Understanding Bluetooth and getting a bluetooth headset to work - well kinda.

If like me you're stuck at home during the COVID-19 outbreak and need to use a headset to join the multitude of of online meetings, then a good headset is a must.

#bluetooth#headset#linux#HSP#HFS

Elementary OS has good bluetooth support, however for bluetooth headsets in particular there's still some challenges in HSP/HFS support (In English this means you may end up with only the sound working in your headset and have to use the laptop mic, annoying I know, but I'll share with you all the troubleshooting I've managed to uncover so far to try and get you as far as possible). Note this is not an Elementary OS problem, it's a general Linux bug.

Anyhow here's how far I got.

First off install blueman as this allows you to change the features that your bluetooth device supports. Once installed start it from the applications menu (search for blueman)

Once in BlueMan, pair your headset and connect to it. Once connected right click and go to "Audio Profile" here you'll see a setting to set it to HSP/HFP mode. If you're lucky and this works,then AWESOME!!!!

Unfortunately for my headset it doesn't, and I get the message "Failed to change profile to headset_head_unit", which I think is telling me that my headset doesn't support HFP. Even though HSP is supported by my headset, from what I understand pulseAudio currently doesn't support HFP.

I'm afraid I don't have a solution as yet, but here's some tips that might give you more information.

Running the following command will tell you what bluetooth devices are connected to your system.

dmesg | grep -i bluetooth

For me this gives the following output, my headset is the last item in red.

[   39.701402] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[   39.701425] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[   39.701431] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[   39.701434] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[   39.701438] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[   39.745095] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: examining hci_ver=06 hci_rev=000b lmp_ver=06 lmp_subver=8723
[   39.746085] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rom_version status=0 version=1
[   39.746087] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: loading rtl_bt/rtl8723b_fw.bin
[   39.750494] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: loading rtl_bt/rtl8723b_config.bin
[   39.750524] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for rtl_bt/rtl8723b_config.bin failed with error -2
[   39.750539] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: cfg_sz -2, total sz 22496
[   41.699907] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[   41.699909] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[   41.699916] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[   45.239790] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[   45.239799] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[   45.239806] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11
[17095.745438] Bluetooth: HIDP (Human Interface Emulation) ver 1.2
[17095.745452] Bluetooth: HIDP socket layer initialized
[17095.747577] input: AirPhone3 Consumer Control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.0/usb1/1-7/1-7:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:1/0005:05D6:000A.0007/input/input27
[17095.748024] hid-generic 0005:05D6:000A.0007: input,hidraw6: BLUETOOTH HID v2.40 Device [AirPhone3] on 18:bb:26:40:5c:c1

Running this command will show you any issues relating to your bluetooth hardware

dmesg | grep -i bluetooth | grep -i firmware

In my case it's picking up a problem with the driver that we used earlier to fix the wifi (see...)

[   39.750524] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for rtl_bt/rtl8723b_config.bin failed with error -2

TO BE CONTINUED