How to install mpow bluetooth dongle driver

keanni · February 6, 2021 at 10:23 PM

Hello,

My daughter is really angry with me because I failed getting her new Bluetooth headphones to work. 🙊

I bought a new Bluetooth 5.0 usb dongle from mpow (this one) which requires installing drivers for linux. Setup relies on compiling the driver using

Code

Make

Which isn't prepared on libreelec ("make not found") . I tried to install build-essentials with apt-get which obviously also fails as apt-get is not working on libreelec.

I also tried adding the driver described in the wiki (here) as I am getting the same error, but still the same. Seems like I need to find a way to compile the driver. Any ideas?

Kind regards

Keanni

**chewitt** · February 7, 2021 at 12:49 AM Official Post

You cannot add drviers yourself, they need to be baked into the image. Start with sharing the "dmesg | paste" and "lsusb | paste" output so we can see what the Linux kernel does (or doesn't do) with the device and how the device identifies itself.

keanni · February 7, 2021 at 5:03 PM

Hi, thanks for the quick reply

Code

LibreELEC (official): 9.2.6 (Generic.x86_64)
LibreELEC:~ # dmesg | paste
http://ix.io/2OEa
LibreELEC:~ # lsusb | paste
http://ix.io/2OEe

Additionally I found this, which indicates issues with the dongle.

The URL to download the driver doesn't work, you can find it on the download page of mpow, searching for the model.

Please let me know if I can assist further.

**chewitt** · February 8, 2021 at 6:39 AM Official Post

Code

[   60.143680] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[   60.143693] NET: Registered protocol family 31
[   60.143694] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[   60.143698] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[   60.143699] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[   60.143702] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[   60.148528] usbcore: registered new interface driver btusb
[   60.158058] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: examining hci_ver=0a hci_rev=000b lmp_ver=0a lmp_subver=8761
[   60.159228] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rom_version status=0 version=1
[   60.159230] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: loading rtl_bt/rtl8761a_fw.bin
[   60.159952] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: loading rtl_bt/rtl8761a_config.bin
[   60.159968] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for rtl_bt/rtl8761a_config.bin failed with error -2
[   60.159973] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: cfg_sz -2, total sz 20204
[   60.183360] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[   60.183362] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[   60.183366] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[   62.428020] Bluetooth: hci0: command 0xfc20 tx timeout
[   70.321349] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: download fw command failed (-110)

Display More

^ looks like rtl8761a_fw.bin exists but rtl8761a_config.bin is missing .. although I don't see it in the upstream linux-firmware repo:

rtl_bt - kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git - Repository of firmware blobs for use with the Linux kernel

I'm not sure what the story is .. but should give you something to go looking for. If you can find the firmware file, put it in /storage/.config/firmware/rtl_bt/ and reboot and it will be overlayed onto /usr/lib/firmware/rtl_bt where it needs to be.

**chewitt** · February 8, 2021 at 6:45 AM Official Post

Code

mkdir -p /storage/.config/firmware/rtl_bt
echo "55ab 2387 0000 " > /storage/.config/firmware/rtl_bt/rtl8761a_config.bin
reboot

The "firmware" file is just a text file in the vendor driver package, so ^ should create it with the same content. No guarantee it works, but.. no harm in trying..

keanni · February 8, 2021 at 8:36 PM

adding the config file like you descriped results in this dmesg:

Code

[  106.851239] usb 2-1.1: new full-speed USB device number 6 using ehci-pci
[  106.950779] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: examining hci_ver=0a hci_rev=000b lmp_ver=0a lmp_subver=8761
[  106.950779] 
[  106.951747] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rom_version status=0 version=1
[  106.951747] 
[  106.951750] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: loading rtl_bt/rtl8761a_fw.bin
[  106.951750] 
[  106.954488] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: loading rtl_bt/rtl8761a_config.bin
[  106.954488] 
[  106.954751] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: cfg_sz 16, total sz 20220
[  106.954751] 
[  109.147889] Bluetooth: hci0: command 0xfc20 tx timeout
[  117.041230] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: download fw command failed (-110)

Display More

(http://ix.io/2OMd)

I also found, that the chip on the dongle is supposed to be rtl8761b (instead of a), so I downloaded this and saved it as rtl8761a_fw.bin (clever, huh?) but of course it also failes:

Code

[  591.711160] usb 2-1.1: new full-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci
[  591.812428] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: examining hci_ver=0a hci_rev=000b lmp_ver=0a lmp_subver=8761
[  591.812428] 
[  591.813418] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rom_version status=0 version=1
[  591.813418] 
[  591.813421] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: loading rtl_bt/rtl8761a_fw.bin
[  591.813421] 
[  591.813494] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rtl: loading rtl_bt/rtl8761a_config.bin
[  591.813494] 
[  591.813526] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: unknown project id 14

http://ix.io/2OMf

chewitt : In this gist the guy talks about a bug in the kernel identifiying the chip of the dongle as the wrong version. But I guess I can't do any of it on my openelec setup, can I?

**chewitt** · February 9, 2021 at 2:34 AM Official Post

[v3,1/1] Bluetooth: btrtl: Add support for RTL8761B - Patchwork

LE 9.2 uses a 5.1 kernel (quite old) and ^ the same change was applied to the Linux kernel last August, so update to a current LE10 nightly image (using a much newer kernel) and it will probably work. You can also drop/remove the config file change as the patch clearly shows this is optional not mandatory.

keanni · February 12, 2021 at 6:40 PM

Thanks for your help. I wont switch to nightly as my kodi instance is important at home

I will switch to OE 10 once it is stable.

In the meantime I bought this Bluetooth dongle, which works: LogiLink BT0015 nano USB Bluetooth Adapter Stick

**chewitt** · February 13, 2021 at 5:05 AM Official Post

Quote from keanni

I will switch to OE 10 once it is stable.

Good luck with that. OE is a dead project since 2017.

keanni · February 14, 2021 at 12:08 AM

I don't know why I always mix them up. I will switch to LE 10 of course...