Output to Bluetooth speaker

Project help balenaSound
1

Hi,

Is it possible to connect my PiZero W to a bluetooth speaker and use it as the audio output?

Thanks!

4

Hi @abis,

Welcome to the balena forums!

balenaSound is currently set up to handle input over Bluetooth, and there is an open feature request to allow Bluetooth connection to the speakers. However, I’m not sure how feasible that would be, except only for a single device, because Bluetooth would add latency to the sound output that can’t be controlled by the software, so the sound wouldn’t be in sync.

Your best bet for an RPi Zero W is to attach a DAC hat to it [1], which will give you a good quality audio output. I have also used the HDMI output for audio on my Zero W, to connect to my main stereo system, and that also works great.

[1] https://sound.balenalabs.io/docs/audio-interfaces#dac-boards

Cheers!
Mark-

6

Thanks.
I managed to connect to the bluetooth speaker from the hostos instance, but I guess there is no way to add it as a sink to pulseaudio?

7

It should be possible, but I don’t know pulseaudio well enough to say. I would expect that the Bluetooth device is available as an audio interface, and will show up with the right commands to check. Then you would need to configure a pulseadio sink for that device.

8

Hey @abis welcome to balena forums : )

As @koyaanisqatsi noted, I found this feature request getting popular with balenaSound users: https://github.com/balenalabs/balena-sound/issues/323

10

It would be stellar if this could be implemented!

1 Like
11

Hey @abis
You can subscribe to the issue Firat sent to you so you get notified once the feature is out.

1 Like
13

My bluetooth speakers would LOVE this!!