OdroidN2+ (Blue) USB Bluetooth

Hardware
1

Anybody have a working USB Bluetooth dongle with a Blue? I recently switched over from an RPi not realizing this would be an issue. :slightly_frowning_face:

I see ameriDroid has an official odroid Bluetooth dongle but I donā€™t want to order it until I know itā€™s going to work with HASS OS.

2

I have one and it works just fine.

3

Just to clarify, you have that ā€œofficialā€
Bluetooth dongle I linked to?

4

Well, you made me look and itā€™s a good thing you did. I fact, I used the ameriDroid one you linked to with the N2 I used before I got the Blue (for which it worked fine), but for the Blue I use this one instead. I switched the Bluetooth dongles, rebooted, but my Flower Care monitors wouldnā€™t work with it.
I therefore retract my previous statement.

1 Like
5

Just ordered one. I see they have a Bluetooth 5.0 version but I stuck with the known working 4.0 version. Iā€™m just using it for presence detection so good 'nuff.

Thanks!

6

You should check the Odroid forum for known working dongles. In theory all dongles should work, there is no need for a special Odroid dongle. But as reality shows, if you have a non working dongle, the Odroid team is more than supportive and adds all necessary ā€œdriversā€ to the Odroid repository.

7

I use this on a USB extension cable. Worked fine on my RPi4 and now my Blue. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0775YF36R/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

8

I found that TP-Link UB400 USB bluetooth USB adapter is also working out of the box.
(https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Bluetooth-Receiver-Controllers-UB400/dp/B07V1SZCY6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2DRAPWL4BS0K9&dchild=1&keywords=tp+link+bluetooth+adapter+4.0&qid=1618402941&sprefix=tp+link+bl%2Caps%2C280&sr=8-1)

9

To those that have a bluetooth dongle working on their HA Blueā€”is there anything you need to do to enable bluetooth? I purchased the dongle that @Groto said works for their Blue. Iā€™ve tried restarting it and even power cycling it and itā€™s doesnā€™t seem to be registering. Is there something that needs to be added to the configuration.yaml? (Iā€™m trying to get my Switchbots working and they require Bluetooth.)

1 Like
10

@XeoSpeed did you get this working? I moved over to an Odroid and am trying to reach my Switchbots too.

11

Unfortunately, no. Was going to try returning the ZEXMTE recommendation from Groto and get the one @nanobra1n said works. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J5WFPXX/

If you have any luck getting things working, please post your solution here.

12

Iā€™m not really sure how to confirm the HA Blue Odroid is recognizing the USB dongle. Is there anything specific you have to do for it to enable Bluetooth or is it supposed to be truly plug and play?

13

I had an old Cirago bluetooth dongle laying around, but it didnā€™t work. Iā€™ve got one of those Techkey dongles on their way. Amz claims itā€™ll be here tomorrow. Iā€™ll report back.

14

This didnā€™t work for me. I bought the one that @nanobra1n linked to above.

Are there any other steps in addition to plugging in the Bluetooth dongle and rebooting?

With the limitations of Home Assistant OS, thereā€™s not a way to run hcitool or similar.

15

Sure there is. Install the Terminal & SSH add-on and run bluetoothctl from it

16

Ah. Thanks. Yep - I see that the controller is there and pairable. Lemme experiment a bit and see if I can figure out why itā€™s not seeing my Switchbot. Iā€™m not using an extension cable, but my Switchbot is about 3 feet from my Odroid.

17

Iā€™m watching this conversation with interest. I have bluetooth presence detection up and running dandy on my Blue but I recently switched out our phones for Pixel 6ā€™s w/ Android 12 and they are not being recognized by HA bluetooth.

To be honest, Iā€™m not sure if the issue is with Android or HA. All my other devices are recognized.
This is buggering up my presence detection automations a bit though, wifi and gps take too long to register as home.

On another note, @nanobra1n do you happen to know if is there a way the bluetoothctl can be set up as a command line sensor to create a ā€œbluetooth is workingā€ sensor? Not really an issue now as bluetooth has been pretty solid on my blue, but it used to go down all the time on my old rpi and Iā€™d have to reboot it to get it going. A sensor like this would be nice to automate that.

18

Hmmm. After rebooting again, the Switchbot integration ā€œseesā€ my switch. I removed it and re-added it successfully. The switch just wonā€™t respond.

19

Do you happen to have MAC randomization turned on on your Pixel? Also unlike iPhones, Android phones donā€™t do Bluetooth advertisement, which makes them harder to use for Bluetooth presence detection.

I played around with the monitor script on distributed Pi Zeros, but it never worked to my satisfaction with my Android. I am now sticking with wifi presence detection.

I guess scanning the system log bluetooth for error might be a way to approach this, but I havenā€™t done so. Something like dmesg --level=err,warn | grep bluetooth | wc -l (totally not tried out)

20

Not sure if itā€™ll last, but Iā€™ve got my Switchbot working now on my Odroid. I opened an SSH session and used bluetoothctl to pair manually.

bluetoothctl pair AA:BB:CC:11:22:33

edit: I spoke too soon. It worked great (faster than I was used to from the Pi) for a bit. Just checked it now and it doesnā€™t respond. bluetoothctl says itā€™s still paired. Sigh.