PS3 Sixaxis with Bluetooth on Debian Sid
Continuing to tweak my Kodi setup, I thought it would be fun to attempt connecting a PS3 Sixaxis controller to it, since the HTPC I’m using has built-in bluetooth.
Contrary to what most of the internet seems to say on the subject for Debian/Ubuntu systems, which seems to involve third-party tools and sometimes compiling things, I found the process much simpler on a modern system.
Here are the basics (since this is an HTPC I’m configuring over SSH, this is all non-visual stuff):
- First, if you haven’t used Bluetooth on the target system yet, make sure it’s set up and working:
- execute
lsusb
and verify the presence of a Bluetooth device, and that it’s firmware is loaded (if not, you’ll see(No firmware)
next to it’s name) - after making sure the device is available, install the
bluetooth
package viaapt-get
oraptitude
- make sure the Bluetooth service is running with
systemctl status bluetooth.service
- as a quick test to make sure BT is working, turn on a bluetooth device and run
hcitool scan
to see if the PC finds it
- execute
- If you have working Bluetooth, the first step is to plug the Sixaxis controller into the PC using a USB cable and turn it on (hit the PS button). This will register/pair the controller.
- to verify, you should be able to run
systemctl status bluetooth.service
again, and see notifications about the controller’s connection.
- to verify, you should be able to run
- After pairing via USB, unplug the controller, hit the PS button again to power it on, and execute
bluetoothctl
.- You should see an entry like
[NEW] Device 00:00:00:00:00:00 PLAYSTATION(R)3 Controller
(where00:00:00:00:00:00
is the mac address of your controller). - If you’re seeing periodic entries like
[CHG] Device 00:00:00:00:00:00 Connected: yes/no
, execute the commandtrust 00:00:00:00:00:00
, and it should flag the controller as a trusted device.
- You should see an entry like
- Once done, you should have a working Bluetooth PS3 controller which you can use to control Kodi and play games with.
My steps are a bit verbose for (hopefully) clarity, but should take no more than 5 minutes and you shouldn’t need to resort to the installation of 3rd party repositories or software, or compile anything yourself.