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Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

engadget.com

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Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#81

Post by Gibbon1 »

kabdib wrote: post #39
theGimp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I agree that it depends on the device. A Chevy model I don't recall had the stupidest bug where you sometimes couldn't pair unless you reset the car computer... by leaving the driver's door open for 5 minutes. I don't blame the Bluetooth standard though, messy as it might be. That's clearly terrible implementation on the car manufacturer's part.

BT seems over-complicated, especially considering that it's quite often low-level (I really mean that organizationally) firmware engineers working on products that won't be updated after they ship. Given the types of products that are made with BT support, the hostile environments that they're developed within, and the common after-sales abandonment of support, BT should be a simpler protocol that is a LOT more resil…

Fifteen years ago, looking at the Bluetooth spec my impression was the best way to implement it would have been to send the designers to the Siberia and then start over.

The two issues I saw were Bluetooth is based on a frequency hopping radio using a dated low performance modulation scheme. The only nice thing you could say is potentially you can build really low power radio's using that design. However that brings up the second issues, a very complicated kitchen sink base band which requires a complex software stack and power hungry processor to support it. There goes your low power, out the window. (I think there were about 20 companies trying to design low power Bluetooth transceivers circa 2000-2003, most of them never could get the power low enough or a working stack)

Hardware design issues aside, frequency hoppers have insurmountable quality of service issues for most applications. Professionally I don't think this is fixable.

They would have been better off doing the following three things.

1. Define a low speed point to point oriented modulation scheme that can be supported by 802.11 radio front ends. Probably could have implemented this as a sub-band of some sort.

2. A direct sequence spread spectrum physical layer for USB. Advantage of that is the USB stack mostly works as USB had a 10 year head start and more resources than the Bluetooth alliance ever had, or will have. If one thinks a stack like USB is 'easy' consider Microsoft had to redesign theirs three or four times.

3. Dedicated DSSS wireless headphone spec. Seriously this was the original design goal and was totally achievable until the committee responsible for the spec lost their minds.

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#82

Post by najra »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #80
jacobolus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple’s stylus has a pretty effective and reliable pairing method: just briefly plug it into the tablet. Too bad this method can’t be more generally used.

Apple Magic Trackpad 2/Mouse/Keyboard do work this way.

How? I always have issues switching my trackpad from my laptop to my mac mini and back...

edit: nevermind, just noticed you said magic trackpad 2

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#83

Post by pi-rat »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #72
the_watcher wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headphones are the big benefactor here, for me at least. I can walk to the kitchen with my wireless headphones.

The problem though is the Sun will negatively affect Bluetooth range. If you're inside it's great and you can go into multiple rooms depending on the materials / wall thickness between you and the device. Once you go outside on a sunny day if the phone isn't directly in the line-of-sight (and even then) you'll get constant disconnects. Using multiple headsets / headphones and phones (including iPhone and multiple And…

Sun affects bluetooth? How?

The only times I've trouble with BT outside is when tons of people or shops are nearby (overcrowded 2.4 ghz spectrum I assume - bt, wifi, etc)

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#84

Post by BillinghamJ »

cbsmith wrote: post #38
modeless wrote: post #4

I don't need more range or more speed. I need it to reliably connect and stay connected while devices are well within range of each other, and stop breaking every time I upgrade anything. Unfortunately that would require making it less complex, which is about as likely as a broken egg spontaneously reassembling.

Yup. Bluetooth is kind of a nightmare for operability. I do think it could benefit from a bit more speed, in terms of opening up what it can do, but in terms of range.... if I need range, I'll use WiFi. What I need is for bluetooth to just work, dammit. I get that it is hard, but work on that before you work on anything else. Heck, I've found that using WiFi instead of bluetooth for a wireless hotspot/link is more re…

It's aimed at low power IoT devices. Wi-Fi is (relatively) very power hungry compared with Bluetooth LE.

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#85

Post by pi-rat »

bokenator wrote: post #20
the_watcher wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headphones are the big benefactor here, for me at least. I can walk to the kitchen with my wireless headphones.

I've found that microwave interferes very strongly with Bluetooth headphones

Both use the 2.4 ghz spectrum, so that makes sense - especially for bad microwaves. I had an old microwave that completely tanked my 2.4 ghz Wifi back in the days (very poorly shielded).

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#86

Post by dominicgs »

enraged_camel wrote: post #14
modeless wrote: post #4

I don't need more range or more speed. I need it to reliably connect and stay connected while devices are well within range of each other, and stop breaking every time I upgrade anything. Unfortunately that would require making it less complex, which is about as likely as a broken egg spontaneously reassembling.

I'd also like it to consume less power. I know the current standard touts itself as "low-energy" but I can see a very noticeable increase in battery drain when I have it enabled on my phone. So I always keep it disabled.

This is really a poor marketing job by the Bluetooth SIG. Bluetooth 4.0 added BLE, the low energy mode, but it didn't change anything about the power usage of existing modes.

BLE is almost and entirely different protocol, albeit implemented on the same chipset, which is running alongside the existing Bluetooth stack on your phone. Nothing in the Bluetooth 4.0 spec reduces the power usage of the Basic Rate and Enhanced Data Rate modes.

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#87

Post by BillinghamJ »

Niksko wrote: post #49

Working with Bluetooth on a project last year was a gigantic pain in the ass. Linux support was reasonably good, though with bizarre quirks and changes of tooling between libbluetooth versions. OSX was a total nightmare. The project is currently stalled because three days before I had to head off (I was doing all of the programming and troubleshooting on the software side) my collaborators decided to inform me that t…

macOS/iOS support for Bluetooth is very good at the core API level but ultimately that means you must use Objective-C for at least a small part of your codebase.

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#89

Post by sdl »

micheljansen wrote: post #69

That's nice, but the biggest UX problem with Bluetooth is still the pairing misery. It's 2016 and it's still nearly impossible to use any one Bluetooth device with multiple other devices. Try switching a Bluetooth headset from an iPhone to a Mac or convincing your car to switch from one phone to another. It's a huge mess and its not just a matter of the technology not working as designed. These are fundamental proble…

So true. At first I couldn't believe it, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to completely remove a paired bluetooth device from windows. After having connected my wireless keyboard to my mac for a day, I tried to reconnect it to windows. It fails silently and doesn't show up any more in available bluetooth devices. The connection to my mac obviously changed the pairing code, while windows still tries the old one. I googled for hours, tried everything from uninstalling bluetooth drivers to removing entries from the registry. Windows always silently re-adds the keyboard to the installed devices and fails at pairing. So I've got 2 choices left: Buy a new keyboard or reinstall Windows. Yay!

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#90

Post by abritinthebay »

cyphax wrote: post #66
vhost- wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need the range. I routinely grab my phone when I'm cooking dinner and walk to the living room causing my bluetooth speaker to make awful noises.

Is the bluetooth spec the limit though, or maybe the implementation? I can leave my phone on the table downstairs and my headphones still work fine in the attic, which is through 2 floors of reinforced concrete. I was very surprised to be able to do this, but kitchen-living room should be possible. Unless your kitchen is in the west wing, and your living room is a mile down the hall in the east wing in which case I'm…

As it's 2.4ghz it may also be partially spectrum pollution.

That said - that seems rather impressive for Bluetooth, I've had one reinforced concrete wall pretty consistently screw up most bluetooth signals in my experience, so I'd posit that you're getting unusually good reception there.

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