Bluetooth input devices

This article describes the setup of Bluetooth input devices, for example a bluetooth mouse, on a Linux system.

Installation

Kernel

Both Bluetooth and evdev support is necessary in the kernel. The following options are also required.

Important
It is important to note that some hardware may require a special driver for the input device. Look under Special HID devices as necessary.

KERNEL

Device Drivers  --->
    [*] HID Devices  --->
          Special HID drivers  --->
                <*> ...
[*] Networking support  --->
    <*>   Bluetooth subsystem support  --->
          <*>   L2CAP protocol support
          <*>   HIDP protocol support

BlueZ settings

Change the value of UserspaceHID to true in /etc/bluetooth/input.conf to enable user-space HID support:

FILE /etc/bluetooth/input.conf

# Enable HID protocol handling in userspace input profile
# Defaults to false (HIDP handled in HIDP kernel module)
UserspaceHID=true

User-space HID support also requires the User-space I/O driver for HID input devices (CONFIG_UHID) to be enabled:

KERNEL Enabling user-space-hid support

Device Drivers --->
    HID support --->
        <*>   User-space I/O driver support for HID subsystem

Configuration

To configure the input devices use the specialized desktop management tools:

• net-wireless/gnome-bluetooth for GNOME
• kde-plasma/bluedevil for KDE
• net-wireless/blueman is a generic GTK client (i.e. for use with Openbox/i3, etc)

Some Bluetooth input devices are initially not in HID mode, but in HCI mode. This is handled by udev in /lib/udev/rules.d/97-hid2hci.rules. Additional devices can be added in a custom rule file which needs to be placed in /etc/udev/rules.d. Refer to the udev article for more details.

See also

• Bluetooth — describes the configuration and usage of Bluetooth controllers and devices.