The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is responsible for publishing all the Bluetooth specs and you can download them here: https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/specs/ Notice that everything appears to be there: very detailed specs and information about testing. However, when you try to implement one of these specs you quickly realize that you cannot do it with the spec alone. You need example code, base imp…
Ask HN: Bluetooth kinda sucks. Why don't we have something better?
51–60 of 165 posts
Re: Ask HN: Bluetooth kinda sucks. Why don't we have something better?
#52There's a long list of comments in that thread discussing "why" it's the case, with most simply saying "it's difficult." I disagree. I think it's the same reason why so much of our software is poor quality: taking something from "works" to "works well" is a cost sink. It will cost you and yet doesn't add much to the bottom line to compensate. It's sad that my family uses the available Bluetooth devices less than if t…
> It's sad that my family uses the available Bluetooth devices less than if there was a wire we could just plug into. I specifically buy wired gaming headphones, wired mice and wired keyboards - if there is any sensible wired option I'll take it every time, I even have an extra long network cable I can throw across the living room for the laptop. Wireless stuff is just less reliable and always seems to throw issues w…
Re: Ask HN: Bluetooth kinda sucks. Why don't we have something better?
#53It's only very recently that I discovered that you could use it to transmit files from Device A to Device B. No middleman app or cloud sync service needed! Considering how awful USB file sync is between Mac OS and Android, I don't even break out the cable to transfer files anymore.
The downside is that transmission speeds are very slow, approx. 5 seconds to transfer 1 MB. That's fine for EPUBs and text-heavy PDFs, but not for anything bigger.
Re: Ask HN: Bluetooth kinda sucks. Why don't we have something better?
#54Are any of these problems actually Bluetooth problems? It seems the data protocol works just fine. It appears to me that the various devices just handle the associated tasks poorly. Eg you could take a call on your phone while playing music on your computer, if your phone had the functionality to send the music via Bluetooth and keep the phone conversation separate.
Exactly. At this point, it's not the protocol. It's devices with shitty implementations of the protocol.
As of 2022, there isn't even a solution, only the hope that BT5 might be have standardized support for marginally acceptable quality, provided vendors actually implement it. Of course, you can't buy BT5 hardware today and vendors have entirely ignored large parts of the spec before, so that's not exactly a great selling point.
Re: Ask HN: Bluetooth kinda sucks. Why don't we have something better?
#55There's a long list of comments in that thread discussing "why" it's the case, with most simply saying "it's difficult." I disagree. I think it's the same reason why so much of our software is poor quality: taking something from "works" to "works well" is a cost sink. It will cost you and yet doesn't add much to the bottom line to compensate. It's sad that my family uses the available Bluetooth devices less than if t…
Re: Ask HN: Bluetooth kinda sucks. Why don't we have something better?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's sad that my family uses the available Bluetooth devices less than if there was a wire we could just plug into. I specifically buy wired gaming headphones, wired mice and wired keyboards - if there is any sensible wired option I'll take it every time, I even have an extra long network cable I can throw across the living room for the laptop. Wireless stuff is just less reliable and always seems to throw issues w…
> I even have an extra long network cable I can throw across the living room for the laptop This seems unnecessary unless you have high latency requirements, like for FPS or fighter gaming, but even then WiFi (and network coding for these games) has gotten so good that lag is barely noticeable anyway. I say this as someone who has my desk hardwired with an unmanaged switch because it seems silly to not take the time…
Re: Ask HN: Bluetooth kinda sucks. Why don't we have something better?
#57For music, I bought a DLNA renderer (more like a Chromecast), and just assumed that lots of software could remotely talk to it. But about the only software that almost works with it is something with a poor UI from yesteryear on Android. And music service support is hit and miss. So I'm edging towards Bluetooth now.
That said, yesterday I resorted to CDs. And today, I've jacked a spare phone into an auxiliary port. And I won't use my phone for Bluetooth music mainly because if I walk out the room or want to take a call it all goes tits up.
I've had Bluetooth on Debian Linux on my Thinkpad for years, and different releases have been hit and miss for things like file transfer. And address book syncing. And that's not confined to Linux either.
When it works... It does feel like magic.
Really I want to easily route sound from one app to a particular device or devices with easy remote management. Voice control is a bit hit and miss. But hands free remote is a good idea.
UI is very esoteric, like when you are offered a list of Bluetooth services. A phone I had would offer itself as a remote device or something, but I never figured out how and what it did. Or the worry that your phone might turn into a data access point accidentally.
Re: Ask HN: Bluetooth kinda sucks. Why don't we have something better?
#58If you stick to the stuff that works with every device (no automated switching, no proprietary codecs, no out of spec bandwidth and timing requirements) Bluetooth works quite well in my experience. Only when companies try to invent their own solution or very cheap, crappy, standards avoiding devices get involved does Bluetooth really start to break down.
Another issue is driver stability. I swear to god, Windows just hates Bluetooth. Somehow, Windows drivers for even common chipsets are worse than Linux drivers. On the other hand, on some Linux kernels, having Bluetooth on while putting a device in sleep can cause a kernel panic... It's all so unstable. There's nothing in the spec that says your software must hang and become unresponsive when an (un)pairing attempt fails, but here we are!
As for some of your complaints:
- connecting devices will make them behave like they were made to do. If they play default music, that sounds like a product feature that's off, not a protocol problem.
- pairing multiple devices is not governed by the spec (nor should it be, in my opinion). What a device will do depends on what makes sense for a device; a party speaker may want to connect to whatever device is available, but headphones or a keyboard prefer connecting to the device they were last connected to. Again, this is more of a device implementation feature, not really a protocol thing.
- connecting multiple headsets to a device is possible. In fact, I've done so in the past. You're limited by the throughput of your Bluetooth version (quite high, these days!) and any interference, but there's nothing preventing a device from playing to two devices at once. In Linux you can create a dummy device to stream to multiple audio endpoints through some config or command lines; on other platforms you'll need custom applications. This is an OS design issue, not a protocol issue, and it's no different from playing audio to both your TV and your headphones (quite useful for watching movies together with people with hearing aids and the like!)
- Can't connect multiple devices to one headset: this is a protocol issue. Devices join a piconet which needs to be synchronised and is controlled by a single master device. In theory that master device could be your headphones, with both other devices acting as clients, but in practice this is often not the case. Such a system can be quite finicky to work with when one or both devices go out of range or if multiple devices try to send high definition audio over the same channel at the same time.
Like all things Bluetooth, I've often wondered why WiFi Direct hasn't been more of a success. It'll eat more power, but it solves so many issues with Bluetooth, especially with modern 5.2GHz WiFi. For battery life purposes we'll be stuck with Bluetooth for a while, but I'd like to see WiFi Direct get a second chance for sharing files. Hell, it could even work as a cross platform Airdrop alternative (though Apple will obviously never join in).
Re: Ask HN: Bluetooth kinda sucks. Why don't we have something better?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's sad that my family uses the available Bluetooth devices less than if there was a wire we could just plug into. I specifically buy wired gaming headphones, wired mice and wired keyboards - if there is any sensible wired option I'll take it every time, I even have an extra long network cable I can throw across the living room for the laptop. Wireless stuff is just less reliable and always seems to throw issues w…
I make an exception for ear buds, because the utility of being able to stand up, and walk around with my hands free and unencumbered by a tether while on a call, is just so great. It helps that Air Pods are among the best implementation there is, but even they are not perfect. I had to disable automatic device switching or they would occasionally get confused and drop the connection to the current device.