Change your Bluetooth address of your Linux machine

Do you have Bluetooth on your computer? Is it a Linux machine? For some weird reason, do you need it to have a different address?

If you answered yes to the above, here’s the magic command:

bccmd -d 0 psset -s 0 bdaddr 0×44 0×00 0×66 0×55 0×33 0×00 0×22 0×11

…and your Bluetooth device address (BDA) becomes 11:22:33:44:55:66. Of course, you will replace the underlined numbers with the actual address that you want to write.

It does not always work. You need bluez-utils 3, and you need a CSR chip in your computer or USB dongle. To find out, type hciconfig hci0 version and the manufacturer should be Cambridge Silicon Radio. Last time I checked, they had~70% market share, so you have a good chance of having one.

If you have more than a single device, use “bccmd -d 1 …” for hci1, and so on.

The option -s 0 stores it into the default memory, which is usually RAM – so the new address may be lost after reboot. Your chip may have various ROM stores – use -s 1 to -s 3. If you want specifically to write your new address in ram, use -s 4. Note that the store with the highest number has priority (e.g. if an address is stored in both RAM and flash, RAM has priority)

For gory details about programming CSR chips, you can get documents from http://www.csrsupport.com/