide on how to get the UB500 working on Linux kernels below 5.16 is available on GitHub.
So, what kernel version are you using??

have you tried
You can unblock it with rfkill unblock bluetooth

1 Like
6

It was basically a realtek chipset (hciconfig -a) and there was firmware (ls -l /lib/firmware/rtl_bt/ ) already present for relatek chipset so I went ahead.

I tested the dongle in windows and Ubuntu it worked fine.

My kernel is 5.10.168-ti-r71, I have also tried it with 4.14.71-ti-r80, are you referring to this one ? I will try this and get back. thanks.

debian@BeagleBone:~$ rfkill list
0: hci0: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
7

This will solve my problem and it has solved someones here - [Solved] Trouble with TP-Link UB5A / UB500 Bluetooth USB dongle - Bullseye - Debian User Forums but im confused as to how to do it, I tried to clone v5.10.168 git branch but there was a memory issue…

I cloned it to an external SD card and complied it from there but it didnt do any good. I have messed it up.

8

This works!

if it doesnt work, you can also update to a new kernel, I tried 6.1.46-ti-r19 after installation it had [ 34.173687] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: firmware file rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin not found issue. To solve this you can wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-realtek_20230210-5~bpo11+1_all.deb and sudo dpkg -i firmware-realtek_20230210-5~bpo11+1_all.deb

1 Like