Bluetooth woes

[Fester Bestertester]

My hp Pavilion p6-2175 has a built-in bluetooth adapter. I'm deaf, so need my hearing aids as headphones - clamping cans on my head and taking them off again is just so teejus! The cans' enclosed ear environment sets the hearing aids howling and squealing, so it's swap both ways. I'm doing this already so I can keep up with the News on TV, but with cans on I'm basically incommunicado - socially isolated. I couldn't find a control app, so went looking. Beggar-all help in Kubi- I swear Muon gets more and more moronic!, so off to the web. Synaptic revealed some bluetooth stuff, some installed that looked like drivers but nothing looking like control, so I installed a few likely candidates at random, eventually hitting on blueman-applet, which in turn required python-bluez. With that I could see the adapter and pair it with the hearing aids' 'Streamer' device. OK, now how do I get audio from the Mixer out through this chain? There's no Mixer control showing. Even given such, am I then likely to be suffering latency? audio a second after video on watching a movie? Some days I really despair!...

Further consideration: blueman-applet would be better Hidden in the System Tray - perhaps a Setting option?

[claydoh]

blueman is the gnome-ish utility for bluetooth, what you might try is bluedevil, that's the KDE one, and it integrates itself in your system tray, where you can set it to be hidden. It is still a KDE 4 thing, so it does not run at login on it's own unless you add it as an autostart item in system settings.

once you have your device connected and you have audio playing somewhere, you can switch to a different sound device. left click on the kmix icon, and then right click the output stream you want to switch , and select "Move"

Also, in System Settings' Multimedia section, you can adjust the priority of different sound devices in different ways, so that when you plug or connect a device it will switch automatically to that if desired. It is slightly complicated but once set up it seems to work for me. I have 2 bt speakers, a bt headset, one wireless headset, and a webcam, so I have
5 outputs I can choose, plus up to 4 mic inputs. If I wanted. Thankfully I don't actually use most of them together.

[Fester Bestertester]

blueman is the gnome-ish utility for bluetooth, what you might try is bluedevil, that's the KDE one, and it integrates itself in your system tray, where you can set it to be hidden. It is still a KDE 4 thing, so it does not run at login on it's own unless you add it as an autostart item in system settings.

once you have your device connected and you have audio playing somewhere, you can switch to a different sound device. left click on the kmix icon, and then right click the output stream you want to switch , and select "Move"

Also, in System Settings' Multimedia section, you can adjust the priority of different sound devices in different ways, so that when you plug or connect a device it will switch automatically to that if desired. It is slightly complicated but once set up it seems to work for me. I have 2 bt speakers, a bt headset, one wireless headset, and a webcam, so I have
5 outputs I can choose, plus up to 4 mic inputs. If I wanted. Thankfully I don't actually use most of them together.

My goodness, claydoh, you are a mine of info! Thanks for this, and earlier... . Now, besides dealing valuable info to those enquiring, do you have a path to devs for feedback? My comment re Muon, if taken to heart, should really go 'upline'. Muon's Software Center (gods, I hate 'Yank' - real English is 'Centre'! - and spoken is even worse; USA pronunciation is typically more like 'Senner' ) is misnamed - it's really only a software browser. If one really wants a Center (yuk!), Synaptic would be a better base to work from. e.g: try searching 'python' in each. Muon will return a few apps that use it, Synaptic gives a slew of stuff - libs, apps, etc...
Keep up the good work, claydoh, and power to your flying fingers!

[vinnywright]

My goodness, claydoh, you are a mine of info! Thanks for this, and earlier... . Now, besides dealing valuable info to those enquiring, do you have a path to devs for feedback? My comment re Muon, if taken to heart, should really go 'upline'. Muon's Software Center (gods, I hate 'Yank' - real English is 'Centre'! - and spoken is even worse; USA pronunciation is typically more like 'Senner' ) is misnamed - it's really only a software browser. If one really wants a Center (yuk!), Synaptic would be a better base to work from. e.g: try searching 'python' in each. Muon will return a few apps that use it, Synaptic gives a slew of stuff - libs, apps, etc...
Keep up the good work, claydoh, and power to your flying fingers!

ya,,,,,,dont use muon software center for package management ,,,,,,as you see it's more of a suggestion box.

for package management (like synaptic) use the "muon package manager"

sudo apt-get install muon

it works just like synaptic ,,,,,,,

VINNY

[Fester Bestertester]

blueman is the gnome-ish utility for bluetooth, what you might try is bluedevil, that's the KDE one, and it integrates itself in your system tray, where you can set it to be hidden. It is still a KDE 4 thing, so it does not run at login on it's own unless you add it as an autostart item in system settings.

