I found a solution to this (my) issue. In some cases, reTerminal with Raspberry Pi OS (I am using the 32-bit 2021-09-14 version that Seeed Studio provides through their wiki) does not seem to properly start up bluetooth when booting. The GUI “Add Device” option under the bluetooth dropdown will not show anything. However, you can find devices by running the following commands in the command terminal:
bluetoothctl
scan on
Here is what I have to do to get bluetooth devices to connect:
- each time I boot the reTerminal, I have to open the command terminal and run “bluetoothctl”. That will enable me to connect devices that have already been paired.
- If I wish to pair a new device, I run “bluetoothctl”, “scan on”, then “scan off” through the command terminal. At that point, the GUI “Add Device” option will show devices and enable me to pair and connect them.
I followed the guide here (Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 question with Bluetooth Add Device... - Raspberry Pi Forums) to get this working.
It looks like there is an issue with the default image provided that causes bluetooth to exhibit this behavior on some reTerminals, so I hope the image can be updated to fix this. But, this is a fix for people who have the same issue I was facing.