Ubuntu 16.04 not recognizing Bluetooth adapter

Bluetooth USB-BT4LE
1

I am running Ubuntu Mate 16.04 . The computer doesn’t recognize the adapter (USB-BT4LE). Any ideas?

2

Hi Lee,

Thank you for posting about your Bluetooth adapter.

Debian-based systems like Ubuntu sometimes don’t recognize the adapter if it is plugged into an already running computer. You can run some commands from the terminal to get it recognized, but the easiest thing to do is to restart your computer with the adapter installed. If this doesn’t work, please let me know, and we can investigate the cause of the problem.

David
Plugable Support

3

Hi Lee,

I’m just checking back to see if you got this working.

Thanks!

David

4

My devices (headset, Android phone) are not able to see the detect a signal from the USB Adapter. How do I know if it’s running correctly?

I ran the following commands to help you tell me the next commands to run.

soverton@osr-ubuntu-2:~$ uname -a
Linux osr-ubuntu-2 4.4.0-66-generic #87-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 3 15:29:05 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
soverton@osr-ubuntu-2:~$ lsusb
…
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0a5c:21e8 Broadcom Corp. BCM20702A0 Bluetooth 4.0

5

I just noticed the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar. I changed the status to visible and then set up the devices, which fixed my issue.

A little documentation for Linux users on the web site or, ideally in the box, would have saved me some frustration.

6

Thank you for your comments. I’m glad you got it working. You are right. We should improve the Linux instructions. We hesitated in the past because there are so many different Linux distros, with different versions and with different instructions for each of them. However, the situation has stabilized somewhat recently int the major distributions: Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian, so now this would be more practical than before.

7

Hi! I have your BT USB adapter BT4LE. I am running Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS on a Zotac with a Celeron processor.

Can you give me some step-by-step suggestions? Wanted to reverify commands shown in post from OneStepRemoved if possible.

Thanks!

8

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for contacting us. Ubuntu has some issues with Bluetooth audio in version 16.04 and it can be tricky to get working.

Could you please contact us directly at our support address? Since this thread is gathering so many requests, it is difficult to do the necessary back and forth that Linux issues often involve. I’m going to close the thread once I hear from you. Our email is support@plugable.com. Please put For David Roberts in the subject. Thanks!

9

will do, and thanks David!