Cannot get bluetooth to work.

[Majere]

Hello, everyone. New guy, here. Hoping someone can help me.

So, I bought my Raspberry Pi 3 Model B last week, and have been setting everything up. I'm not a tech guy by any means, so it's been a bit of a challenge, but thanks to youtubers like ETAprime I've been able to get everything up and running. The only snag I've hit is getting the bluetooth running.

No matter what I do, I just can't get it to recognize any of my wireless controllers (PS4 controller, Nintendo Wii Pro pad). They will work when plugged into the USB port, but that's it. I've scoured the retropie website, updating everything that was listed on the set-up and troubleshooting pages, but to no avail. Should I just shell out a couple of extra bucks and pick up a bluetooth dongle or what? This is so frustrating. It's the very last step to having my perfect old-school emulator, but I can't seem to get over this hurdle. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[ChuckyP]

I can't help you a great deal here... But I have had much trouble with my bluetooth on Pi3. I can, however get it to connect, but it just loses connection within a minute or 2. I have heard a lot of similar issues to you as well... Most just get a dongle and never look back.

It would be nice to have it work out of the box though. I'm not sure if it is a Raspberry Pi, or RetroPie issue.

Hopefully someone can help you out.

[Majere]

Thank you, Chucky. I've gone ahead and put in an order for a dongle and some USB-wired controllers to go along with it just in case. If I can get the bluetooth working, great. If not, I'll work around it. I agree with you though, it sure would've been nice to have it working out of the box as advertised.

[ChuckyP]

@majere xbox360 controllers with the PC dongle allow 4 player connections and works great. You can get a repro for 10 bucks online. They work great.

[Clyde]

@majere My clone Wii U Pro pads could connect to Retropie, but suffered from so called "ghost inputs", i.e. button signals while no buttons are pressed. They work perfectly fine with this adapter from Mayflash, without any connection problems or ghost inputs.

[Majere]

So, I got my bluetooth dongle today. Zero. When I check my bluetooth status from the command line, the last two lines read:

Sap driver initialization failed.
sap-driver: Operation not permitted (1)

Any clue where I've gone wrong?

[ChuckyP]

@majere maybe post the brand or model number. Not all adaptors work, but there are a few sites that have compatability lists.

[Majere]

It's a Plugable Bluetooth 4.0 LE USB Adapter, model:USB-BT4LE. I've got a wired PS3 and wired PS4 controller to work, but not the wired Wii Pro Controller. Nothing on Bluetooth. I don't know what I did/am doing wrong.

[mitu]

@majere How are you checking the status ? A normal lsusb should list the USB adapter. If you run dmesg | tail immediately after plugging it in, you should see if it's detected, something like this should be printed:

[    2.305588] usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 4 using dwc_otg
[    2.450005] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0a12, idProduct=0001
[    2.450023] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[    2.450031] usb 1-1.2: Product: CSR8510 A10
...
[    3.595425] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[    3.595760] NET: Registered protocol family 31
[    3.595767] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[    3.595794] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[    3.595810] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[    3.595851] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[    3.657289] usbcore: registered new interface driver btusb

If this is the product you're using, it should work without problems.