Back to posts.

Setting up a Bluetooth Headset on Arch Linux

I got a Sennheiser PXC 550 headset that I wanted to setup on my Arch Linux PC recently. The PXC 550 headset is a wireless headset that can be used wirelessly using bluetooth. I'm setting it up on a PC with the following specs

OS: Linux arch680 5.0.7-arch1-1-ARCH x86_64 GNU/Linux
Bluetooth: External USB Bluetooth adapter with Broadcom chipset
Headset: Sennheiser PXC 550

Before we get started make sure your system is up to date. If you don't feel like doing a full system upgrade at least make sure to update your the keyring and packages.

Updating your system

Full upgrade

# pacman -Sy
# pacman-key --refresh-keys
# pacman -Syu

Minimal upgrade

# pacman -Sy
# pacman-key --refresh-keys

Installing necessary packages

# pacman -S pulseaudio-bluetooth
# pacman -S pulseaudio-alsa
# pacman -S pavucontrol
# pacman -S bluez
# pacman -S bluez-utils

Make sure bluetooth is running and automatically starts after booting:

# systemctl enable bluetooth
# systemctl start bluetooth

Configure PulseAudio and Bluetooth

Add the following to the bottom of the main bluetooth configuration file:

# emacs -nw /etc/bluetooth/main.cf
 
AutoEnable=true

To make sure that your headsets is automatically connected to your bluetooth device we need to enable the switch-on-connect module. We also copy the configurations to our user directory because we don't want to change the system wide settings. If you want you can also change /etc/pulse/* though, the choice is whatever you prefer.

mkdir -p ~/.config/pulse
cp /etc/pulse/* ~/.config/pulse/
 
 
# emacs -nw ~/.config/pulse/default.pa
load-module module-switch-on-connect      -- add this at the bottom

After making these changes restart bluetooth:

# systemctl restart bluetooth

Pairing your headset

Ok we've finally done all the ground work to pair our PXC 550. Open a terminal and start bluetoothctl. We use bluetoothctl to pair, trust and connect to the headset.

But before we start we check if the device was already paired and maybe incorrectly configured. To make sure we start off with the same settings check if the device was paired, then remove it and start from scratch:

# bluetoothctl
 
[bluetooth]# paired-devices
Device 00:1D:43:6D:03:26 PXC 550
 
[bluetooth]# remove 00:1D:43:6D:03:26

Ok, now we can start with a clean configuration. Execute the following commands. After you've given the scan on command (see below), you need to put your PXC headset into pairing more.

To set your PXC 550 into pairing mode hold down the sound effect button (on the right cap) for 4 seconds. The headset will tell you something like "Pairing..."

You can use the TAB key to autocomplete the device IDs. You don't have to type them yourself, simply type the first characters and hit TAB.

$ bluetoothctl
 
[bluetooth]# power on
[bluetooth]# agent on
[bluetooth]# default-agent
[bluetooth]# scan on
 
[NEW] Device 00:1D:43:6D:03:26 PXC 550
 
[bluetooth]# pair 00:1D:43:6D:03:26     -- pair with the device
[bluetooth]# connect 00:1D:43:6D:03:26  -- connect with the device
[bluetooth]# trust 00:1D:43:6D:03:26    -- trust the device
 
[bluetooth]# scan off
[bluetooth]# exit

Verify if your headset is working

You can use pacat or just open a YouTube video. To playback a YouTube video make sure to restart your browser if you already opened it.

pacat < /dev/urandom

You can also open pavucontrol and see if the bluetooth headset was found in the output devices tab.

