How to disable the Pi3's WLAN & Bluetooth ?

[Fidelius]

When on 29th February 2016 Mr. Upton made the nice Pi3 anouncement, in the posts below the announcement, a user asked if the Wifi and Bluetooth features of the Pi3 could be disabled. Mrs. Upton kindly answered:

You can turn Bluetooth and WiFi off – we’ll make sure there’s an easy interface for you to do that with in our next update.

Can we turn-off WLAN & Bluetooth already now with some simple means, until the easy interface comes?

In the Pi3 Q&A forum thread somebody mentioned some Linux modules to black-list, but is this enough hardware-wise and what exact steps would be necessary? (For those not being experts with hardware and Linux kernel modules.)

Thanks!

[HopmanUK]

I've been trying to find the same information..

I believe it may be possible to alter the kernel to be able to put it in airplane mode permanently, but have not had a chance to try it yet...

# put into airplane mode
rfkill.default_state=0

#stop airplane mode button from doing anything
rfkill.master_switch_mode=0

The only other thing I can think of is to disable the loading of the drivers for now:

/etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf

#wifi
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist brcmutil
#bt
blacklist btbcm
blacklist hci_uart

I may be wrong on these, but I think we need some input from people in the know.

Rich

[denghauser]

Thanks a lot. The blacklist worked perfect.

[Fidelius]

Yes, thanks for these lines!

/etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf

#wifi
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist brcmutil
#bt
blacklist btbcm
blacklist hci_uart

Will do that.
Then how do I find out if it worked? Is there some LED or other means to see if the Wifi and Bluetooth hardware is active? (Like one some laptops where there's some hot keys with small LEDs).

Out of interest (and not having activated your blacklist yet), when I "lsmod" my kernel loaded modules, I see the "brcmfmac" and "brcmutil" modules loaded, but not the "btbcm" and "hci_uart" one. Is this normal? (With current Raspbian)

[Whiznot]

I thought disabling wifi and bluetooth might lower temperatures and boost performance so I created the raspi-blacklist.conf file and rebooted. Wifi was disabled but the temperature monitor went from 53 to 67. I don't understand why I had a 14 degree rise but after removing raspi-blacklist.conf and rebooting the temp monitor went back to 53.

[jahboater]

I thought disabling wifi and bluetooth might lower temperatures and boost performance so I created the raspi-blacklist.conf file and rebooted. Wifi was disabled but the temperature monitor went from 53 to 67. I don't understand why I had a 14 degree rise but after removing raspi-blacklist.conf and rebooting the temp monitor went back to 53.

I saw no change in temperature at all. Are you sure there were no other changes?

[Whiznot]

It works now. I'm not sure what went wrong before. I had the wifi plugin in the system tray before the first attempt that caused the temperature rise. I restored a system backup and removed the wifi plugin before the second attempt that worked. Disabling wifi and bluetooth seems to have decreased temperature by one or two degrees.

[bfesser]

When on 29th February 2016 Mr. Upton made the nice Pi3 anouncement, in the posts below the announcement, a user asked if the Wifi and Bluetooth features of the Pi3 could be disabled. Mrs. Upton kindly answered:

You can turn Bluetooth and WiFi off – we’ll make sure there’s an easy interface for you to do that with in our next update.

Any word on if/when this will be added to raspi-config and whether or not it saves power?

[tweak42]

When on 29th February 2016 Mr. Upton made the nice Pi3 anouncement, in the posts below the announcement, a user asked if the Wifi and Bluetooth features of the Pi3 could be disabled. Mrs. Upton kindly answered:

You can turn Bluetooth and WiFi off – we’ll make sure there’s an easy interface for you to do that with in our next update.

Any word on if/when this will be added to raspi-config and whether or not it saves power?

Not sure if these answer your question.

https://github.com/RPi-Distro/raspi-config/issues/15
http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/qu ... nt-setting

[olaffit]

When on 29th February 2016 Mr. Upton made the nice Pi3 anouncement, in the posts below the announcement, a user asked if the Wifi and Bluetooth features of the Pi3 could be disabled. Mrs. Upton kindly answered:

You can turn Bluetooth and WiFi off – we’ll make sure there’s an easy interface for you to do that with in our next update.

you can simply turn wifi and BT off in the GUI. At the top right.
This option should really go into raspi-config

[kwacka]

I agree the ability to turn off wifi should be part of raspi-config, but will this also enable USB wi-fi devices?

Might blacklisting be the preferred method?

[hommar]

for disable onboard WiFi and BT on Pi3 add to config.txt

Code: Select all

dtoverlay=pi3-disable-wifi
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt

[ronny_b]

I am running Raspbian with Pixel, and there two icons in the upper right of the taskbar, one for WiFi and one for Bluetooth. Clicking on either will bring up a menu. The first item
on both menus is a "clickable" entry to turn off the respective service.

It's bedtime in Misouri - good night everyone.

Ron

[daharris]

for disable onboard WiFi and BT on Pi3 add to config.txt

Code: Select all

dtoverlay=pi3-disable-wifi
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt

How would you use this method to disable the ethernet?

[pcmanbob]

Hi.

just do

Code: Select all

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

and add those two lines to the bottom of the file then save and reboot.

like this.

Code: Select all

# For more options and information see
# http://rpf.io/configtxtreadme
# Some settings may impact device functionality. See link above for details

# uncomment if you get no picture on HDMI for a default "safe" mode
#hdmi_safe=1

# uncomment this if your display has a black border of unused pixels visible
# and your display can output without overscan
#disable_overscan=1

# uncomment the following to adjust overscan. Use positive numbers if console
# goes off screen, and negative if there is too much border
#overscan_left=16
#overscan_right=16
#overscan_top=16
#overscan_bottom=16

# uncomment to force a console size. By default it will be display's size minus
# overscan.
#framebuffer_width=1280
#framebuffer_height=720

# uncomment if hdmi display is not detected and composite is being output
#hdmi_force_hotplug=1

# uncomment to force a specific HDMI mode (this will force VGA)
#hdmi_group=1
#hdmi_mode=1

# uncomment to force a HDMI mode rather than DVI. This can make audio work in
# DMT (computer monitor) modes
#hdmi_drive=2

# uncomment to increase signal to HDMI, if you have interference, blanking, or
# no display
#config_hdmi_boost=4

# uncomment for composite PAL
#sdtv_mode=2

#uncomment to overclock the arm. 700 MHz is the default.
#arm_freq=800

# Uncomment some or all of these to enable the optional hardware interfaces
#dtparam=i2c_arm=on
#dtparam=i2s=on
#dtparam=spi=on

# Uncomment this to enable the lirc-rpi module
#dtoverlay=lirc-rpi

# Additional overlays and parameters are documented /boot/overlays/README

# Enable audio (loads snd_bcm2835)
dtparam=audio=on
gpu_mem=16

# turn wifi and bluetooth off
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-wifi
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt

[rbphilip]

the /boot/config.txt edits work, but so to shell commands.


sudo ifconfig wlan0 down

[graysky]

The only other thing I can think of is to disable the loading of the drivers for now:

/etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf

#wifi
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist brcmutil
#bt
blacklist btbcm
blacklist hci_uart

With recent kernel version is seems bluetooth is still loading. After some exploring, I found the following is needed to stop:

Code: Select all

% cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf 
# ref: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=138610
# bluetooth
blacklist hci_uart
blacklist btbcm
blacklist btintel
blacklist rfcom
blacklist btqca
blacklist btsdio
blacklist bluetooth

# wifi
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist brcmutil