No Country (Bluetooth) For Old Men

[d3r]

@Mykle1 If you’re on jessie (with pixel), keep reading this post. I think you mentioned you have blueman installed. You don’t need blueman anymore. I would recommend getting rid of it. Pixel comes with pi-bluetooth which is supposed to make things easier for audio. Notice how you have 2 bluetooth icons in your taskbar? They could be conflicting.
Please also see this link https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/another-update-raspbian/ for how to connect the speaker. It should work.
Of course do back up your card in case something goes wrong.

Raspbian Stretch also changed some stuff about bluetooth, maybe take a look at that if you have a spare sd card lying around. I personally haven’t tried it yet.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbian-stretch/

This is how mine looks

[Mykle1]

@d3r said in No Country (Bluetooth) For Old Men:

You don’t need blueman anymore

I really can’t wait to try your suggestions. I have other household matters to take care of first (says the wife). I will report back to you later when I’ve tried. Many thanks for your input and advice!

[Mykle1]

Finally finished working my butt off today. Now, I take a stab at your suggestions. Wish me luck!

[Mykle1]

@d3r said in No Country (Bluetooth) For Old Men:

You don’t need blueman anymore.

Just to clarify, pulseaudio stays? I’ve removed Blueman

[d3r]

@Mykle1
Ya. Pulseaudio stays.

[Mykle1]

@d3r said in No Country (Bluetooth) For Old Men:

Ya. Pulseaudio stays.

Ok, I thought so. I’ll have an update in a little while

[d3r]

@Mykle1 you might have to be remove (forget) the speaker on your pi bluetooth and restart the pi again once you remove blueman.

[Mykle1]

@d3r said in No Country (Bluetooth) For Old Men:

you might have to be remove (forget) the speaker on your pi bluetooth and restart the pi again once you remove blueman.

I haven’t tried that. Pairing doesn’t seem to be my problem. The speaker pairs automatically.

Let me explain my sequence and result

The first thing I have to do is RUN start-pulseaudio-x11 because I don’t have it in startup yet. This enables the Volume Control where I clearly see the speaker connected.

Click on the Bluetooth icon and again, I see the speaker is paired

Right click the Volume icon and I see the speaker but it is not chosen yet.

Following the directions of the link you gave, I click on HMDX in the drop down menu of the volume icon, but this is the result

My pulseaudio is up to date.

I’ll remove the speaker and add it again if you think that will help

[Mykle1]

@Mykle1 said in No Country (Bluetooth) For Old Men:

I’ll remove the speaker and add it again

As it turns out, that was a bad idea. Now the Pi does not see the speaker.

[d3r]

@Mykle1 Sorry to hear it’s not working.
When you reboot try it without running the start-pulseaudio-x11 command. If that doesn’t work, I’m lost.
Iirc, when I set mine up, I paired the speaker, then did the right click on the speaker icon to change it to the bluetooth speaker.

[Mykle1]

@d3r

I can’t try anything right now. The Pi doesn’t see the speaker since I removed it. I can’t add it because it doesn’t appear in the Add Device window

[d3r]

@Mykle1 try the command line instead of the gui to pair your speaker.
Run bluetoothctl in terminal.
Then type:
power on
Default-agent
Agent on
Scan on
then see if bluetoothct sees the speaker.

[Mykle1]

@d3r

Seemed like it pair, but then says COnnected: no

Discovery started
[CHG] Controller B8:27:EB:78:6F:82 Discovering: yes
[NEW] Device 5D:7C:05:CD:53:E2 5D-7C-05-CD-53-E2
[NEW] Device A0:E9:DB:89:37:82 HMDX RAVE
[CHG] Device 5D:7C:05:CD:53:E2 RSSI: -72
[CHG] Device 5D:7C:05:CD:53:E2 RSSI: -89
[CHG] Device 5D:7C:05:CD:53:E2 RSSI: -72
[CHG] Device A0:E9:DB:89:37:82 RSSI: -66
[CHG] Device A0:E9:DB:89:37:82 RSSI: -53
[CHG] Device 5D:7C:05:CD:53:E2 RSSI: -90
[bluetooth]# pair A0:E9:DB:89:37:82
Attempting to pair with A0:E9:DB:89:37:82
[CHG] Device A0:E9:DB:89:37:82 Connected: yes
Request PIN code
[agent] Enter PIN code: 0000
[CHG] Device A0:E9:DB:89:37:82 UUIDs:
	0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
	0000110e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Device A0:E9:DB:89:37:82 Paired: yes
Pairing successful
[CHG] Device A0:E9:DB:89:37:82 Connected: no
[bluetooth]#

[d3r]

@Mykle1 Can you try the right click on the speaker icon now to see if it works?

[Mykle1]

@d3r

The speaker was there but I got this error when I clicked on it

FatalError: Unable to connect to PulseAudio: OK

[Mykle1]

Getting something to drink, in lieu of a sedative.

[d3r]

@Mykle1 Getting close.
Run pulseaudio --start then try the speaker thing again.

[Mykle1]

@d3r said in No Country (Bluetooth) For Old Men:

pulseaudio --start

[Mykle1]

@d3r said in No Country (Bluetooth) For Old Men:

Getting close

I thought so too, and I thank you for your help but I had one hell of a day and I am exhausted. Instead of hitting this thing with a hammer I’ll walk away and start again tomorrow.

Go get yourself a beer. Sorry for all the troubles.

[Mykle1]

@d3r

I realized that I may have scared you off but I thought you might like to know that I got bluetooth to work.

How? I took my mirror off the wall. Put in a new SD card with a new installation of Jessie 2017-07-05. Installed mpg123 as my mp3 player. Connected to bluetooth using your instructions. Saw the green check mark next to my speaker when right clicking the Volume icon in the menu bar and clicking on my speaker.

Here comes the HOLY SHIT moment.

I have exactly ONE mp3 on my Pi (HA) In the terminal I navigate to the mp3 file. I type mpg123 Nicole.mp3 (A song I wrote for my daughter many moons ago) and BLAM! The song starts playing, plays all the way through, no crash, no freeze. Just music to my ears!

H O L Y S H I T !

So, thank you for your help and advice and all the time you spent trying to get me up and running