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[SOLVED] Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-27 22:16
by ticojohn
I have a friend that has a Lenovo Thinkpad T60 with Debian Buster installed. He recently purchased some Energy Sistem Sport 2 earbuds (and yes that spelling is correct) and brought his laptop and the earbuds to me for help. We spent almost an hour trying to get the earbuds to pair, with no success. The earbuds did not show up in the list of devices. On a whim I fired up my Intel NUC, running Bullseye, and went through the process of installing the bluetooth packages. I was able to discover and pair to the earbuds with no trouble. Both his laptop and my NUC have Bluetooth 2.0, so I don't think that is the problem. Is it probable that the issue is with him still running Buster? I have encouraged him to upgrade to Bullseye but he always has some excuse. If the problem is likely that he needs to upgrade to Bullseye then maybe that will give some impetus to move him to upgrade. My harping at him hasn't done the trick. :lol:

My friend is currently out of country on vacation. I do not have access to his machine so I can't give additional information at this time.

EDIT: Yes the earbuds work. He was able to pair them with his wife's Dell laptop running Windows 10.

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-27 23:43
by canci
I think the most likely problem is that The Thinkpad T60 is just very old and uses a very old bluetooth adapter. I mean, Bluetooth 2.0 sounds very old. I've recently bought a newer laptop and before that I had one from 2011 (Thinkpad T420) -- the bluetooth on it was super sketchy, but maybe because the devices I tried to connect with it just were too new. While it might be that Bullseye will give you a more stable bluetooth stack, I highly doubt that the drivers were optimised for such an old device.

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-28 00:09
by ticojohn
canci wrote: 2022-01-27 23:43 I think the most likely problem is that The Thinkpad T60 is just very old and uses a very old bluetooth adapter. I mean, Bluetooth 2.0 sounds very old. I've recently bought a newer laptop and before that I had one from 2011 (Thinkpad T420) -- the bluetooth on it was super sketchy, but maybe because the devices I tried to connect with it just were too new. While it might be that Bullseye will give you a more stable bluetooth stack, I highly doubt that the drivers were optimised for such an old device.
Well, like I said in the post, my NUC has Bluetooth 2.0. But you may be right. Still going to have him upgrade.
Thanks for your response.

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-28 00:36
by canci
Or maybe borrow a new Bluetooth dongle just to rule out it's the T60s internal Bluetooth.

Sadly, Bluetooth is an incredibly unreliable thing on Linux in certain cases.

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-28 13:52
by ticojohn
canci wrote: 2022-01-28 00:36 Or maybe borrow a new Bluetooth dongle just to rule out it's the T60s internal Bluetooth.

Sadly, Bluetooth is an incredibly unreliable thing on Linux in certain cases.
One thing I noticed, while trying to get Bluetooth working on the T60, was that NO devices showed up while trying to pair the earbuds. However, on the NUC I saw not only the earbuds but two other devices. Kind of makes me wonder if the T60 is defective, or as you said just too old.

I'll see if I can locate a Bluetooth dongle but I'm not optimistic about being able to find one here in small town Costa Rica.

Thanks for your feedback.

EDIT: Just tried to pair my Bluetooth speakers with my Intel NUC. Device found but it won't connect. @canci, maybe you are right on about Linux reliability with Bluetooth.

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-28 20:36
by ticojohn
I have to say that trying to get bluetooth to work on Debian 11 is exceedingly frustrating. I've been through the process at least 10 times, to no avail. The last message in dmesg says that it is connected, but NOOOO. What a pain in the backside. Glad I have a fiber optics link to my speakers. I am giving up on this project. I will wait a few days to see if I get any other helpful responses. If not I will mark this post as closed. Thanks to those that did offer advice.

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-28 22:30
by canci
I still think you should try a more recent Bluetooth dongle, 4.0 or 5.0. You can order those online.

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-28 22:53
by ticojohn
canci wrote: 2022-01-28 22:30 I still think you should try a more recent Bluetooth dongle, 4.0 or 5.0. You can order those online.
I may give that a try. I was looking at the NUC specs and the Bluetooth chip is version 4.2. I personally don't care about using Bluetooth but may check out a new dongle to see if it can help my friend. Thanks for your suggestions @canci .

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-28 23:23
by ticojohn
@canci, I do have a question about using a Bluetooth dongle, if I can add that question to this post. Since the computers in question have Bluetooth built in, is it possible to use the dongle without killing the onboard RF? I assume killing RF would disable both Bluetooth and WiFi. My friend uses WiFi for his internet connection so having Bluetooth (via the dongle) without having WiFi would be kind of pointless.

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-29 08:07
by canci
You can use a new Bluetooth adapter dongle without disabling the onboard chip. And if you need to disable it, you can just disable the driver module in software.

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-29 12:58
by ticojohn
canci wrote: 2022-01-29 08:07 You can use a new Bluetooth adapter dongle without disabling the onboard chip. And if you need to disable it, you can just disable the driver module in software.
Cool. I'll see if I can find a dongle. Thanks.

Re: Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-29 15:06
by ticojohn
Using bluetoothctl I finally got my speakers to pair with the NUC, however the sound quality was horrible (choppy). I have read that the likely problem is latency. So maybe I'll take a look at the latency settings in pulseaudio. But since I was finally able to get the speaker paired I will mark this post as [SOLVED]. Thanks for your help @canci .

Re: [SOLVED] Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-29 16:20
by canci
No problem. Try to switch the settings in Pulseaudio from "Headset" to "ADSP" or something like that.

Re: [SOLVED] Problem pairing bluetooth earbuds

Posted: 2022-01-29 18:35
by ticojohn
canci wrote: 2022-01-29 16:20 No problem. Try to switch the settings in Pulseaudio from "Headset" to "ADSP" or something like that.
There doesn't appear to be any option other than Headset, at least through the GUI. However, setting the latency to 50ms did the trick. Thanks a lot for your help @canci. Hopefully what I have learned will help my friend with his earbuds. He's on vacation for the next two weeks so I'll have to wait. Hopefully I won't forget what I learned. I am an old fart. LOL!