Connecting a Bluetooth device for serial communication on Arch Linux.

bluetooth_serial.md

The following are instructions for connecting a Bluetooth device for serial communication on Arch Linux using BlueZ 5.31.

Prerequisites

The following packages are required:

• bluez: bluetoothd
• bluez-utils: bluetoothctl, rfcomm

Pair

1. Start daemon: systemctl start bluetooth

2. Pair using bluetoothctl:

   power on
   agent on
   scan on
   ... wait ...
   scan off
   pair <dev>
   

3. Create serial device: rfcomm bind 0 <dev>

You should now have /dev/rfcomm0.

Unpair

1. Remove serial device: rfcomm release 0

2. Unpair using bluetoothctl:

   remove <dev>
   power off
   

3. Stop daemon: systemctl stop bluetooth

Troubleshooting

Check rfkill list to make sure that the Bluetooth device is not blocked.

Weird for issue on Archlinux.
After pairing, when I attempt to connect via bluetoothctl itself, I get these:

[bluetooth]# connect 38:0B:3C:XX:XX:XX
Attempting to connect to 38:0B:3C:XX:XX:XX
[CHG] Device 38:0B:3C:XX:XX:XX Connected: yes
Failed to connect: org.bluez.Error.Failed
[CHG] Device 38:0B:3C:XX:XX:XX Connected: no

Made me scratch my head for an hour when I found this gist and just rfcomm bind 0 <dev> worked.

EDIT: Just figured out the even the wiki suggests to only pair. Damn.