Hi there - to the developers, really great work on OSMC!
I recently bought the Bluetooth dongle offered in the OSMC store, but haven’t been able to get it working. I am running a RPi 2 and have an externally powered USB hub which has a Leadtek TV dongle, a USB DVD drive and a Logitech wireless keyboard dongle attached. But the result is the same whether I plug into the Pi or the USB hub.
I select the Bluetooth option in the network tab of MyOSMC, enable Bluetooth and start Discovery, but the first problem is that it seems to be pretty sluggish in finding most of my devices. I have an iphone and an iPad that sometimes (but not always) are discovered (parking them right on top of the dongle doesn’t seem to make much difference). The next problem is that even if the device is found, when I attempt to pair (with or without pin), the phone can’t see the dongle. After a few seconds OSMC then aborts the connection (‘Connection to device_x failed’).
I have an XPS13 running Ubuntu 16.04 that can pair with the phone (or iPad) without issue, and I can play audio from the phone through the computer, so there is nothing wrong with the Bluetooth functionality of the source devices themselves.
So I read the article on connecting a Bluetooth device and other posts on Bluetooth problems generally, but not much report of similar problems. I guess the dongle could be defective, but I think it is more likely that the user is defective. Are there any additional actions that need to be taken (e.g. software installations) to enable Bluetooth discovery?
Also, could anybody give me some indication of which logs would be useful and I can upload them? I’m not very familiar with Linux (yet) but remember stumbling around in dmesg output when I was trying to get the Leadtek Dongle working (successfully, eventually).
Make sure you are on the latest version. Some Bluetooth issues were fixed.
What is your objective with pairing? iPads and iPhones only support A2DP based streaming. For this to work, you will need to install the experimental A2DP streaming software (found in Testing and Development Forum). iPad and iPhone cannot be used as Bluetooth keyboards or for file transfers; audio only.
Hey Sam - I currently have a stereo with RPi connected via 1 analogue channel and a (MusicTooth Pro) bluetooth receiver connected via another. The receiver is for things like Pandora (Kodi app no longer available) and some other audio that is just easier to run over bluetooth. I just wanted to cut out the receiver so that everything goes through OSMC / Kodi. So just looking to stream audio from iphone / ipad / Android.
Perhaps I misunderstood what the current bluetooth capabilities are. Was the primary objective to make OSMC bluetooth audio source? In that case I have completely misunderstood.
I want to be able to send audio from iphone / ipad to OSMC primarily (as well as allow visitors to send content from Android OS). Previously used AirPlay but keeps breaking when I update my OS, so Bluetooth seemed a better bet. Will try the a2dp streaming software.
But would also be good to send audio from OSMC to bt receiver. So sounds like this should be possible as is with the current OSMC release, assuming that there are no issues with the device to be paired (MusicToothPro), correct?
as described in Dev and Testing page, and all seemed to install okay. Rebooted. Behaviour same as described above. In network page, OSMC is hit and miss as to whether it discovers some BT devices, and some others it never sees at all. In any case, pairing with the devices it does discover inevitably fails, whether with or without PIN.
All devices work with each other (for example I can stream from iphone or ipad to either bluetooth receiver or my Ubuntu laptop).
Apart from update of system and install of package as above, are there additional steps I need to take, or should it work at this point? Apologies if I have missed something obvious. Noob to say the least. If not, suggestions for next steps would be much appreciated. Can upload logs if this helps - just let me know which logs are most useful.
However, I still am trying to ascertain whether the BT dongle I got from OSMC store is actually functioning properly. I have not had any luck getting it to connect to anything - not a phone, tablet, computer or BT receiver. Sometimes the devices show up in the OSMC networking screen (although I have had my iphone sitting literally on the dongle for the last 30 minutes and it hasn’t), but pairing never works and none of the devices have ever discovered the dongle.
My plan was to stream from devices to OSMC, then output to speakers via Hifiberry DAC+, but although that doesn’t seem possible right now I would like to confirm whether my dongle actually works. I assume the presence of the DAC won’t affect the ability of the system to pair with devices, right?