## About
This gist will show how to setup Raspbian Stretch as a headless Bluetooth A2DP audio sink. This will allow your phone, laptop or other Bluetooth device to play audio wirelessly through a Rasperry Pi.

## Motivation
A quick search will turn up a plethora of tutorials on setting up A2DP on the Raspberry Pi. However, I felt this gist was necessary beacuse this solution is:
* Automatic & Headless - Once setup, the system is entirely automatic. No user iteration is required to pair, connect or start playback. Therefore the Raspberry Pi can be run headless. 
* Simple - This solution has few dependencies, readily available packages and minimal configuration.
* Up to date - As of December 2017. Written for Raspbian Stretch & Bluez 5.43

## Pre-requisites
* Raspberry Pi - I used the Raspberry Pi 3. The Pi 3 has integrated Bluetooth, however there is a [known bug](https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/1402) when the WiFi is used simultaneously.
* Raspbian Stretch Lite - See the offical guide on how to install the latest Raspbian OS: https://www.raspberrypi.org/learning/software-guide/quickstart/

## Disabling Integrated Bluetooth
If you are using a separate USB Bluetooth dongle, disbale the integrated Bluetooth to prevent conflicts.

To disable the integrated Bluetooth
Add the following line to ``/boot/config.txt``
```dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt```

Execute the following command
```
sudo systemctl disable hciuart.service
```

## Initial Setup
First execute the following commands to make sure the system is up to date.
```
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
```
Then reboot the Pi to ensure the latest kernal is loaded.

Install the pre-requisite packages.
```
sudo apt-get install bluealsa python-dbus
```