Adding Bluetooth support to the TonidoPlug2

I'm planning to use my TonidoPlug2 (TP2) for reading out the electricity production of my solar panels. I attached a very small USB bluetooth dongle to my TP2. The USB bluetooth device is detected, but the default kernel has no bluetooth support:

root@TonidoPlug2:~# lsusb 
... 
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp. BCM2046B1 USB 2.0 Hub (part of BCM2046 Bluetooth) 
... 

The only solution to this problem is to build a new TP2 kernel with bluetooth enabled. The next section details the specific steps that did the trick for me.

Important note: Do NOT change the kernel on the internal flash memory as it might brick your device! Configure your TP2 to boot from the SATA HD first. I created a dedicated 32GB boot partition on my SATA device. Details:

• best manual: http://www.tonido.com/communitywiki/doku.php?id=advanceduses:usbboot (pay special attention to the fdisk part as the TP2 can only boot from "msdos" partitions)
• other info: http://www.tonido.com/support/display/docs/Booting+off+USB+Drive

Once you are booting from the SATA HD, you can proceed with the instructions below.

Building a TP2 kernel with bluetooth

The arm-kernel can be built on a linux desktop. I used my regular Ubuntu laptop.

First start with building a normal TP2 kernel:

• http://www.tonido.com/support/display/docs/How+to+build+a+TonidoPlug2+kernel
• note that the url to download the kernel changed: http://www.tonidoplug.com/partners/topkick/2011/kernel/source/kernel-2.6.31-topkick1281p2-codelathe-20111122.tar.bz2

After you built the kernel and modules you can enable bluetooth by modifying the .config file:

   make menuconfig 

• Options to enable: (toggle by pressing 'space' until an * or M appears)
  • Networking → <*>Bluetooth subsystem support (CONFIG_BT)
  • Networking → Bluetooth subsystem support → <*>L2CAP protocol support (CONFIG_BT_L2CAP)
  • Networking → Bluetooth subsystem support → <*>SCO links support (CONFIG_BT_SCO)
  • Networking → Bluetooth subsystem support → <*>RFCOMM protocol support (CONFIG_BT_RFCOMM)
  • Networking → Bluetooth subsystem support → [*]RFCOMM TTY support (CONFIG_BT_RFCOMM_TTY)
  • Networking → Bluetooth subsystem support → <*>BNEP protocol support (CONFIG_BT_BNEP)
  • Networking → Bluetooth subsystem support → <*>HID protocol support (CONFIG_BT_HID)
  • Networking → Bluetooth subsystem support → Bluetooth device drivers → HCI USB driver (CONFIG_BT_HCIUSB)
• this is how my .config file was modified:

  ~/tonido/kernel-2.6.31$ diff .config.old .config 
  4c4 
  < # Sat May 12 21:21:58 2012 
  --- 
  > # Sat May 12 22:24:11 2012 
  654c654,673 
  < # CONFIG_BT is not set 
  --- 
  > CONFIG_BT=y 
  > CONFIG_BT_L2CAP=y 
  > CONFIG_BT_SCO=y 
  > CONFIG_BT_RFCOMM=y 
  > CONFIG_BT_RFCOMM_TTY=y 
  > CONFIG_BT_BNEP=y 
  > # CONFIG_BT_BNEP_MC_FILTER is not set 
  > # CONFIG_BT_BNEP_PROTO_FILTER is not set 
  > CONFIG_BT_HIDP=y 
  >  
  > # 
  > # Bluetooth device drivers 
  > # 
  > CONFIG_BT_HCIBTUSB=m 
  > # CONFIG_BT_HCIBTSDIO is not set 
  > # CONFIG_BT_HCIUART is not set 
  > # CONFIG_BT_HCIBCM203X is not set 
  > # CONFIG_BT_HCIBPA10X is not set 
  > # CONFIG_BT_HCIBFUSB is not set 
  > # CONFIG_BT_HCIVHCI is not set 
  1351a1371,1372 
  > CONFIG_HID_APPLE=y 
  > CONFIG_HID_WACOM=y 
  

You can continue with the instructions for building a TP2 kernel at step 15:

make uImage 
... 

Some attention points with the last activation step:

• remove two unnecessary symlinks before running scp:

  ~/tonido/kernel-2.6.31$ rm ../current_kernel/lib/modules/2.6.31.8-topkick1281p2-001-004-20101214/build 
  ~/tonido/kernel-2.6.31$ rm ../current_kernel/lib/modules/2.6.31.8-topkick1281p2-001-004-20101214/source 
  

• run scp (don't forget the -r for a directory):

  ~/tonido/kernel-2.6.31$ scp ../current_kernel/boot/uImage root@tp2-ip:/boot 
  ~/tonido/kernel-2.6.31$ scp -r ../current_kernel/lib/modules root@tp2-ip:/lib/ 
  

• double-check if all transfers were OK before rebooting

If the TP2 booted successfully you can now enable and test bluetooth:

• apt-get install bluez
• test with hcitool:

  root@TonidoPlug2:~# hcitool scan 
  Scanning ... 
   E4:D5:3D:EB:EA:E4 ubuntu-0 
   00:80:25:1F:9A:F4 SMA001d SN: ... 
  

Background info:

• forum thread on building a TP2 kernel: http://www.tonido.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=4338&start=10
• generic instructions for setting up Bluetooth for the Linux kernel: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_setup_Bluetooth#Configuring_the_kernel
• adding new modules for audio to the TP2 kernel: http://www.tonido.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=4344