bluetooth-controller (device class)¶
USB Bluetooth controllers — parked for power and radio silence, or switched off through BlueZ
The Bluetooth radio of a laptop or dongle, as the kernel sees it: a USB device (on the field laptop, the Bluetooth half of an Intel AX210 combo card, whose Wi-Fi half is on PCIe and is not this device) driven by btusb and managed by BlueZ.
Devices in this class¶
Shared setup¶
Nothing to install; BlueZ is part of the desktop. The radio switch is bluetoothctl power off or the tray's toggle; park and wake are hammunition hardware park bluetooth-controller and hammunition hardware wake bluetooth-controller.
Power control¶
This device can be parked and woken. Method: usb_deauthorize.
A parked USB Bluetooth controller is unconfigured, not unpowered at the port: btusb drops hci0, BlueZ sees the adapter vanish and every paired device (a headset, a keyboard) disconnects, and the port is only allowed to suspend. This does not cut the controller's supply. The lighter switch is BlueZ's own, bluetoothctl power off, which the helper's radio off bluetooth verb and the tray's Radios toggle are to wrap (planned, not yet released). It needs no root and keeps the adapter attached. Park a Bluetooth controller only when nothing you are using is Bluetooth: a Bluetooth mouse or keyboard goes with it. Parking has not been run on a controller here (unmeasured).
See device power control for what parking does to a machine, how to inspect it and how to reverse it.