Beginners • Starting/struggling with the built-in Bluetooth on RPi 5

Today I started fiddling with Bluetooth on my Raspberry Pi 5.

I started with "sudo apt install bluetooth bluez libbluetooth-dev libudev-dev".

I did a "sudo systemctl enable bluetooth" and "sudo systemctl start bluetooth", but BT didn't run unless I did a "sudo modprobe btusb". But I sincerely doubt that is the right module to interact with the built-in bluetooth radio. I'm sure that radio is recognised by the kernel:

>>:sudo journalctl -n 500 -k -g bluetooth
okt 17 14:24:40 HuisPi kernel: Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
okt 17 14:24:40 HuisPi kernel: Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
okt 17 14:24:40 HuisPi kernel: Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
okt 17 14:24:28 HuisPi kernel: Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
okt 17 14:24:28 HuisPi kernel: Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
okt 17 14:24:28 HuisPi kernel: Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
okt 17 14:24:28 HuisPi kernel: Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
okt 17 14:24:28 HuisPi kernel: NET: Registered PF_BLUETOOTH protocol family
okt 17 14:24:28 HuisPi kernel: Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22

BTW, to remove a stupid error in sudo systemctl status bluetooth I set in /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
# Enables D-Bus experimental interfaces
# Possible values: true or false
Experimental = true

"sudo bluetoothctl list" didn't list any BT controller. How to use the built-in bluetooth?

I couldn't find any relevant tutorial - any suggestions?

Statistics: Posted by PaulGuijt — Fri Oct 17, 2025 12:44 pm

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