Enabling Bluetooth and CTS Touchscreen Support on Custom Armbian OS

[HarrisonCreates]

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening everybody!

This is my first post on the Olimex forum, however I come to it having already tried many routes to get a few key features to work.

Let me back up here. I am using the Olimex 1Ge-4GW Olinuxino board. I went to armbian.com and downloaded the minimal, console interface (no desktop) Armbian Buster mainline based kernel 4.19.y, and the board booted beautifully. I have armbian configured, and am having a blast with this little board. I am having a few problems, however.

1.) I can't seem to get bluetooth working. I have scoured so many resources on Armbian and Linux development, I found the bluetooth firmware files on the board, tried rfkill list, hcitool dev, systemctl enable bluetooth, rfkill unblock all, and so many other options. The system just isn't recognizing the onboard bluetooth hardware. I am able to "start" the bluetooth service and get into the bluetoothctl terminal, but when I try to scan it replies simply with "No Default Controller Available". Has anyone experienced this and/or found a fix?

2.) I bought two of Olimex's touchscreens (the 10CTS and 7CTS models) and was wondering what files I had to install/configure/modify in order to allow the board to display through the LCD instead of HDMI. On this, I haven't done much research I'll admit, but I would appreciate any and all pointers you can offer!

3.) I purchased a 3.7V battery through Amazon (I tried to order through Olimex but shipping restrictions prevented me from doing so). I have verified that the battery has charge (actually popped a couple LEDs because I had no resistors on hand) but when I plug it into the board... nothing happens. No indicator light, nothing through HDMI. Am I missing something from the documentation?

Thank you so much! I look forward to learning more about this kind of stuff!

[LubOlimex]

Hello,

You started with the improper images. Use the ones we have here: ftp://staging.olimex.com/Allwinner_Images/a64-olinuxino/linux/

Tell me if the Bluetooth works better with one of the official images.

About the displays first make sure to test with the desktop image. It can be found here: ftp://staging.olimex.com/Allwinner_Images/a64-olinuxino/linux/1.latest_images/bionic/images/

If the displays don't get auto-recognized - interrupt the u-boot and configure them manually. This is explained in this article: https://www.olimex.com/wiki/ArmbianHowTo#Selecting_video_output

About the battery - the LED doesn't turn on when operating on battery. To turn on the board while powered by a battery hold the PWRON1 button.

Edit: Important - LCD and Ethernet can't work together due to multiplexing: keep PHYRST1 closed in order to use the LCDs.

Best regards,
Lub/OLIMEX

[HarrisonCreates]

Hello,

You started with the improper images. Use the ones we have here: ftp://staging.olimex.com/Allwinner_Images/a64-olinuxino/linux/

Tell me if the Bluetooth works better with one of the official images.

Yesss, thank you so much, this fixed the bluetooth stuff! For some reason the battery option still isn't working, so I ordered another one of the board to see if I got a weird case. I will try to test the battery with a multimeter as well.

Will keep you posted, thank you so much!!

[LubOlimex]

Make sure the polarity is alright. Often + and - got reversed between different batteries and different JST connectors.