bluetooth does not detect any devices on Banana Pi M2+

[laibsch]

My Banana Pi M2+ is running quite fine on noble but something is amiss with bluetooth.  bluetoothctl never shows any devices even when scanning for them and there are plenty of devices within arm's length.  I am hoping for your help in diagnosing and ultimately fixing the issue.

 

Logs:

Spoiler

$ uname -a
Linux banana 6.12.20-current-sunxi #1 SMP Sat Mar 22 19:54:28 UTC 2025 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux
 

[ the second line below at 14:20:17 is certainly odd ]

 

$ sudo journalctl -u bluetooth

[...]

Jul 05 14:20:17 banana systemd[1]: Starting bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service...
Jul 05 14:20:17 banana (uetoothd)[6656]: bluetooth.service: ConfigurationDirectory 'bluetooth' already exists but the mode is different. (File system: 755 ConfigurationDirectoryMode: 555)
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: Bluetooth daemon 5.72
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana systemd[1]: Started bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service.
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: Starting SDP server
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: Excluding (cli) sap
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support csip plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: profiles/audio/micp.c:micp_init() D-Bus experimental not enabled
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support micp plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support vcp plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support mcp plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support bass plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support bap plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: Bluetooth management interface 1.23 initialized
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: Battery Provider Manager created
 

$ dmesg | grep -iE 'blue'
[   10.606832] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[   10.606985] NET: Registered PF_BLUETOOTH protocol family
[   10.606999] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[   10.607024] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[   10.607036] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[   10.607060] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[   10.657314] Bluetooth: HCI UART driver ver 2.3
[   10.657350] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol H4 registered
[   10.657360] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol BCSP registered
[   10.657511] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol LL registered
[   10.657529] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol ATH3K registered
[   10.657595] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol Three-wire (H5) registered
[   10.657913] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol Broadcom registered
[   11.013343] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: chip id 94
[   11.014074] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: features 0x2e
[   11.016311] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM43430A1
[   11.016349] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM43430A1 (001.002.009) build 0000
[   11.454352] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM43430A1 'brcm/BCM43430A1.hcd' Patch
[   11.463017] systemd[1]: Reached target bluetooth.target - Bluetooth Support.
[   12.161443] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: features 0x2e
[   12.163860] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM43438A1 26MHz AP6212A1_CL1 BT4.0 OTP-BD-0034
[   12.163886] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM43430A1 (001.002.009) build 0106
[81464.071110] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[81464.071141] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[81464.071164] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[81464.083645] Bluetooth: MGMT ver 1.23
 

[ the following is odd, too, but maybe this is to be expected on Raspberry-like devices? ]

 

$ sudo lspci 
pcilib: Cannot open /proc/bus/pci
lspci: Cannot find any working access method.

 

$ rfkill 
ID TYPE      DEVICE      SOFT      HARD
 0 bluetooth hci0   unblocked unblocked
 2 wlan      phy1   unblocked unblocked

 

$ lsmod |grep bcm -i
btbcm                  12288  1 hci_uart
bluetooth             516096  25 btrtl,hci_uart,bnep,btbcm
 

$ sudo systemctl status bluetooth.service 
● bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
    Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/bluetooth.service.d
             └─override.conf
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2025-07-05 04:20:18 PST; 1 day 23h ago
       Docs: man:bluetoothd(8)
   Main PID: 6656 (bluetoothd)
     Status: "Running"
      Tasks: 1 (limit: 2028)
     Memory: 1.3M (peak: 2.0M swap: 248.0K swap peak: 292.0K zswap: 68.9K)
        CPU: 342ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/bluetooth.service
             └─6656 /usr/libexec/bluetooth/bluetoothd --noplugin=sap

Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: Excluding (cli) sap
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support csip plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: profiles/audio/micp.c:micp_init() D-Bus experimental not enabled
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support micp plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support vcp plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support mcp plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support bass plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: src/plugin.c:plugin_init() System does not support bap plugin
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: Bluetooth management interface 1.23 initialized
Jul 05 14:20:18 banana bluetoothd[6656]: Battery Provider Manager created
 

$ bluetoothctl scan on
SetDiscoveryFilter success
 

[ yet, no devices are ever discovered, nothing is returned ]

 

$ bluetoothctl devices && echo nothing
nothing

 

[laibsch]

hcitool does see something, but bluetoothctl still does not

 

$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
        41:BB:00:D0:D3:D8       Baseus Bowie WM02