Ubuntu – Setting up a bluetooth audio-microphone headset on ubuntu 12.04

Sad story,
Seems that your bluetooth card has not a fully compatible driver with bluez or whatever as mine :(.

I solved following this guide and building two stupid scripts

Getting ready

Install ofono

sudo apt install ofono

Config pulseaudio to use ofono:

• Goto /etc/pulse/default.pa find the line load-module module-bluetooth-discover and change it in load-module module-bluetooth-discover headset=ofono.
• Add the user pulse to group bluetooth to grant the permission: sudo usermod -aG bluetooth pulse (probably it's already correct)
• VERY IMPORTANT: To grant the permission, add this to /etc/dbus-1/system.d/ofono.conf (add this before </busconfig>):

  <policy user="pulse">
    <allow send_destination="org.ofono"/>
  </policy>
  

Provide phonesim to ofono.
In order to make ofono work, you have to provide a modem to it! You can install a modem emulator called phonesim (implemented by ofono) to make it work:

• install ofono-phonesim (in some distros it is called phonesim). in Ubuntu 18.04 (for Ubuntu 20.04 follow this link):

 sudo apt install ofono-phonesim

• Configure phonesim by adding the following lines to /etc/ofono/phonesim.conf:

[phonesim]
Driver=phonesim
Address=127.0.0.1
Port=12345

• Restart ofono:

sudo systemctl restart ofono.service

• Clone ofono repository (contains useful scripts)

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/ofono/ofono.git destination/path

Then, every time you want to enable hfp/hsp:

ofono-phonesim -p 12345 /usr/share/phonesim/default.xml &

then use

path/to/cloned/repo/test/enable-modem /phonesim

then restart pulseaudio with

pulseaudio --kill` and `pulseaudio --start

Now you should see a microphone device.

When you want to go back to a2dp:

path/to/cloned/repo/test/disable-modem /phonesim

then restart pulseaudio with

pulseaudio --kill` and `pulseaudio --start

eventually restart pulseeffects with

pulseeffects --quit` and `pulseeffects &

Lately i'm not using this because it's not always working, and so using a jack is faster.

Hope it helps :)

edit: Added getting ready section edit 2: Added git clone step

The problem here is that your IFROGZ Toxix Wireless do not support Headset profile (HSP). They only support Handsfree profile (HFP) as can be seen in your bluetoothctl output. PulseAudio on the other hand does not support HFP out of the box, as is explained here: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/Documentation/User/Bluetooth/

So your only options are to install oFono or to patch and compile PulseAudio yourself. Patch is available here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/merge_requests/94