How to get Bluetooth working using armbian minimal recomended image indiedroid nova

how do i get Bluetooth to function?

Did you already check out http://wiki.indiedroid.us/

yes, I did and found nothing helps, yet

Are you running a desktop environment? Or are you trying to use BT from the minimal command line?

i have the xfce desktop instaklled

Hmm, haven’t tried BT on XFCE on Armbian. I’ve done it on MATE and Gnome, mostly. Works well.

Was just talking to Tech Toy Tinker Co and they said that there is something that needs to be added to Cron to run at boot for some OSes to work well with BT.

Hello, there are some steps that need to be done for bluetooth.
wifibt · main · steve laminger / RG503_kernel · GitLab

Grab the 3 files from that URL and then do:
move rtck_hciattach to /usr/bin folder and made it executable
move rtl8821c_fw to /lib/firmware folder
move rtl8821cs_config to /lib/firmware/rtl8821c_config
sudo apt install bluez
then do
echo 0 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/state
sleep 1
echo 1 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/state
sleep 1
/usr/bin/rtk_hciattach -n /dev/ttyS1 rtk_h5 115200 &

Using Ubuntu 22.04 (Armbian) image:

Is there a mis-spell in line 2 above? Should rtck_hciattach be rtk_hciattach? The command as written results in error:
No such file or directory

Even after changing it to rtk_hciattach, and moving it to /usr/bin, and making it executable, the command:

sudo echo 0 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/state
results in error: Permission denied

AND

sudo /usr/bin/rtk_hciattach -n /dev/ttyS1 rtk_h5 115200
results in error: No such file or directory

Looking in /usr/bin, the file (rtk_hciattach) is there, and permissions show it to be executable.
Looking in /dev directory, there is no ttyS1 device.
Even when I make one (with sudo mknod ttyS1 c 4 65) command still gives error:
No such file or directory

What am I doing wrong?

Not sure if we have been abandoned or what. No replies since November of last year.

I will share the way I got bluetooth working. First, I dumped Armbian. Then I downloaded the Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS image form Indiedroid’s site (image is dated January 01,2024) and installed to SD card. It has a newer kernel (5.10.160 as opposed to Armbian kernel 5.10.110) and supports bluetooth (and WiFi) out of the box. It also has Panfrost video drivers. I had also previously had problems with Armbian version of Firefox not letting me import my bookmarks. With Ubuntu 22.04.3 Firefox imports works perfectly. My printer was automatically detected, set up, and printed as it should. So far, I have not run into any problems with Ubuntu. If you need USB display port to work, Indiedroid “Issues” says that it does not work. I do not have a USB-C monitor, so I cannot test if that is still true.

I think Indiedroid should change their recommended image to Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS.

EDIT: Sound works too! You may need to go into sound settings and change the output device to whichever you use.

@theoak Thanks for your report!

It’s true that a lot of people have been communicating on Discord instead of the Forum, but overall communication is lower than it had been. Maybe the developers are busy working on additional projects.

We’ll take into consideration moving the recommended image to Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS.