Pulseaudio and Bluetooth working as root but not as normal user

Question

I have been pulling my hair out trying to get something to work which I would have thougth would be simple in 2019: Connect an external bluetooth speaker to my Raspberry Pi Zero WH, which is running headless, so I am configuring it over SSH.

The raspberry pi zero is running raspiban buster lite, and I have installed the packages (some re-installed multiple times in an effort to fix the error):

bluez
pulseaudio
pulseaudio-module-bluetooth

I have managed to pair the device using

sudo bluetoothctl
scan on
trust xx:xx:xx:xx
pair xx:xx:xx:xx

However, when I try

connect xx:xx:xx:xx

I get this error:

Attempting to connect to xx:xx:xx:xx
Failed to connect: org.bluez.Error.Failed

When I look at

sudo service bluetooth status

I get this error message:

a2dp-sink profile connect failed for xx:xx:xx:xx: Protocol not available

When I search for this error online, all I find is "you are missing pulseaudio-module-bluetooth", however this is installed and I have re-installed it multiple times now.

However, when I start pulseaudio as root:

sudo pulseaudio --start

The speaker connects perfectly fine in bluetoothctl.

I have found some posts online as permission problems with bluetooth and pulseaudio and have added the user "pi" (the user which should play audio on the speaker) to the groups:

lp
pulse-access

and the user "pulse" to the groups:

lp
audio

Restarted everything, and it still does not work unless I start pulseaudio as root.

I am at my wit's end and google is less than helpful at this stage. Anything I find, does not work. Does anyone have an idea what else I can try?

Thanks, Joe

Answer 1

Should have waited 5 minutes before posting.

Adding both users (pulse and pi) to the group "bluetooth" and restarting pulseaudio worked.

Leaving this here in case anyone else ever runs into this problem.

This shouldn't be this difficult to set up. Seriously.