Unpack the .deb – locating the rtl8761b bin and config files
Balena
Set homeassistant service to privileged
Re-mount /lib/firmware read-write
Copy firmware files to /lib/firmware/rtl_bt/
Will report back in a week if the connection has remained stable – which was my reason for changing from the internal RPi3 BT in the first place.
EDIT: Have noticed the firmware is also available at the git.kernel.org address originally posted and would have been simpler than extracting files from packages.
Can confirm Bluetooth connection has been rock-solid.
Further edit: The Bluetooth connection remained good for longer than the built in chipset, but eventually the connection became unavailable and communication with the temperature sensor failed in the same way as before. I just don’t use Bluetooth on the Pi3 any more.
I don’t know what Proxmox is. You might be best starting a thread that’s in a more specialised area, probably providing significantly more information than you have.
Thanks for posting this - very helpful. Please note - for some distributions (raspbian lite for example) and many distributions of linux in general, this driver will already be installed at /lib/firmware/rtl_bt. However - it is currently over two years out of date, so make sure you do wget the most recent version from the linux firmware repository (as you do instruct).
Why do you emphasize not setting dtoverlay=disable-bt in \boot\config.txt? My understanding (limited, granted) was that this disabled the in-built bluetooth only and so obviates having to disable the in-built (uart) adapter using hciconfig. With dtoverlay=disable-bt the usb adapter still seems to be registered.
I have no idea why I wrote that. I probably tried it and it didn’t work for me, but I wrote most of the post almost a year ago so I don’t recall the details. Total guess here, maybe it disabled all Bluetooth for me.
If someone wants to try it on Raspbian and report back their results I’m happy to edit the post. I’d rather not mess with my working config too much.
I’ve updated the guide based on having to go through these steps again March 2024. My six month old ADATA SU650 512GB m.2 SSD in the Argon one case failed, I’ve replaced it with a higher quality Transcend TS128GMTS970T-I 128GB 3D TLC BiCS5. The Argon One case has poor ventilation for the m.2 SSD, which probably doesn’t help, but the new SSD is rated for higher temperatures. Fingers crossed. If this fails I’ll probably replace the Raspberry Pi with hardware that’s made to run 24/7 and has better ventilation.
One key change was suggested by @targettadams which is using config.txt to disable built in Bluetooth. If you do that USB Bluetooth adapters still work fine.