What must be added to the Lite distro to make Bluetooth work?

[Seamus]

I was asked to transfer my issue here (to documentation) from here. I'm not quite sure I understand why the "other group" asked me to transfer it here, but here it is - please note that I've left the Title the same. Also please note this is (for me anyway) an important issue:

I'm trying to get Bluetooth working on the bullseye Lite distro. I've run into what I'd call a serious issue with what I think should be a relatively straightforward operation. And this is not the first time I've run into this. In fact, it seems to go back as long as I've been using RPi ( ~ 2016). And it's always with the "Lite" version of the distro. It seems that someone failed to consider that Bluetooth might come in handy for Lite users also - not just those that run one of the "Desktop" distros. Anyway - let me get to it:

I gave up on Bluetooth for Lite in buster. I haven't tried it in bullseye until yesterday; and I've run into the usual roadblocks/lack of information. I do not understand why this has to be so difficult - but it is. I don't claim to be an "expert" in any area, but I do consider myself to be reasonably competent, and have some experience in "wrangling" Raspberry Pis. But I feel this Bluetooth issue is in a class by itself due to the persistence and longevity of the issue.

Two examples:

1. Connect to a Bluetooth speaker & play music: I've installed mpg123, and I've put a couple of MP3 files on the RPi. I can make the BT connection (with some difficulty) to the speaker using bluetoothctl, but getting sound to actually play through the speaker appears to be verboten. Why is that? What must be done? I learned during my earlier bouts w/ BT that in the Lite distro, one of the issues was that user pi (always my default) was not a member of the bluetooth group; I corrected that. But still no sound.

2. Try to connect two RPi via BT to exchange data: I spent hours wrangling this the other day with no success. I used two bullseye Lite systems: a RPi3A and an RPi4B. Despite the fact that these systems were separated by less than 2 meters, I was never able to make a connection between them using bluetoothctl. I have filed a bug report/Issue on this problem... and FWIW, this issue seems to affect your latest bookworm Lite distro as well.

I don't know if this is a documentation issue - or if it is a software issue. But I do feel strongly that it is an issue.

I would hope that the various individuals and organizations involved in supporting Rasperry Pi and its users could pull together, and fix this. As I said, it's been "going on" for many years.

I'll close this with the final paragraph from the first issue I filed :

I'd really like to see a "Lite+" distro that included Bluetooth - OR - something in the documentation that explains roughly what must be done. Things like "add user pi to bluetooth group", "install pulseaudio (or is it pipewire this time around?)", "set config file XYZ to ABC", etc.

Is this something that could be considered??

[Liz Upton]

This is not a documentation issue, and it looks like the software folks wontfix either.

We are a small team and the docs only support the latest version of the OS, which is Bookworm.

[Seamus]

That's great... finger pointing and denial of responsibility. I predict you will go far.