Hacker News Reader

Comment by pizza234 | Hacker News Reader

You have two options to try:

    1. install the pulseaudio-bluetooth-module, if you didn't
    2. follow the procedure below

BT in Ubuntu is in an embarrassing state, and I'm not exaggerating. After they've upgraded bluez to version 5, the workflow for connecting BT audio peripherals is:

    - connect the peripheral (takes a few attempts...)
    - disable the profile (set to off)
    - disconnect the peripheral
    - re-connect the peripheral (takes a few attempts again...)
    - set the profile to a2dp

this mad workflow has been consistent across multiple machines and audio peripherals.

Before the v5, the BT stack was still garbage, requiring changes (again, verified on multiple machines and peripherals) to obscure parameters in the bluez configuration.

So "please Ubuntu devs", try to produce a working BT stack, and stick with it.

View on HN

I follow a nearly identical flow several times a day to connect bluetooth headphones to my laptop.

- Turn on headphones * Laptop connects immediately and uses the HSP/HFP mode (works!) * Trying to select A2DP appears to work, but no audio will play - Disconnect the headphones using the Bluetooth manager - Reconnect the headphones using the Bluetooth manager - Select A2DP, this now works.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bluez/+bug/1438510

Separately, many web videos will stop playing and refuse to play when the Bluetooth audio device is selected.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1589008

OK, well, this had to be released before or later ;-)

Here you can find a script which automates the connection to bluetooth headphones, executing (in ruby) the steps outlined above, using the bluez commandline tool (including: retry until the connection is established...):

https://gist.github.com/anonymous/8f6058df9a879292bc8dbd3aaf...

As usual, you need to give execution permissions, or pass it to the ruby interpreter. It's designed to executed via terminal, call it from GUI has undefined behavior.

There is also currently a bug where you can't connect to an amazon echo via bluetooth [0]. I suspect it is a bluez issue or pulseaudio, as it happens across distros, but it does make me feel quite sad that it is this difficult.

Reminds me of how much of a pain printers could be and scanners can still be..

[0] https://askubuntu.com/questions/871630/cant-send-audio-to-am...

Thanks I think I tried exactly this but will try again. Actually I'd like a command line way which should be more deterministic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com