Troubleshooting

Here are some commands that can help you to get more information when you're running into problems.

dmesg

# dmesg | grep -i bluetooth
 
[    5.114524] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[    5.114534] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[    5.114538] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[    5.114539] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[    5.114541] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[    5.181918] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[    5.181919] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[    5.181922] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[    5.264246] Bluetooth: hci1: BCM: chip id 63
[    5.265242] Bluetooth: hci1: BCM: features 0x07
[    5.281221] Bluetooth: hci1: arch680
[    5.282232] Bluetooth: hci1: BCM20702A1 (001.002.014) build 0000
[    5.282399] bluetooth hci1: Direct firmware load for brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-21e8.hcd failed with error -2
[    5.282400] Bluetooth: hci1: BCM: Patch brcm/BCM20702A1-0a5c-21e8.hcd not found
[   16.534360] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[   16.534366] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[   16.534371] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11

lsmod

$ lsmod | grep -i bluetooth
bluetooth             651264  49 btrtl,btintel,btbcm,bnep,btusb,rfcomm
ecdh_generic           24576  3 bluetooth
rfkill                 28672  4 bluetooth,cfg80211
crc16                  16384  2 bluetooth,ext4

btmon

You can run btmon in a separate terminal while you're scanning for your device and see if there are logs that contain e.g. the name of your device.

# btmon
Bluetooth monitor ver 5.50
= Note: Linux version 5.0.7-arch1-1-ARCH (x86_64)                                                                                                                 0.794111
= Note: Bluetooth subsystem version 2.22                                                                                                                          0.794112
= New Index: 5C:F3:70:81:F0:5A (Primary,USB,hci1)                                                                                                          [hci1] 0.794113
= Open Index: 5C:F3:70:81:F0:5A                                                                                                                            [hci1] 0.794114
= Index Info: 5C:F3:70:81:F0:5A (Broadcom Corporation)                                                                                                     [hci1] 0.794114
= New Index: 9C:B6:D0:02:2D:64 (Primary,USB,hci0)                                                                                                          [hci0] 0.794114
= Open Index: 9C:B6:D0:02:2D:64                                                                                                                            [hci0] 0.794114
= Index Info: 9C:B6:D0:02:2D:64 (Qualcomm)                                                                                                                 [hci0] 0.794115
@ MGMT Open: bluetoothd (privileged) version 1.14                                                                                                        {0x0001} 0.794115
@ MGMT Open: btmon (privileged) version 1.14                                                                                                             {0x0002} 0.794125
> HCI Event: Connect Request (0x04) plen 10                                                                                                            #1 [hci1] 27.312940
        Address: 00:16:94:29:CB:82 (Sennheiser Communications A/S)
        Class: 0x240404
          Major class: Audio/Video (headset, speaker, stereo, video, vcr)
          Minor class: Wearable Headset Device
          Rendering (Printing, Speaker)
          Audio (Speaker, Microphone, Headset)
        Link type: ACL (0x01)

lsusb

Because my bluetooth device is a simple USB adapter, I used lsusb -v to find more information about the type of device that I use.

# lsusb -v
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0a5c:21e8 Broadcom Corp. BCM20702A0 Bluetooth 4.0
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass          255 Vendor Specific Class
  bDeviceSubClass         1 
  bDeviceProtocol         1 
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x0a5c Broadcom Corp.
  idProduct          0x21e8 BCM20702A0 Bluetooth 4.0
  bcdDevice            1.12
  iManufacturer           1 Broadcom Corp
  iProduct                2 BCM20702A0
  iSerial                 3 5CF37081F05A
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength       0x00da
    bNumInterfaces          4
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0 
    bmAttributes         0xe0
      Self Powered
      Remote Wakeup
    MaxPower                0mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           3
      bInterfaceClass       255 Vendor Specific Class
      bInterfaceSubClass      1 
      bInterfaceProtocol      1 
      iInterface              0 
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0010  1x 16 bytes
        bInterval               1
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x82  EP 2 IN
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               1
      Endpoint Descriptor:

pacman

You can use pacman to see what bluetooth packages are currently installed. Use the pacman -Qs with a search term like blue.

$ pacman -Qs blue
local/blueman 2.0.8-2
    GTK+ Bluetooth Manager
local/bluez 5.50-6
    Daemons for the bluetooth protocol stack
local/bluez-libs 5.50-6
    Deprecated libraries for the bluetooth protocol stack
local/bluez-utils 5.50-6
    Development and debugging utilities for the bluetooth protocol stack
local/pulseaudio-bluetooth 12.2-2
    Bluetooth support for PulseAudio
local/qt5-connectivity 5.12.2-1 (qt qt5)
    Provides access to Bluetooth hardware
local/sbc 1.4-1
    Bluetooth Subband Codec (SBC) library

Also checking what pulse audio packages are installed can give your more info while you're running into issues.

