CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbluetoothandroid-bluetoothbluez
Lakindu Akash
Lakindu Akash

Reputation: 1036

Read battery status bluetooth headset linux

I use Bluetooth headset that use Bluetooth version 4.1. When I connect with android it shows the battery status. But with Linux (Ubuntu 18.04) I cannot get battery status. I tried with bluetoothctl, looking file in /sys/class/power_supply as in other questions, But they didn't help me.

askubuntu.com/questions/53880/is-there-any-way-to-check-the-battery-percentage-of-apple-wireless-peripherals

stackoverflow.com/questions/49078659/check-battery-level-of-connected-bluetooth-device-on-linux

My bluetooth device don't use GATT profile. It uses A2DP sink for streaming audio.

I looked Bluez documentation. They all said is do with GATT profile and get the attributes.

Is there a way to read battery status even with pragmatically in Linux properly? How does android device get the battery status? Is it a weakness of Linux Bluetooth stack?

Upvotes: 13

Views: 11031

Answers (2)

Hecker
Hecker

Reputation: 51

Just Enable Experimental Mode for bluetooth (bluez) and its done.

Steps to Enable Experimental Mode:

NOTE

Remember to edit the file in sudo or doas or root mode.

  • Open /etc/bluetooth/main.conf in a text editor.

  • Go to Line where it is written # Experimental = false

  • Change the line to Experimental = true and also remember to remove the # symbol for the line to make it a command instead of a comment.

  • Then Run this command

    sudo systemctl restart bluetooth

And You are done. Enjoy :)

Upvotes: 3

LHLaurini
LHLaurini

Reputation: 2570

Since this pull request by Dmitry Sharshakov, PipeWire has support for reporting battery status (with devices that use Apple HFP AT commands). It uses bluez's Battery Provider API, which is still experimental and is only available if bluetoothd is started with the -E flag.

On Arch Linux, it should be enough to run

cp /usr/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service /etc/systemd/system/
sed -i -r 's/ExecStart=.+/& -E/' /etc/systemd/system/bluetooth.service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart bluetooth

And the headset battery level should appear. To get the battery level programatically, you can then use UPower's DBus API.

Upvotes: 9

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