Picture of the Victor Reader Trek GPS navigator and book player, front view, showing the numeric keypad, bookmark, bookshelf selectior, goto, sleep, and playback navigation buttons, along with the Wi-Fi status lamp and built In microphone.

How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Bluetooth Speaker

The Victor Reader Trek GPS navigator, eBook player, pod catcher, and internet radio now can connect to most any Bluetooth speaker. This allows you to listen to  podcasts, books, recorded notes, and streaming internet radio through that wireless speaker. We thus, demo here how to pair the Victor Reader Trek with a typical Bluetooth speaker.

How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Bluetooth Speaker Summary

In a nutshell, the pairing process goes as follows:

  • First, get the Victor Reader Trek ready for pairing.
  • Next, turn on your Bluetooth speaker.
  • Put it into Bluetooth pairing mode.
  • Finally, on your Trek, scan for and connect to your speaker.

We detail each of these three high level steps next.  For this Demo, we’ll be pairing our Trek to the Craig CMA3568 mini Bluetooth speaker, as pictured next.

Picture of the Craig Bluetooth speaker model CMA3568, front view, powered on and in Bluetooth pairing mode, with the blue pilot lamp highlighted.
Craig Bluetooth speaker model CMA3568, front view, powered on and in Bluetooth pairing mode, with the blue pilot lamp highlighted.

How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Bluetooth Speaker (Detailed)

1. Power on the Victor Reader Trek

Hold in the round power button, located on the top left side of the Trek, as shown next, until the unit vibrates.  Then, wait for the green power-on lamp to illuminate and the Trek to complete booting; it’s fully booted once the welcome message plays and the electronic chime sounds.

Picture of the Victor Reader Trek navigator, left side view, showing the power button location and the green power-on lamp glowing.
Victor Reader Trek navigator, left side view, showing the power button location and the green power-on lamp glowing.

2. Turn Off Airplane Mode if it’s On

With airplane mode on, the Trek will not be able to connect either to Wi-Fi or to Bluetooth devices.  So, make sure that airplane mode is turned off.  Detail: When the online status lamp, as shown next, either glows solidly or is flashing, this means that airplane mode is OFF. When OFF, the unit tries to connect to an in-range Wi-Fi network or Bluetooth device.

When the lamp is dark, this COULD mean that airplane mode is on.  But it also could mean that, though airplane mode is OFF, that there is no active Wi-Fi connection.  The Trek can indeed be offline even though airplane mode is OFF.





So, check  that your airplane mode is indeed OFF.  How?  Press and hold the Online button.  The Online button is the circular button with the WiFi symbol in the top row of keys on the front of the unit.  Press and hold this button in until the Trek reads its airplane mode status. If it says, “Airplane mode OFF,”  then you’re good to go.  But if it says, “Airplane mode ON,” then press and hold the Online button again until it says, “Airplane mode OFF.”

Note that you need not be connected to a WiFi network to pair with a Bluetooth speaker.  But again, airplane mode MUST be disabled.

Picture of the Victor Reader Trek DAISY book player, front view, showing the Online lamp glowing amber, and highlighted. Indicates that airplane mode is OFF, and therefore, that the Trek can connect to Bluetooth devices and / or Wii-Fi networks.
Victor Reader Trek DAISY book player, front view, showing the Online lamp glowing amber, and highlighted. Indicates that airplane mode is OFF, and therefore, that the Trek can connect to Bluetooth devices and / or Wii-Fi networks.

3. Next, Turn On Your Bluetooth Speaker

We’re using the Craig CMA3568 speaker for this demo, as shown next.  For that speaker, the power button is a three-position switch with BT, OFF, and TF positions.  To use this speaker as a Bluetooth speaker, we move the switch to the left.  This turns the speaker on and places it into pairing mode automatically.  No additional button presses needed.

Picture of the Craig Bluetooth speaker, model CMA3568, front view, with its BT on-off switch highlighted.
Craig Bluetooth speaker, model CMA3568, front view, with its BT on-off switch highlighted.

When the speaker is ready to pair, the blue lamp glows and flashes, as shown next.

Picture of the Craig Bluetooth speaker model CMA3568, front view, powered on and in Bluetooth pairing mode, with the blue pilot lamp highlighted.
Craig Bluetooth speaker model CMA3568, front view, powered on and in Bluetooth pairing mode, with the blue pilot lamp highlighted. How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Bluetooth speaker.

4. Scan for the Speaker on the Victor Reader Trek

To do that, make sure the unit is working with the online bookshelves by quickly pressing and releasing the Online button until the unit announces, “Online bookshelves.”  Then quickly press and release the * key once and then the 7 key twice (*77).  The Trek then announces, “Bluetooth.”  Then, quickly press and release the 8 key, until the Trek announces, “Connect to Bluetooth device.”  Finally, press the # (pound) key.  This starts the Trek scanning for Bluetooth devices, and it announces this by saying, “Scanning for Bluetooth devices.”  The scan is complete when the Trek announces the number of Bluetooth devices it discovered, as in, “3 devices found.”





5. Select your Bluetooth Speaker from the List of Found Devices

Use the 2 and 8 keys to move up and down in the list of found devices, until the Trek announces the name of your speaker.  In this demo it found our speaker, named CMA3568.

6.  Connect to your Bluetooth Speaker

With the list cursor currently pointing at your speaker, press the # key.  This initiates the connection process.  After a short pause, the Trek establishes a connection with the speaker, announcing this by saying, “Connected to <your device name>.”  Once the Trek is paired with your speaker, you should now hear any audio that would normally come from the Trek, now emanating from the external Bluetooth speaker that you just successfully paired it with.

7. Done with How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Bluetooth Speaker !

Problems You May Encounter

Note that as of this writing, the announcements made by the Trek are sometimes wrong.  E.g. Sometimes, when you scan for devices, the list of devices it found does not include your speaker.  We find that often, doing a second or third scan finds the speaker, and it will appear in the list of Bluetooth devices as expected.

The following also happens at times.

  • You find your speaker in the list.
  • Then press the # key to connect to it.
  • The Trek then announces, “Connected to Bluetooth device.”
  • But then a second or two later, it announces, “Failed to connect to Bluetooth device.”

Again, the answer here is to try the scan and connection again.  Do this by pressing the * (star) key to leave the Bluetooth menu, then repeat steps 4 through 6 in this procedure.  Keep trying until you make the Bluetooth connection.

About Memorized Bluetooth Devices

Please note that once your Bluetooth speaker has been added to the previously paired devices list in the Trek, your Trek will connect to it again, when it’s Bluetooth is turned on and it detects that speaker is activated and in Bluetooth range. With our Craig speaker, we just turn the speaker on and it automatically reconnects, without us having to do anything further.

Check out the audio demo we recorded   here,   that illustrates via example, how to pair and unpair the Trek from a typical Bluetooth speaker.





Related Posts to How to Pair Victor Reader Trek with Bluetooth Speaker

  1. How to Change Wi-Fi Network on Victor Reader Trek GPS Navigator and eBook Player
  2. Pairing Victor Reader Trek Portable Media Player with Amazon Alexa Echo Smart Speakers Via Bluetooth
  3. How to Unpair the Victor Reader Trek eBook Reader from a Bluetooth Speaker
  4. HumanWare Victor Reader Trek GPS Navigator and DAISY Book Player Picture Gallery
  5. Google Home Mini Bluetooth Speaker Pairing Instructions

Revision History

  • 2021-09-09: Revised the internal links and tags lists.
  • 2019-04-06: Removed ad code.
  • 2018-02-09: Originally published.