Getting bluetooth up and running

Like any hopeful person I plugged in the little bluetooth dongle I bought for something else and hoped for the best... (I WOULD NOT BUY THIS DONGLE UNTIL I HAVE CONNECTED SOMETHING TO IT)

Lets check the device with lsusb

With the device unplugged...

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. 

With the device plugged in

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0a5c:21e8 Broadcom Corp. 

So I am running a Broadcom Corp bluetooth usb device - no word on the rpi verified devices list (yes I am an idiot and did not check first...)

It turns out that bluetooth is not setup by default on Raspbian “wheezy”.

So time to install bluetooth and the bluez system.

sudo apt-get install bluetooth bluez

And boom it wants to install an insane amt of stuff...

The following extra packages will be installed:
  acl avahi-daemon bc bind9-host bluez-alsa bluez-cups bluez-gstreamer colord cups cups-bsd cups-client cups-filters cups-ppdc dc
  foomatic-db-compressed-ppds foomatic-db-engine foomatic-filters geoip-database ghostscript-cups gir1.2-glib-2.0 hpijs hplip
  hplip-data libart-2.0-2 libavahi-core7 libbind9-80 libcap-ng0 libcups2 libcupscgi1 libcupsdriver1 libcupsfilters1 libcupsimage2
  libcupsmime1 libcupsppdc1 libdns88 libescpr1 libgeoip1 libgirepository-1.0-1 libgusb2 libgutenprint2 libhpmud0 libieee1284-3
  libisc84 libisccc80 libisccfg82 liblwres80 libnss-mdns libperl5.14 libsane libsane-common libsane-extras libsane-extras-common
  libsane-hpaio libsensors4 libslp1 libsnmp-base libsnmp15 libv4l-0 libv4lconvert0 mscompress perl perl-base perl-modules
  printer-driver-all printer-driver-c2050 printer-driver-c2esp printer-driver-cjet printer-driver-escpr printer-driver-foo2zjs
  printer-driver-gutenprint printer-driver-hpcups printer-driver-hpijs printer-driver-m2300w printer-driver-min12xxw
  printer-driver-pnm2ppa printer-driver-postscript-hp printer-driver-ptouch printer-driver-pxljr printer-driver-sag-gdi
  printer-driver-splix python-dbus python-dbus-dev python-gi python-gobject-2 python-imaging python-pexpect python-renderpm
  python-reportlab python-reportlab-accel sane-utils ssl-cert

It looks like they want to make sure that all the things you may want to connect to via bluetooth get their drivers and software installed.  But perl? Well in a former life I wrote a huge engine in perl for a project so I dont mind having perl but somebody may want to look at the dependencies on these packages because that is insane. Ahh, well I went ahead and did the install.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ hcitool dev
Devices:
hci0 00:02:72:3F:67:F9

looks like I have a device - no clue if it works or not...