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setting-up-bluetooth-audio-with-pulseaudio.md

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title Setting Up Bluetooth audio with PulseAudio - A2DP only
subject Bluetooth

Overview

Debian jessie is using BlueZ 5 and PluseAudio 5, which are fairly new.
There were major breaking changes in these versions.
Most stuff you find on the Internet will be for BlueZ 4 and PulseAudio 4,
so watch out, those configurations may not work.

PulseAudio 5 only supports the A2DP profile and not Headset profile (HSP) or Hands-free profile (HFP), although it is under development see note 2.

The A2DP profile supports:
UUID: Audio Source
UUID: Audio Sink

How to get PulseAudio working with Bluetooth

This should all be done as root

  1. Install pulseaudio:
    apt-get install --no-install-recommends pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

  2. Create a systemd service for running pulseaudio as the pulse user.
    Save the following lines as /etc/systemd/system/pulseaudio.service
    [Unit]
    Description=Pulse Audio
    [Service]
    Type=simple
    ExecStart=/usr/bin/pulseaudio --system --disallow-exit --disable-shm
    and reload systemd with systemctl daemon-reload

  3. Give the pulse user permission to use Bluetooth.
    Save this file: pulseaudio-bluetooth.conf to /etc/dbus-1/system.d/pulseaudio-bluetooth.conf

  4. Paste the following lines to the end of /etc/pulse/system.pa:
    ### Automatically load driver modules for Bluetooth hardware
    .ifexists module-bluetooth-policy.so
    load-module module-bluetooth-policy
    .endif
    .ifexists module-bluetooth-discover.so
    load-module module-bluetooth-discover
    .endif

  5. Start the systemd service: systemctl start pulseaudio.service

  6. Run bluetoothctl to connect the device.
    You only need to do the pairing stuff once.
    Be sure to substitute the address of the actual device your are connecting to.
    Here are the commands:
    agent on
    default-agent
    scan on
    pair 11:11:11:11:11:11
    trust 11:11:11:11:11:11
    connect 11:11:11:11:11:11

  7. Now, you should be able to play sound from a remote device on your EV3 without any further configuration.

  8. To play sound from the EV3 on a remote device, there are a few more steps.

  • add root and your own non-root user(s) to the audio and pulse-access groups:
    usermod -a -G pulse-access,audio root
    usermod -a -G pulse-access,audio myuser
  • Run pactl list cards.
    The end of the output should look something like this:
Card #1
    Name: bluez_card.00_17_E7_BD_1C_8E
    Driver: module-bluez5-device.c
    Owner Module: 14
    Properties:
        device.description = "BlueZ 5.23"
        device.string = "00:17:E7:BD:1C:8E"
        device.api = "bluez"
        device.class = "sound"
        device.bus = "bluetooth"
        bluez.path = "/org/bluez/hci0/dev_00_17_E7_BD_1C_8E"
        bluez.class = "0x0c0000"
        bluez.alias = "BlueZ 5.23"
        device.icon_name = "audio-card-bluetooth"
    Profiles:
        a2dp_source: High Fidelity Capture (A2DP Source) (sinks: 0, sources: 1, priority: 10, available: yes)
        a2dp: High Fidelity Playback (A2DP Sink) (sinks: 1, sources: 0, priority: 10, available: yes)
        off: Off (sinks: 0, sources: 0, priority: 0, available: yes)
    Active Profile: a2dp
    Ports:
        unknown-output: Bluetooth Output (priority: 0, latency offset: 0 usec)
            Part of profile(s): a2dp
        unknown-input: Bluetooth Input (priority: 0, latency offset: 0 usec)
            Part of profile(s): a2dp_source

The active profile probably doesn't say a2dp, although in the output above it already has been set.
So set it by running: pactl set-card-profile 1 a2dp
The "1" in this command is the number of the BT card from the output above.

  1. Now you can play sound using paplay.
    Example: paplay -d bluez_sink.00_17_E7_BD_1C_8E /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
    Possibly error messages like xcb_connection_has_error() returned true have been seen and not explained.
    There seems to be no ill effect on BT audio.
    Using my simple non-root user I get:
    Failed to create secure directory (/run/user/0/pulse): Permission denied
    but playback does work.