Using retropie as bluetooth speaker

borstel

hello everybody,

I am running retropie 4.2 on my RaspberryPi 3

among gaming I running squeezelite and shairport to stream music.
Additionaly I want stream music from my amazon echo dot to retropie.
Is it possible, to configure the system to act as a BT speaker?
I have seen several tutoral to do this, but all require X11.

thank you for help

best regards

Bjoern

borstel

https://github.com/lukasjapan/bt-speaker/blob/master/install.sh

this works great!

backstander

@borstel
Awesome find! I'll have to give this a try later!

luquio

@borstel im new here and i dnt know where to add that line to install btspeaker :(

mitu

@luquio You need to exit Emulationstation and then follow the instructions at https://github.com/lukasjapan/bt-speaker and type the commands at the command prompt:

sudo -i
bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lukasjapan/bt-speaker/master/install.sh)

robmcc83

This method no longer works on raspian stretch.
It cause audio problems, sounds similar to a audio CD skipping.
This worked fine on Jessie but I have installed retropie on stretch for testing purposes and recreating my install that I have on Jessie.

jojowi

@robmcc83 said in Using retropie as bluetooth speaker:

This method no longer works on raspian stretch.
It cause audio problems, sounds similar to a audio CD skipping.
This worked fine on Jessie but I have installed retropie on stretch for testing purposes and recreating my install that I have on Jessie.

I tried the bt-speaker install script and the installing process ran without any problems.
At first I had the same problem with the stuttering bluetooth-sound , but it can be solved. The problem is caused by the onboard wifi of the raspi 3. Apparently Wifi and Bluetooth don't go well together. Disabling the internal Wifi helps, the sound works now as expected.

See:
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/1402
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/43720/disable-wifi-wlan0-on-pi-3
I used the "dtoverlay=pi3-disable-wifi" method.

Works on RetroPi 4.3 / Raspberry Pi 3

Hope this helps

LineOf7s

I too used the bt-speaker install script and had no problems with the install.

Lo and behold, stuttering bluetooth sound (I don't know if this is typical, but as well as the moments of no sound the sound in between those moments seemed to be sped up, so if you were watching a video with it the sound would more-or-less stay in sync. I mention the sped-up sound as nobody else seems to have).

The trouble is, turning the wifi off seems to make no difference at all (which certainly seems at odds with everything I've read elsewhere). I've used 'sudo ifconfig wlan0 down' and the 'dtoverlay=pi3-disable-wifi' methods to no avail. I've tried turning off bluetooth discoverability (it's been mentioned as A Thing around the place) for no different result.

This particular thread is quite old now, but nobody seems to be discussing it anymore anywhere I can find since early 2018 or so. Has it been fixed and I've just somehow b0rked something? Have people just given up and are using wifi and/or bluetooth dongles? Or has something changed recently perhaps?

This is all on a Raspberry Pi 3B running Retropie 4.4.9 connected via ethernet and HDMI.

It just bugs me because it's soooooooooo cloooooose to working and would be extremely handy around here.

LineOf7s

Alas, I've discovered what the problem is, if not the solution.

We have here a Galaxy S6, S7, S8 and S9 to test with.

Everything works great with the S6 and S7. It does NOT with the S8 and S9.... but ONLY when they're paired with our smartwatches. If one unpairs from the watches, the Bluetooth audio is wonderful.

Apparently this is A Known Thing, SO THAT'S GREAT.

I'm yet to find a solution, but the research continues.

LineOf7s

Sadly, not as cut and dried as hoped. I thought I'd bite the bullet and unpair my watch, but try as I might it didn't make a difference.

Boo.