once you have your device connected and you have audio playing somewhere, you can switch to a different sound device. left click on the kmix icon, and then right click the output stream you want to switch , and select "Move"

Also, in System Settings' Multimedia section, you can adjust the priority of different sound devices in different ways, so that when you plug or connect a device it will switch automatically to that if desired. It is slightly complicated but once set up it seems to work for me. I have 2 bt speakers, a bt headset, one wireless headset, and a webcam, so I have
5 outputs I can choose, plus up to 4 mic inputs. If I wanted. Thankfully I don't actually use most of them together.

First, blueman-applet will not remove or purge, but Synaptic says it's just blueman. Re-start after complete removal?
Next, Synaptic reports bluedevil as already installed, and latest. Kmix shows no option to Move on right-click, and only the built-in analog device.
Then, nothing showing in System Settings for Bluetooth in any form.
Where to now?
Hopefully...

[Fester Bestertester]

Thanks Vinny. Do the distro compilers really think Kubi-users are dolts? Why the brain-dead Discover at all, let alone as default? I didn't even know the muon Package Manager existed - it might have been an option... - would have saved a lot of head-scratching to go through from command-line apt-get to aptitude to synaptic.
As usual, we eventually get there - linux *works*, and is getting towards the 'rocks' point

[vinnywright]

do you even see the bluetooth icon in the system tray ?

if not maby it is not starting with the system ,,,,go to Kickoff>applacations>internet> and click on "BlueDevil" ,,,,,,,,dose anything happen ,,,,,do you get a bluetooth icon in the system tray?

VINNY

[Fester Bestertester]

Yep - nothing shows on startup - Icon in SysTray after Kickoff as above. Streamer detected. Connect Headset or Audio Sink? Neither connected at present, both time out (device is switched on ). Still no device in Kmix, though Event Sounds will Move between Built-in and Caicos (presumably raw device?). I feel like a total newbie idiot here... lead me on!

[sithlord48]

some things to check
do you have "enable kde bluetooth intergration" checked in system settings -> bluetooth?
Are you able to connect the device via bluetooth using System Settings -> bluetooth?
Please also check that you have your device in pairing mode when your attempt to pair.

iirc their is a bug in plasma5 (at least the version that shipped w/ 15.04) where the bt icon doesn't always show in the tray..


Since you have 15.04 and therefore you have plasma5 and cannot use veromix (that i know of).You need to now Tell KDE what audio device to output to so that you get sound. Make sure you use System Settings -> Multimedia -> Device Preferances to set you preferred device to your connected bluetooth set.

[Fester Bestertester]

Yikes! What sort of cesspit am I wading in? System Settings has NO Bluetooth, or Multimedia! claydoh and vinniewright have guided me so far - thanks! , but I still have no bluedevil on startup, and when run manually the device is paired. PLEEZ - am I the only one with such woes?

[claydoh]

If you want to configure Bluetooth, do that From the tray icon, which you start by running bluedevil from the kmenu.

You'll want to go into system settings and add bluedevil as an autostart item in the Startup and Shutdown section.

Not having Multimedia in System Settings, that's not normal. It should be there, at the bottom somewhere.


Sent from my LG G4

[Fester Bestertester]

Too right it's not normal. There's probably a fix in a script somewhere. Appearance, Workspace (added bluedevil as above already), Personalisation, Network and Hardware are there, that's all. Any others missing?

[claydoh]

this is basically how it should look

Sent from my LG G4

[Fester Bestertester]

Right. It all looks OK so far. Found Multimedia under Hardware. Still no Bluetooth that I can see. Multimedia has Audio and Video, which shows as Phonon and I found the Streamer under the Backend tab. A bit of fiddling had it show as a preference/option in Audio Playback, but still Kmix only shows it for Event Sounds (And I haven't heard a peep yet).I can *sometimes* get the test sound from the usual devices as listed in Kmix, but not a peep through the Streamer.

8:30pm here in NZ, so I'll give it a bye for the day. Thanks for the help so far.

[sithlord48]

strange i do have a bluetooth entry in my system settings. it is possible that the version of plasma 5 included by default with 15.04 does not have it as part of its bluetooth issues. have either of you upgraded kde with the backports repo ? 15.04 has the newest KDE software and right now its all switching to KF5 so somethings currently just are not done or don't work . you may wish to use 14.04 since you can install plasma 4 and its much more stable.