Connect and use multiple bluetooth dongles on linux?

Question

Is it possible to connect more than two bluetooth dongles(adapters) to the linux machine and use them for read/write/communication with other external bluetooth devices simultaneously? So that there are will be more than one bluetooth device bluez can recognize and work with in parallel.

Giaour

Yes, you can connect more then one and use it in parallel. – Emotionalism

Answer 1

To complete @sam's answer as I was looking at doing the them. Here is the demonstration of two bluetooth adapter in Linux with bluetoothctl:

Without any USB Bluetooth dongle on my laptop I see:

[bluetooth]# list
Controller 84:EF:18:1E:5B:8A olivier-ThinkPad-E460 #1 [default]

After I hotplug the USB Bluetooth dongle, I can see:

[NEW] Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 olivier-ThinkPad-E460 #2 [default]
[CHG] Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 UUIDs: 00001112-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 UUIDs: 00001801-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 UUIDs: 0000110e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 UUIDs: 00001800-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 UUIDs: 00001200-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 UUIDs: 0000110c-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 UUIDs: 0000110a-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[CHG] Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 UUIDs: 0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
[bluetooth]# list
Controller 84:EF:18:1E:5B:8A olivier-ThinkPad-E460 #1 [default]
Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 olivier-ThinkPad-E460 #2

To select the USB Bluetooth dongle which has for MAC address 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97:

[bluetooth]# select 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97
[bluetooth]# list
Controller 84:EF:18:1E:5B:8A olivier-ThinkPad-E460 #1 
Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 olivier-ThinkPad-E460 #2 [default]

We can see the USB adapter is now marked as [default]. When I scan for bluetooth devices, I can see it use the USB dongle:

[bluetooth]# scan on
Discovery started
[CHG] Controller 5C:F3:70:8A:A6:97 Discovering: yes
[NEW] Device A0:E6:F8:37:AE:94 5AAA=mRwb6qK$v_~xL5O#uK)AqfHK
[NEW] Device 54:E5:F7:BC:4C:D9 54-E5-F7-BC-4C-D9

Same when I want to connect:

[bluetooth]# connect DE:79:A2:A1:E9:FA
Attempting to connect to DE:79:A2:A1:E9:FA
[CHG] Device DE:79:A2:A1:E9:FA Connected: yes
Connection successful
[NEW] Primary Service
    /org/bluez/hci1/dev_DE_79_A2_A1_E9_FA/service0008
    00001801-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
    Generic Attribute Profile
[NEW] Characteristic
    /org/bluez/hci1/dev_DE_79_A2_A1_E9_FA/service0008/char0009
    00002a05-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb
    Service Changed

Notice the hci1 in the DBUS path: /org/bluez/hci1/dev_DE_79_A2_A1_E9_FA

Boxing

Answer 2

yes its possible. Use bluetoothctl command line tool provided by bluez to select adapter. Each device will recognized with different adapter. You can choose the adapter and give commands

Boutin