Balena Sound - PS3

Project help balenaSound
1

Hey there. I got this thing working great using my RPi 4 today. Ideally I was hoping to put one of my 2 old first gen Pis to purpose with this, it’d be cool if this project was available for older Pis, but it is convenient using my pi4 w/built in wifi/bt.

Any plans to include older Pi models with the Balena Sound project? I’d love to find a purpose for my 2 older Pis. I had tried a few projects that I came across to use one of my older Pis in essentially this manner (BT audio receiver - fed to 3.5 jack) but couldn’t get them to work, sadly. The fact these old Pis have only 2 USBs made it a bit more frustrating as well as I have a USB hub, it’s just not a powered one, so entering commands at the prompts was constantly an adventure (suuuudoooooooooo lol) If anyone knows of a project that works for older Pis, a shared link would be appreciated… This one is the last one I tried, but I had a lot of problems getting it to work for me unfortunately.

(https://www.instructables.com/Turn-your-Raspberry-Pi-into-a-Portable-Bluetooth-A/)

I was stoked to come across Balena Sound and I’m so close to my goal, but now I’ve hit another road block. :unamused:

Priority 1:

The purpose for my wanting to do this is to connect my wired Sennheiser Headset to the pi and connect it to consoles as a BT headset (well, headphones), more specifically, my PS3.

I tested the BT connection with my phone and it works, however my PS3 doesn’t see it… I’m thinking it’s the version of BT? I know the PS3 uses BT 2.0 and the RPi4b has BT 5.0. I also know that BT 5.0 is reverse compatible, but does that mean a BT 5.0 can connect to a BT 2.0 device only, or should it work in reverse as well? If not, is there a way to force the RPi into BT 2.0 mode, to allow for BT 2.0 connections? Alternatively, if that’s not possible, I have an older 2.0 BT dongle, if plugged into the Pi, is there a way I can disable the internal BT 5.0 and make Balena Sound use the 2.0 dongle instead?

Priority 2:

Once I get that figured out, I’m thinking it’d be cool to be able to plug the USB dongle that came with my wired Sennheiser Headset into the Pi and use it not only as BT headphones, but as a BT headset, as intended. Any thoughts on whether this might be possible with Balena Sound, or am I asking too much? This is a secondary thought however, as my main priority is getting the BT sound to work at least with my PS3.

Thanks in advance for any advice :blush:

Rick

2

Hi Rick, welcome to the Forums. I can’t say I know anything about connecting headphones to a PS3, so you’ll have to do some research on that one…but balenaSound does indeed work on the older Raspberry Pi’s. It can go all the way down to the Pi Zero. When you deploy a device, you just have to choose the type of Pi from the drop-down menu and you will get an SD Card specific to that Pi version.

For older Pi’s that don’t have built-in WiFi and/or Bluetooth, you will need to use a dongle as you mentioned.

1 Like
4

That’s awesome. Thanks so much for getting back to me and the warm welcome. :slight_smile: :smiley:

I’ll create a new fleet with RPi vi/zero/zero w and give that a go. :slight_smile:

As for connecting a ps3, all I know is that they are BT v2.0 whereas my pi 4b is BT 5.0. Beyond that, I know BT is reverse compatible, but I suppose I’m wondering if BT is reverse compatible in regards to incoming connections eg. a BT 5.0 device can connect to a BT 2.0 device, but can it work the other way around do you know? (a BT 2.0 device - in this case a ps3, connecting to A BT 5.0 device - the rpi4b)

Thanks again and hope all is well!

Rick

5

I am unsure, perhaps some trial and error testing it out will be needed. :slight_smile: