This project maintains two utilities (bluealsa-autoconfig and
bluealsa-agent) which are designed to help simplify the management of the
Bluetooth audio user experience when using BlueALSA. See
The bluez-alsa project for more
information on BlueALSA.
bluealsa-autoconfig is a simple program to add and remove ALSA configuration
nodes for BlueALSA Bluetooth PCM and CTL devices. It can also optionally
simulate udev events on Bluetooth audio device connect and disconnect.
ALSA has built-in functions to add and remove PCM configuration nodes when sound cards are added or removed. However, it provides no equivalent functionality for software PCM types such as BlueALSA. This is unfortunate because Bluetooth audio devices are more likely to be disconnected during a session, so dynamic management of the ALSA configuration is even more important for Bluetooth than it is for sound cards.
bluealsa-autoconfig aims to rectify that situation by updating the ALSA
configuration dynamically whenever a Bluetooth audio device connects or
disconnects. So, for example, when no Bluetooth audio devices are connected,
aplay -L may show:
$ aplay -L
default
Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=PCH
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
Default Audio Device
surround21:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
And then when a Bluetooth device is connected:
$ aplay -L
default
Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=PCH
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
Default Audio Device
surround21:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
surround40:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
HDA Intel PCH, ALC236 Analog
7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
bluealsa:DEV=C4:67:B5:37:26:12,PROFILE=sco
Libratone Zipp Mini HFP (CVSD)
Bluetooth Audio Input/Output
bluealsa:DEV=C4:67:B5:37:26:12,PROFILE=a2dp
Libratone Zipp Mini A2DP (aptX)
Bluetooth Audio Output
The last two entries in the above listing have been created by
bluealsa-autoconfig.
As an example GUI application, here's a screenshot of the kodi audio device
selection dialog with the same Bluetooth speaker connected:
bluealsa-autoconfig can also optionally create a new default device
definition that uses a connected BlueALSA device; and it can also optionally
trigger a udev audio device change event to notify ALSA applications when
the configuration has changed. The udev option is particularly important when
using applications such as kodi because otherwise they will not see the
changes to the ALSA configuration and therefore will not display devices
connected after the application started.
In the above kodi example, bluealsa-autoconfig is running as
bluealsa-autoconfig --udev
and /etc/asound.conf contains:
defaults.bluealsa.namehint "%n %p (%c) Bluetooth %s"
bluealsa-autoconfig must be run as root to gain the necessary privileges
for modifying the global ALSA configuration and triggering udev events. See
the manual page for full details.
A systemd system service unit file is included for bluealsa-autoconfig
bluealsa-agent is a simple program to invoke arbitrary user commands in
response to BlueALSA PCM D-Bus signals. It does not require root privileges
and is intended to be used as a user service.
For a trivial example, suppose it is required to display a desktop info pop-up
whenever a BlueALSA PCM is added or removed; one could install the following
shell script as /usr/local/bin/bluealsa-notify and then run the
bluealsa-agent service as
bluealsa-agent /usr/local/bin/bluealsa-notify
#!/bin/sh
title="BlueALSA PCM"
case "$1" in
"add")
title="$title added"
;;
"remove")
title="$title removed"
;;
"update")
title="$title updated"
;;
*)
exit 0
esac
text="dbus path: $2"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_NAME" ] && text="${text}\nname: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_NAME"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_ADDRESS" ] && text="${text}\naddress: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_ADDRESS"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_PROFILE" ] && text="${text}\nprofile: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_PROFILE"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_MODE" ] && text="${text}\nmode: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_MODE"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_CODEC" ] && text="${text}\ncodec: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_CODEC"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_CODEC_CONFIG" ] && text="${text}\ncodec config: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_CODEC_CONFIG"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_FORMAT" ] && text="${text}\nformat: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_FORMAT"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_CHANNELS" ] && text="${text}\nchannels: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_CHANNELS"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_SAMPLING" ] && text="${text}\nsampling: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_SAMPLING"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_TRANSPORT" ] && text="${text}\ntransport: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_TRANSPORT"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_SERVICE" ] && text="${text}\nservice: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_SERVICE"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_ALSA_ID" ] && text="${text}\nALSA id: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_ALSA_ID"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_RUNNING" ] && text="${text}\nrunning: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_RUNNING"
[ "$BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_SOFTVOL" ] && text="${text}\nsoftvol: $BLUEALSA_PCM_PROPERTY_SOFTVOL"
exec /usr/bin/zenity --info --title="$title" --text="$text" -
See the manual page for full details.
meson setup builddir
cd builddir
meson compile
sudo meson install
To include the manual pages, the application rst2man from the docutils project is required. Many distributions provide this in the package python3-docutils. To enable building and installing the manual page, setup the build directory with
meson setup -Ddoc=true builddir
or, if the build directory has already been set up, change its configuration with
meson configure -Ddoc=true builddir
The systemd unit file for bluealsa-autoconfig is installed as a system
unit, and the unit file for bluealsa-agent is installed as a user unit.
For both units the default install runs the executable with no arguments. Note
that bluealsa-agent fails to start if not given a command to run.
To have bluealsa-autoconfig started at boot, run
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now bluealsa-autoconfig.service
To have bluealsa-agent start when a user logs in, first enable the service:
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl ---user enable bluealsa-agent.service
Then edit the local service instance to add the chosen command
systemctl --user edit bluealsa-agent.service
and finally start the service
systemctl --user start bluealsa-agent.service
This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.
It includes copies of source code files from the bluez-alsa project, which are also licensed under the MIT license and all rights to those files remain with their original author.