Broadcom BCM43242A0 Bluetooth adapter not detected in Ubuntu 18.04

My Laptop has a Broadcom BCM43242A0 Bluetooth adapter which does not work with Kubuntu 18.04.

lsusb | grep Bluetooth
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0a5c:216c Broadcom Corp. BCM43142A0 Bluetooth Device

I already tried to fix it by downloading the firmware from and copied it to /lib/firmware/brcm/BCM.hcd because the output of

dmesg | grep bluetooth

was

[ 12.314809] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for brcm/BCM.hcd failed with error -2

After that, the bluetooth adapter is not recognised anymore in the system settings -> Bluetooth and dmesg | grep bluetooth gives no return. Output of

uname -r; lsusb; lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net; rfkill list all; hciconfig -a; dmesg | egrep -i 'blue|firm'

is

4.15.0-22-generic
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:8001 Intel Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0a5c:216c Broadcom Corp. BCM43142A0 Bluetooth Device
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 04f2:b40e Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd HP Truevision HD camera
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:c00c Logitech, Inc. Optical Wheel Mouse
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
08:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Limited BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [103c:2230] Kernel driver in use: wl
--
09:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 08) Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [103c:2297] Kernel driver in use: r8169 Kernel modules: r8169
0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no
2: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no
hci0: Type: Primary Bus: USB BD Address: 00:00:00:00:00:00 ACL MTU: 0:0 SCO MTU: 0:0 DOWN RX bytes:312 acl:0 sco:0 events:7 errors:0 TX bytes:37 acl:0 sco:0 commands:9 errors:0 Features: 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 Packet type: DM1 DH1 HV1 Link policy: Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT
[ 0.000000] [Firmware Bug]: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata; please update microcode to version: 0x25 (or later)
[ 0.049786] ACPI: [Firmware Bug]: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored
[ 1.167623] [Firmware Bug]: Invalid critical threshold (0)
[ 2.822033] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI(PXSX) defines _DOD but not _DOS
[ 21.550566] platform regulatory.0: Direct firmware load for regulatory.db failed with error -2
[ 21.611269] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[ 21.611297] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[ 21.611302] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[ 21.611306] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[ 21.611316] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[ 21.749781] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: chip id 70
[ 21.750785] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: features 0x06
[ 21.766795] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM43142A
[ 21.766798] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM (001.001.011) build 0000
[ 23.900113] Bluetooth: hci0: command 0x0a0a tx timeout
[ 27.050123] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[ 27.050125] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[ 27.050128] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[ 31.964068] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: Patch command 0a0a failed (-110)
[ 34.076050] Bluetooth: hci0: command 0x1001 tx timeout
[ 42.204067] Bluetooth: hci0: BCM: Reading local version info failed (-110)

I have no Idea what this means, but from I understood that this bug has been fixed with a newer linux kernel. My kernel version is 4.15.0-22-generic, but the problem still persist. How can I get bluetooth working?

4

2 Answers

Steps to fix:

1. Go to repo winterheart/broadcom-bt-firmware and download fileBCM43142A0-0a5c-216c.hcd (according your Bluetooth chipset).
2. Move that file to /lib/firmware/brcm (if not working: rename file to BCM.hcd)
3. Turn off and turn on pc

P.S. This can work for other broadcom adapters as well, only need to get correct .hcd file: grep Bluetooth Device and ID with command lsusb | grep Bluetooth.

Edited This Bluetooth issue solution working for Ubuntu 20.04 as well.

Source

3

After 5 days of trying I finally got it to work for me.

What I did is firstly I deleted all of the .hcd files from /lib/firmware/brcm (used sudo nautilus file manager) then very important to download the correct files from given link.

Go to repo winterheart/broadcom-bt-firmware and download the file BCM43142A0-0a5c-216c.hcd (according your Bluetooth chip-set).

Move that file to /lib/firmware/brcm (if not working: rename file to BCM.hcd) very important.

P.S. This can work for other broadcom adapters as well, only need to get the correct .hcd file: grep Bluetooth Device and ID with command lsusb | grep Bluetooth.

After downloading the .hcd file I copied it to /lib/firmware/brcm using this command :sudo cp BCM20702A0-0a5c-216f.hcd /lib/firmware/brcm (need to change hcd file name according what you download).

After this i restart my Bluetooth service using this command.

sudo modprobe -r btusb and then sudo modprobe btusb

That is it everything works now.

2

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