Bluetooth Connected - No Sound
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Hi All,
I'm new here and usually don't post on forums, but I've been struggling with bluetooth issues since the time I installed RetroPie on my Raspberry Pi 400 (on top of Raspberry Pi OS 32 bit) and I think I just broke it further trying to fix the problem. For the life of me I can't figure out how to proceed. From a clean install I was originally able to use Apple Airpods just fine and most of the time able to connect to a JBL Charge 2 bluetooth speaker. However, in RetroPie the JBL speaker would activate in "headset mode" for some reason, turning the sound input on as well as the output (the phone icon on the device would light up) and sound quality was worse as a result of being in this mode. I was also never able to connect to my UE Boom 2 bluetooth speaker with RetroPie, for reasons unknown. My settings were to connect in "background" from Retropie Bluetooth settings.
Now sometimes Retropie would just not connect to any of these devices unless forced to pair through the menu, and even then it wouldn't always do it, giving me an error like "org.bluez.Error.Failed: device or resource busy". In a gung-ho but misguided attempt to solve these problems I though I'd uninstall and reinstall a number of bluetooth and audio related apps like bluez, blueman, and pulseaudio.
Now I've gotten to the point where RetroPie will not connect to any bluetooth device.
However, in Raspberry Pi OS (I'm running RetroPie on top of Raspbian/Raspberry Pi OS) I CAN connect to some bluetooth devices, namely the Apple Airpods through one of the bluetooth applets (blueman-manager, not the default applet). BUT no sound comes through (e.g. on youtube) and the audio menu won't let me select the connected bluetooth device as an option for audio output. For other bluetooth devices besides the AirPods I get the error "GDBUS.Error:org.bluez.Error.Failed: Device or resource busy."
When I try to connect to a bluetooth device from the default bluetooth applet (as opposed to blueman-manager) in the panel in Raspberry Pi OS, it tells me "Connection failed - Use the audio menu to connect to this device," but the volume control applet no longer gives me the option to do (it only gives me a volume selector).
So in summary, I seem to be able to connect to a bluetooth device but not run audio on it in Raspberry Pi OS, but not connect at all in RetroPie. I now have two bluetooth icons in my panel that seem to have different functions (one I guess is blueman and the other the default app?) and also two volume icons (one the default I think and the other pulseaudio).
Honestly at this point I just want to get back to the default audio/bluetooth setup but have no idea how to achieve this. The information I've found online about uninstalling and reinstalling pulse/bluez/blueman etc. seems to be out of date and geared at different Linxu distros (for instance, this one https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/48140/raspberry-pi-3-connecting-to-bluetooth-audio-device-on-raspbian-jessie), so if anybody knows a simple way to fix this I would be eternally grateful. Thanks for reading!
Pi Model: 400 (Overclocked to 2.2 ghz)
Power Supply: Stock
RetroPie Version: 4.7.1
Raspberry Pi OS (32 bit): Kernel Version 5.4
Built from: Pre-made SD image on RetroPie website
USB devices connected: Xenta wireless mouse, sandisk usb stick with retropie-mount -
Update: I tried these instructions: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/53408/automatically-connect-trusted-bluetooth-speaker/76288#76288
Installed BaReinhard's repo and rebooted. I was able to connect to the AirPods when it launched back up and for a brief moment sound actually came through from youtube on the AirPods and I thought I may have fixed it, but then it cut out again after about two seconds. I'm getting the feeling that it connects and then gets disconnected almost immediately for some reason. Indeed, looking at bluetoothctl it seems to connect then disconnect to the devices immediately.
E.g. it will say:
sudo bluetoothctl
Agent registered
[CHG] Device D0:03:4B:ED:E5:20 Connected: yes
[CHG] Device D0:03:4B:ED:E5:20 Connected: no
[CHG] Device D0:03:4B:ED:E5:20 Connected: yes
[CHG] Device D0:03:4B:ED:E5:20 Connected: noin quick succession, continuing on with this "yes/no" pattern. It does not seem able to maintain a connection.
Don't know if that sheds any light on the problem.
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