$ pacman -Qs pulse
local/libcanberra-pulse 0.30+2+gc0620e4-2
    PulseAudio plugin for libcanberra
local/libpulse 12.2-2
    A featureful, general-purpose sound server (client library)
local/pavucontrol 1:4.0-1
    PulseAudio Volume Control
local/pulseaudio 12.2-2
    A featureful, general-purpose sound server
local/pulseaudio-alsa 2-4
    ALSA Configuration for PulseAudio
local/pulseaudio-bluetooth 12.2-2
    Bluetooth support for PulseAudio
local/pulsemixer 1.4.0-3
    CLI and curses mixer for pulseaudio

NAT Types This is so exciting, in this article I dive into some of the different ways a NAT device translates addresses which is important for peer-to-peer connections.
Building Cabinets In this post I dive into the design and construction of a cabinet with an interact LED strip. I also explain how I dynamically change the colors of the LEDs over TCP/UDP.
Compiling GStreamer from source on Windows How to compile GStreamer on Windows from Source using Visual Studio 2019 and the meson build system.
Debugging CMake Issues In this post I explain a process you can follow to debug issues with CMake by focusing on a specific target and making the output verbose.
Dual Boot Arch Linux and Windows 10 How to install Arch Linux and Windows 10 Pro as dual boot. A step by step tutorial how to create bootable installers, partition and setup a dual boot menu.
Mindset Updated Edition, Carol S. Dweck (Book Notes) Paragraphs I marked from the book "Mindset" from Carol S. Dweck.
How to setup a self-hosted Unifi NVR with Arch Linux A step by step HOW-TO that explain show to setup a Unifi Video Controller with an NFS share with Arch Linux.
Blender 2.8 How to use Transparent Textures Follow this node setup when you want to use an image with transparency as a "sticker".
Compiling FFmpeg with X264 on Windows 10 using MSVC A couple of steps to compile FFmpeg on Windows using MSVC.
Blender 2.8 OpenGL Buffer Exporter The following Blender script creates a [name].h and [name].cpp for the selected object and stores the positions, normals and UVs.
Blender 2.8 Baking lightmaps Light maps are a cheap way to add a lot of realism to you static scenes and have been used forever.
Blender 2.8 Tips and Tricks Use Environment Map only for reflections; create a floor plane for a Product Render, diffuse texture for roughness and more!
Setting up a Bluetooth Headset on Arch Linux Learn how to setup a Sennheiser PXC 550 Bluetooth headset on Arch Linux.
Compiling x264 on Windows with MSVC Compile the excellent x264 source on Windows using MSYS2 and MSVC.
C/C++ Snippets Is a number divisible by four?
Reading Chunks from a Buffer Some thoughts on reading bytes from a file; handy for reading NALs.
Handy Bash Commands Bash scripts: removing white space, lowercase filenames, backup using tar, etc.
Building a zero copy parser Simple solution to parse data in a pretty performant way. Used this for a RTSP protocol parser.
Kalman Filter A very simple yet powerful filter which works great when you have to smooth noisy data. Used for the Nike Rise 2.0 project.
Saving pixel data using libpng Do you have raw RGBA data that you want to save? Use this snippet to save it into a PNG file.
Compile Apache, PHP and MySQL on Mac 10.10 Setup you own PHP, MySQL and Apache and with virtual document roots.
Fast Pixel Transfers with Pixel Buffer Objects Using Pixel Buffer Objects (PBO) for fast asynchronous data transfers and OpenGL.
High Resolution Timer function in C/C++ Wait...... wait.. fast high resolution timer funtions (Windows, Linux, Mac)
Rendering text with Pango, Cairo and Freetype My never ending obsession with font rendering. A complex beast to do well. Use Pango and FreeType for the heavy lifting.
Fast OpenGL blur shader Make things look blurry ... and fast using this OpenGL blur shader.
Spherical Environment Mapping with OpenGL An old trick to get great lighting effects using Environment Maps and OpenGL.
Using OpenSSL with memory BIOs OpenSSL is a great library with lots of abstractions. In this post I discuss how to break some of these abstractions and use your own memory buffers.
Attributeless Vertex Shader with OpenGL A simple way to render a fullscreen quad without a vertex buffer with OpenGL.
