DietPi-Config | Add native Bluetooth audio (bluealsa) support

[Tristan-Day]

I've recently been trying to connect a Bluetooth speaker to my Pi 3A+ running the latest image of dietpi, after reinstalling bluealsa / enabling and disabling Bluetooth & audio repeatedly it appears that dietpi doesn't seem to detect Bluetooth devices as audio outputs even if they are fully connected.

I would be happy to provide any more information you require

Thanks, Tristan

[MichaIng]

@TROFER First of all are the Bluetooth devices detected correctly? bluetoothctl

Do you mean bluez-alsa? https://github.com/Arkq/bluez-alsa A I see now it is called bluealsa indeed nowadays.

And can you paste the output of: aplay -l

[Tristan-Day]

Thanks for your response,

I have tried to use a different speaker and this seems to have no effect.

Here is the output of aplay -1

card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 0: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA]
  Subdevices: 6/7
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
  Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 1: bcm2835 IEC958/HDMI [bcm2835 IEC958/HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 2: bcm2835 IEC958/HDMI1 [bcm2835 IEC958/HDMI1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Thanks, Tristan

[MichaIng]

@TROFER Okay indeed ALSA only detects the onboard sound card. I am not familiar with bluealsa, is it probably required to run a command to create a certain audio device from a certain bluetooth device?

And did you install all dependencies? I.e. "sbc" is required as Bluetooth audio codec, not sure if the lib only or the tools as well:

apt install libsbc1

and in case

apt install sbc-tools

---

Hmm okay looking into the docs, it seems like the asound.conf needs to be configured quite different compared to a physical sound card. See: https://github.com/Arkq/bluez-alsa#configuration--usage So it looks like dietpi-config does not support this, as it looks for PCM devices only, which are listed via aplay -l, which a card index and a device index. But in this case the device needs to be bluealsa and a MAC address needs to be attached like "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX". So you need to alter /etc/asound.conf manually according to the docs.

[Tristan-Day]

Thanks,

I have just installed the dependencies you mentioned and it appears that libsbc1 is already installed, you may be right about bluealsa needing a command or configuration. There is an article which talks about ~/.asoundrc could this be the cause of the problem?

Thanks, Tristan

[MichaIng]

@TROFER Exactly. Please try the following:

cat << _EOF_ > /etc/asound.conf
defaults.bluealsa.service "org.bluealsa"
defaults.bluealsa.device "XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX"
defaults.bluealsa.profile "a2dp"
defaults.bluealsa.delay 10000
_EOF_

Replace XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX with the MAC address of the connected Bluetooth audio device, as shown by bluetoothctl. Then try to play a sound file via: aplay -D bluealsa /path/to/file.wav

[Tristan-Day]

Thanks, that fixed the issue

[MichaIng]

@TROFER Great. It should be btw possible to configure it as default audio device: https://github.com/Arkq/bluez-alsa/issues/251 The following additional /etc/asound.conf entry could be tried:

pcm.!default bluealsa
ctl.!default bluealsa

So you don't need to add -D bluealsa to your aplay command and all audio players should use Bluetooth audio by defaut.

[MichaIng]

Ah there is actually a bluealsa package available on the RPi repo:

# apt show bluealsa
Package: bluealsa
Version: 0.13
Priority: optional
Section: sound
Maintainer: Simon Long <[email protected]>
Installed-Size: 244 kB
Depends: libasound2 (>= 1.0.16), libbluetooth3 (>= 4.91), libc6 (>= 2.28), libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.9.14), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.30.0), libsbc1, bluez
Homepage: https://github.com/Arkq/bluez-alsa
Download-Size: 57.8 kB
APT-Sources: https://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian buster/main armhf Packages
Description: Bluetooth ALSA Audio backend
 Packaging of the bluez-alsa audio backend to add ALSA support to
 BlueZ version 5.

So no need to compile oneself and it ships with a default ALSA (drop-in) config, systemd unit and all this. Even available for all other archs, so we could use this and implement Bluetooth audio into dietpi-config natively for all SBC/PC models: http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/pool/main/b/bluealsa/ udev activation, systemd unit, all is there, very nice!

[MichaIng]

I reopen this issue and make a feature request out of it as most info around it is accumulated here.

[shoulih]

any update for this feature request?
BTW, if I want to pair a Bluetooth speaker to dietpi, what is the procedure now?

Thanks

[MichaIng]

Try to enable Bluetooth via dietpi-config > Advanced Options, then:

apt install bluealsa

Try to bind the speakers via bluetoothctl, then:

alsamixer -D bluealsa # check or tune mixer settings
speaker-test -D bluealsa # test

[shoulih]

Not able to install bluealsa with the latest dietpi 8.8 for some reason:

root@DietPi:~# apt install bluealsa Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done Package bluealsa is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source

E: Package 'bluealsa' has no installation candidate root@DietPi:~#

[Joulinar]

@MichaIng a Debian package bluealsa did not exist.

@shoulih to enable bluetooth: dietpi-config > 4 : Advanced Options > Bluetooth : [On]

[MichaIng]

Just checked it, indeed it got removed with Bullseye (while it still appears as recommendation of some other packages), still present on Buster. Note that it was only present on RPi anyway: https://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/pool/main/b/bluealsa/

It is actively developed, so looks like one better compiles it from source then installing the old packages: https://github.com/Arkq/bluez-alsa

[Joulinar]

looks like it will become available with Bookworm https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/bluez-alsa-utils

[MichaIng]

Great find. I wonder why they use the ~old~ name "bluez-alsa", while the project is now called "BlueALSA" 🤔. The contained binary is of course called bluealsa as of source code, but the config and service files are called "bluez-alsa". Confusing inconsistency 😅. EDIT:

This project created and maintains a product called BlueALSA ... BlueALSA consists of the daemon bluealsa

Projekt is "bluez-alsa" but "product" and daemon is "BlueALSA".

However, great to see this!

EDIT2: This won't be changed, but probably someone explains the reasons: https://bugs.debian.org/1020333

[KevinGaudry]

Any idea on how to set it up as default ? (speaker is working and connected, it plays some test sound)

[MichaIng]

Try this:

echo -e 'pcm.!default bluealsa\nctl.!default bluealsa' > /etc/asound.conf