USB Bluetooth support

There are differences between bluez5,bluez4 and current (2015) bluez5. (daemon names, config files …)

• Bluetooth LE 6LoWPAN
• Bluetooth Audio
• Smartphone Bluetooth Tethering
• Bluetooth Speakers

Some images offered on the OpenWrt download page, come with the basic USB support already included, if yours does not, this page will explain how to install USB support. The OPKG packages needed to obtain a very basic USB support under OpenWrt are the following (please read about the different host controller interfaces on Wikipedia):

By installing the correct kernel packages, your GNU/Linux system is able to address the bus. Now, depending on what you want to connect over the bus, you still need to install the drivers for that specific device. Please see usb.overview

If you wish to manually install all needed packages needed for bluetooth support just issue this command:

Space needed: ~1.3 MB

opkg update
opkg install kmod-bluetooth bluez-libs bluez-utils kmod-usb-core kmod-usb-uhci kmod-usb2 usbutils

In OpenWRT >=18.06:

opkg update
opkg install kmod-bluetooth bluez-libs bluez-utils kmod-usb-core kmod-usb-uhci kmod-usb2 usbutils bluez-daemon

bluez-tools automatically installs dbus as dependency package but it is not enabled by default in order to have benefits of dbus you need to enable both dbus and bluez-utils or bluetoothd services to start on boot:

/etc/init.d/dbus enable
/etc/init.d/dbus start

/etc/init.d/bluez-utils enable
/etc/init.d/bluez-utils start

In 18.06 the bluez-daemon installs the bluetoothd init script instead of bluez-utils:

/etc/init.d/bluetoothd enable
/etc/init.d/bluetoothd start

There are few basic commands to test if you bluetooth device is properly detected and working ok.

hciconfig

Print name and basic information about all the Bluetooth devices installed in the system:

# hciconfig 
hci0:	Type: USB
	BD Address: 00:1A:82:00:12:11 ACL MTU: 339:6 SCO MTU: 180:1
	DOWN 
	RX bytes:454 acl:0 sco:0 events:16 errors:0
	TX bytes:70 acl:0 sco:0 commands:16 errors:0

hciconfig is part of the bluez-utils package.

To activate a device, use:

# hciconfig hci0 up

hcitool

To scan for remote devices:

# hcitool scan

hcid.conf man page is missing this info:

/var/lib/bluetooth/nn:nn:nn:nn:nn:nn/pincodes

    Default location for pins for pairing devices. The file is line separated, with the following columns separated by whitespace:

    nn:nn:nn:nn:nn:nn Remote device address.

    n 1-8 digit pin code. User may have to consult hardware documentation in cases of hard coded pins. Try 0000

If bluetooth device doesn't inicialize correctly and doesn't show up while running hcitool dev command try reinitializing bluetooth stack:

hciconfig hci0 reset
hciconfig hci0 up
/etc/init.d/bluez-utils restart