PI Zero W Bluetooth audio not working

1st Official Post

    I'm using the Pi Zero W and I can't get any bluetooth audio device to work. Either the whole system crashes and reboots when a sound should be played or nothing happens at all. I'm using version 8.2.5, the built-in bluetooth with the Pi Zero W and have tried with two bluetooth devices (UE Roll and Logitech H800 Headset).

    Here is the log of trying the UE Roll speaker http://ix.io/1bvf and another one trying the headset afterwards http://ix.io/1bvh

    How can I get this to work?

    Cheers,

    Michael

    Thanks for the link. It seems this thread is about the PI 3 and not the Pi Zero W. I'm not sure if the hardware is comparable in this respect.

    Also it does not seem that clear to me that this is a problem of the chip itself. The hardware itself works, as tested with VLC under Rapsbian Jessie. So the hardware is definitely capable of playing sound via bluetooth. Furthermore, the problem still occurs when WIFI is turned off as mentioned by others in that thread (I also tested this myself some time ago).

    Any other suggestions what could be the problem or how to solve this besides using an external WIFI dongle? Any other things I could try?

    • Official Post

    AFAIK the HW is the same, or at least very similar.

    If I read the thread correctly, yes it works but not continuously, whether this is due to the strength of the BT signal, or the processor speed I'm not too sure. I don't have a Zero nor a RPI3 to test it on but I did do some work on Kodi and BT and it was a right pain in the donkey.

    You could try disabling wifi by adding dtoverlay=pi3-disable-wifi in config.txt How (It should work on a Zero) and try moving closer to to the Zero to discount a distance issue.

    If it still doesn't work, try another distro to see if it's a LE issue or Kodi.

    I already tried with WIFI turned off. However, I used the GUI to turn it off. Does this have the same effect or should I try again with the config as you proposed?

    Distance should not be an issue as the speaker/headset was already very close (around 30cm).

    I also tried openELEC and OSMC which resulted in slightly different behavior but in the end nothing worked. I've been trying to get this setting running for almost a year now trying every release of libreELEC, openELEC and OSMC but without any success :(

    • Official Post

    Turning off is not the same as disabling, however it's worth a try. Yet, I'm not optimistic.

    By virtue that you have tried all the other RPi distros, and you get different results would seem to suggest that it is a HW issue as the distros mentioned all use the same basic SW.

    You could try Archlinux but I don't believe there is any active Kodi implementation.

    At the end of the day the RPi Zero is a real bottom end SBC and designed for educational purposes and not high end media systems

    I'll try disabling within the next days and let you know.

    The main result from trying all the distros is always the same - it does not work. However, sometimes I can't even connect to the speaker, sometime it crashes, sometimes there is just no sound.

    I know that the Raspi Zero (W) is not designed to be a media system but I assume the HW works. What keeps me going is the fact that bluetooth audio is working with Raspbian Jessie and VLC but yet not using any other software I've tried so far...That's why I still think this is some kind of software problem and may be fixed in the future.

    • Official Post

    The general solution sequence with most Pi connectivity issues is:

    Disable wifi

    Check power supply

    Use an external dongle

    The radio hardware in RPi0/3B devices is basically the same and is renowned for being "close, but no cigar" on performance. Using an external dongle is normally the thing that gets people happy.

    • Official Post

    It would seem we might have been barking up the wrong tree.

    I tested using a generic BT USB dongle and an Amazon BT speaker.

    I tried 8.2.5 on a Rpi 1 B+ and experienced everything you explained. Audio not working via BT, occasional crashes of Kodi and frequent disconnects of BT. Audio was heard, but only via HDMI – even when audio was set to Puleseaudo BT.

    I then tried (with the same BT hardware) 8.2.5 on a RPi2 and BT worked as expected – audio via the BT speaker.

    I then tried 8.2.0.1, 8.2.3 and even 7.0.3 on the Rpi 1 with the same results – no BT audio.

    Seemed to always error on “pa_stream_write failed”

    dmesg

    Kodi Log

    pactl list

    I'll try and debug further, but if anyone else has any pointers, it would be appreciated.

    I've tried Raspbian on both RPi1 and RPi2 and BT works. (Not via the web browser!)

    Related posts:

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    Update (2018-06-03)

    I tried a newly compiled LE9 (Latest git) with little improvement - in fact worse as the BT kept disconnecting.