Ubuntu 13.10 and Bluetooth on Broadcom BCM43142 WIFI+BT combo adapter

So, wireless and bluetooth on my spankin new Y510p are provided by a single Mini PCI-e Broadcom BCM43142 adapter. The wifi part worked out of the box, most of the time, but the bluetooth did not. There are evidence that this particular chipset is supported on certain Ubuntu certified Dell laptop models, but only up to Ubuntu 12.10. The attached .deb on that post can be installed on 13.10, but bluetooth is still not working. Bummer

Usually, to know what kind of bluetooth adapter do you have, or whether your box has a bluetooth adapter, all you have to do is:

lsusb | grep -i bluetooth

But surprisingly:

ikhsan@M5-X:~/$ lsusb | grep -i bluetooth
ikhsan@M5-X:~/$

No bluetooth adapter was identified. But I know the laptop has one, since it was actually detected by hciconfig

ikhsan@M5-X:~/bt/hex2hcd$ hciconfig 
hci0:    Type: BR/EDR  Bus: USB
    BD Address: 1C:3E:84:E5:BA:68  ACL MTU: 1021:8  SCO MTU: 64:1
    UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN 
    RX bytes:36699 acl:2135 sco:0 events:273 errors:0
    TX bytes:30967 acl:13 sco:0 commands:213 errors:0

So, unfiltered result of lsusb gave me this:

ikhsan@M5-X:~/bt/hex2hcd$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp. 
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:8008 Intel Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 05e3:0747 Genesys Logic, Inc. 
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 004: ID 105b:e065  
Bus 003 Device 007: ID 1532:0033 Razer USA, Ltd 
Bus 003 Device 006: ID 041e:30df Creative Technology, Ltd 
Bus 003 Device 005: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 174f:1474 Syntek 
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

There’s one entry that has no description. Googling  the device id confirms that this is indeed the bluetooth adapter that I’m looking for

dmesg gave me:

[   16.645428] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.16
[   16.645445] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[   16.645453] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[   16.645455] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[   16.645461] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[   18.861363] Bluetooth: hci0 command 0x1003 tx timeout
[   18.923343] Bluetooth: can't load firmware, may not work correctly
[   22.312535] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[   22.312538] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[   22.312544] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[   22.373769] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[   22.373782] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[   22.373784] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11

So it’s a firmware issue. After further reading, this particular board requires additional firmware to be pushed during initialization, it supposed to be fixed , but here I am, with an a nonworking bcm43142 bluetooth on my Y510p. These are the steps that I did to get it to work:

• Obtain .hex file for the bluetooth adapter. The easiest way is to do this is to to your windows partition, and copy the file from C:\windows\system32\drivers. The file should be named BCM43xxxx.hex. If there’s more than one file, consult your Windows device manager which file you should get. Or, if you have the same device id as mine, get it here,  this file is included on version 12.0.0.7820 of the bluetooth driver for Windows 8.1 X64. Put the file somewhere in your home folder, let say /home/ikhsan/bt
  

  

  BCMxxxxxx

• The .hex file need to be converted to a .hcd file. Replace 105b_e065 with your device id. Get the tool, convert, and place the hcd file to the firmware directory by performing

  $ cd /home/ikhsan/bt
  $ git clone git://github.com/jessesung/hex2hcd.git
  $ cd hex2hcd
  $ make
  $./hex2hcd ../BCM43142A0_001.001.011.0161.0172.hex fw-105b_e065.hcd
  $ sudo cp fw* /lib/firmware

• Reload btusb module by performing

  $ sudo modprobe -r btusb
  $ sudo modprobe btusb

  If that doesn’t work, reboot the machine

You should now have a working bluetooth adapter. Dmesg after reboot and attaching my Razer Orochi  now gave me this:

ikhsan@M5-X:~$ dmesg | grep -i bluetooth
[   15.371858] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.16
[   15.371871] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[   15.371876] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[   15.371878] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[   15.371881] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[   16.819444] Bluetooth: firmware loaded
[   21.887192] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[   21.887195] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[   21.887203] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[   21.889667] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[   21.889675] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[   21.889676] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11
[   31.580987] Bluetooth: HIDP (Human Interface Emulation) ver 1.2
[   31.580996] Bluetooth: HIDP socket layer initialized
[  318.526686] input: Razer Orochi as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb3/3-7/3-7:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:11/input18
[  318.526988] hid-generic 0005:1532:0014.000A: input,hidraw7: BLUETOOTH HID v5.01 Mouse [Razer Orochi] on 1c:3e:84:e5:ba:68

My Razer Orochi works normally, even the pairing survived a reboot. Strangely my Apple Magic mouse can be paired but still not working.

Gnome-Shell Bluetooth menu

Update 8/3/2014:
So I decided to replace the Broadcom adapter with an Intel 6235AN adapter. It’s has 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio and  Bluetooth 4.0