Circular Image Selector Some thoughts on a different way to select images from a huge collection in a compact UI.
Decoding H264 and YUV420P playback Using libav to demux and playback with OpenGL.
Fast Fourier Transform Analyse your audio using the Fastest Fourier Transform in the West.
OpenGL Rim Shader Pretty glowy edges using a GLSL rim shader.
Rendering The Depth Buffer Render the non-linear OpenGL Depth Buffer.
Delaunay Triangulation Do you need to triangulate some shape: use the “Triangle” library.
RapidXML RapidXML is a versatile and fast XML parser with a simple API. Check out these examples.
Git Snippets Some simple GIT snippets; added here to remind myself.
Basic Shading With OpenGL A couple of basic GLSL shaders with explanation.
Open Source Libraries For Creative Coding Collection of great open source libraries for you creative programming projects.
Bouncing particle effect Snippet that can be used to create a bouncy particle effect; basic, effective, simple but nice.
OpenGL Instanced Rendering Want to render thousands and thousands of objects? Use OpenGL instanced rendering. The solution...the only solution.
Mapping a texture on a disc Ever heard about projective interpolation related to texture mapping? Learn about this intertesting issue with OpenGL and texture mapping.
Download HTML page using CURL When you want a quick solution to perform a HTTP(S) request CURL is always a quick an simple solution. Check out this example code.
Height Field Simulation on GPU Although not a Navier-Stokes implementation ... still a very nice and enjoyable effect.
OpenCV Optical Flow: when doing anything with tracking you've probably heard of it. See this simple example code using OpenCV and OpenGL.
Some notes on OpenGL FBOs and Depth Testing, using different Attachment Points, a YUV420p shader, ...
Math Meaning of the Dot Product in 3D graphics, calculating a perpendicular vector using Sam Hocevar's solution, orientation matrix and more.
Gists to remember Some gists that I want to remember, often use, etc...
Reverse SSH Do you want to login, into a remote PC but the remote PC is behind a firewall? Then use this simple reverse SSH trick which doesn't require changing your firewall rules.
Working Set Having issues with your compiler? Or during linking? Check these common issues and their solutions. I also list several tools that you can use to get a some useful info.
Consumer + Producer model with libuv Example of a common Multi Threaded Consumer/Producer Model using LibUV.
Parsing binary data Learn about the basic of a binary protocol and how to create one easily yourself.
C++ file operation snippets Reading a file into a string, vector, checking the file size, change to a position, etc. A collection of C++ file operation snippets.
Importance of blur with image gradients Do you want to experiment with OpenGL and aligning Brush Strokes along Image Gradients? Then check out this post about the importance of blurring.
Real-time oil painting with openGL Code snippet for fake "oil painting" effect with OpenGL using instanced rendering.
x264 encoder Basic example on how to use libx264 to encode image data using libav
Generative helix with openGL Screenshots of a project I worked on with that generates a DNA helix.
Mini test with vector field Screenshots while experimenting with a vector field; nothing much to see here.
Protractor gesture recognizer Testing the amazing One Dollar $1 gesture recognizer. The simplest and very good gesture recognizer.
Hair simulation Example code that implements the "Fast Simulation of Inextensible Hair and Fur" paper from M. Müller, T.Y. Kim and N.Chentanez.
Some glitch screenshots Glitch screenshots.
Working on video installation Screenshots of some experiments of a video installation.
Generative meshes I enjoy creating physics based simulations and render them on high res. Here are some experiments I did a time ago.
Converting video/audio using avconv Examples that show you how to use avconv to manipulate video and audio files.
Auto start terminal app on mac Automatically start you application whe Mac boots and make sure that it restarts your app when it exists. Handy for interactive installations.
Export blender object to simple file format Export the selected object in Blender into a .h and .cpp file that prepresents the buffer.