Everything You Need to Set up Bluetooth on Your Raspberry Pi 3

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One of the best new features on the Raspberry Pi 3 is built-in Bluetooth , but while the software required to get it working is easy to install, it can be a little cumbersome to use. Element14 has a Bluetooth manual from Raspbian.

If you are using the most recent version of Raspbian, you should already have all the software you need, but if not, you should update Raspbian using the following commands:

 sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get upgrade -ysudo apt-get dist-upgrade -ysudo rpi-update

Once everything is updated, you need to pair your Bluetooth devices. You can do this in the Raspbian GUI by simply clicking on the Bluetooth icon in the upper right corner and then adding devices just like you would on any other desktop computer. All this speaks for itself. However, adding devices from the command line is not that straightforward.

At the command prompt, enter bluetoothctl to run the bluetoothctl tool. From here, you have a bunch of commands that you can run, but connecting to the device is pretty simple:

  1. In the bluetoothctl tool, enter power on to make sure bluetooth is turned on.
  2. Enter agent on to make sure Bluetooth is working.
  3. Enter scan on to start searching for nearby Bluetooth devices.
  4. You should see pop-ups of all your various Bluetooth devices with their MAC addresses (this is the number shown on the screen next to the device name, usually something like “50: 54: B4: 45: 00: EB”). Make a note of the MAC address of the device you want to connect to the Raspberry Pi.
  5. Enter connect followed by the MAC address, for example connect 50:54:B4:45:00:EB

In this case, your device must be paired. Go ahead and complete this process for each of the Bluetooth devices you want to set up. Skip to element 14 for a more detailed installation process and a step-by-step guide to using the Raspbian GUI.

Setting up Bluetooth on the Raspberry Pi 3 | Element 14

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