Tp-Link UB500 reports wrong Bluetooth version
The UB500 Bluetooth dongle from Tp-Link reports Bluetooth 5.1, but it is capable of at least Bluetooth 5.3. I verified with both
btmgmt and hciconfig.
I've managed to make it use a more up-to-date firmware in Bazzite by putting the firmware rtl8761bu_fw.bin in /usr/local/lib/firmware and adding the kargs rpm-ostree kargs --append-if-missing="firmware_class.path=/usr/local/lib/firmware".
I downloaded the driver directly from Tp-Link's site for this. The BT dongle I bought is version 2. There's at least 3 versions, and I even managed to use the firmware from v3 and it reports Bluetooth 5.4, but I don't really know if it is actually compatible with it since I can't find if a Bluetooth 5.3 device can be updated to 5.4. I also did this in Windows and it worked too so there seems to at least not be an apparent problem.
Is this the correct place to report this or should I report it somewhere else?4 Replies
I also have an UB500 dongle, and had a problem with it. My xbox controller kept disconnecting, and reconnecting after 2-3 seconds. On the following thread: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2527715#p2527715 one of the users pointed to xpadneo's website, which says, that the
0xdfc6d922 version of the same firmware is causing the problem.
I have replaced the driver with the one provided in linked github repository (0x09a98a6b), and now the controller works without an issues. However, the firmware i used is older than the one bazzite shipped with, and I wanted to try with a newer one. However, I can't find a way to extract firmware .bin file from the adapters's windows driver page on TP-Link's website. @Rondo Revolution can I ask, how did you found it?
But yeah, I can confirm that the stock driver is faulty, and it should be replaced.Sure thing @doteq
I downloaded the win10/win11 driver from here: https://www.tp-link.com/nordic/support/download/ub500/
After extracting the file, you can find the driver in
/UB500V3/BT/plugins/Driver Files/Driver/Windows_11_64bit/rtl8761b_mp_chip_bt40_fw_asic_rom_patch_new.dat
You just need to rename this .dat file to rtl8761bu_fw.bin and put it in the appropriate directory I mentioned before.
After that just need to add the new firmware path to the kernel and it should now be loaded correctly. You can use btmgmt info to check the version. You can find the table mapping to check the version in the first answer here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/591803/how-to-check-bluetooth-version-on-my-laptop
I have been using this 5.4 version for a while now and it seems to work correctly, so it looks like at least V2 of UB500 supports it.
Tho, it probably all supports it since it's using the exact same chipset.Thank you so much! That new firmware seems to work without any issues, and the connection is stable without any drops. To be precise, my adapter is UB500 Plus V1, so the driver really works with all of them. Also, I do think that it is "real" Bluetooth 5.4, because the realtek chipset is pretty old, and it was released before Bluetooth 5.2 and 5.3, so if those versions were able to be implemented only with software, than we can assume it's the same for 5.4.
Glad I could help! :3