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Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

cnn.com

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Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#221

Post by toxik »

mschuster91 wrote: post #167
toxik wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I’ve noticed is that Bluetooth breaks down around major construction sites, like infrastructure projects. It’s very strange, I wonder if they have some kind of high power BT transmitters for some reason.

On construction sites, I'd suspect that the problem is an awful lot of EM noise from machinery that should have been replaced or at least maintained decades ago, like mechanic spark generators/distributors from simple combustion motors or brushed electric motors (e.g. in drills). Additionally, remote controls for cranes, concrete pumps and other machinery may be the cause, depending on the frequency bands these use.…

It may be motor noise but anecdotal evidence suggests that it happens even when the machines are off, eg on national holidays. Some kind of transmitter seems likely though. I know one construction site had analog video signals in the 2.4 Ghz range for their surveillance cameras. I accidentally found out when I did a range sweep on a video receiver for other reasons.

PS I am in northern Europe, not the US.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#222

Post by stackbutterflow »

cedivad wrote: post #200
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #162

The biggest relevation I had with bluetooth was seeing an actual pairing sequence and data transmission on an RF spectrum analyser. It really is low-power. Once you realize it is a rat's fart above the noise floor you have a whole new appreciation for the fact that it even works in the first place.

No, you had a bad test setup. BT is 10dB below wifi, I can't see how what you are saying makes sense. Also it uses simple encodings that save on processing power but require more rf power to be decoded successfully.

For those who don't know, every 3db the energy is halved/doubled.

So at -10db the energy has been halved over 3 times.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#223

Post by jtbayly »

jefe_ wrote: post #185
blackhaz wrote: post #91

My car (Lexus) and my iPhone X: The car detects iPhone presence, like, 50% of the time. If it does detect it, it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other and begins playing "Songs of Innocence" the moment I turn the ignition on. I tried deleting this song from the iPhone, but it auto-magically restores itself somehow, as if it is in the telephone's firmware. The image of men hugging in shade is…

Similar thing would happen in my Toyota, the song 'Afraid' by Yellowcard would play every time I turned on the car. Realized it was playing the first song in my library. In Apple Music there is a song called 'A a a a a Very Good Song (Silent Track)' by artist Samir Mezrahi, that contains 10 minutes of silence. I added that to my library and now that song plays when I turn on my car (although this autoplay only happen…

I created a one-hour long silent MP3 and named it similarly and added it to my phone. I've sent it to a friend who uses it as well.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#224

Post by knorker »

Sometimes people make excuses for bluetooth. Like "it can do so many things, that's why it's so complex and can get bugs".

No. Just no.

99.999% of use cases is "get audio to my headphones, and possibly from its mic too".

20 years and we can't even get the primary use case to work.

If this were about setting up some esoteric "I can't believe bluetooth can do this" feature, then maybe.

But just get audio to work. That's it. This is not fusion power, yet seems to be as hard for the people implementing it.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#225

Post by meltyness »

This happens with all networking.

The most well-funded companies oscillate between "trying to get ahead" by hacking in "whatever's next" and selling that to people and "just blowing off the spec" because they're not getting paid enough. This is a sedementary process because of whatever business-related adage stops them from rewriting their code.

The next awful bit is what happens to the spec itself. We show up in Vegas at the Bluetooth conference in the hottest July on record. No one can share any vision about what this thing is supposed to do, or replace, so everyone just sneezes into the multithousand page specification.

The multithousand page specification is actually a paid affair as well, and it's inefficient, confusing, poorly organized, and loooooong, so everyone just ends up building what they think the spec "sounds like."

Even better, there's a deadline creeping up, because there's a rumor that Competitor B is pushing out their part of the stack in November, and even if we pay the unbelievable fee to the FCC to get expedited treatment, it's still a 2 month wait, if it's approved -- not to mention legal's checks.

...at least, that's what it looks like to an outsider.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#226

Post by themaninthedark »

aliqot wrote: post #199
NikolaNovak wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone. I assumed I was just a grouchy old man (because I am:) but I recently found out what level of social stratification happens for teenagers without iPhone. Immediate judgement, plus the continued dreaded green text box. It is brutal I thought I was exaggerating the iPhone as a status symbol as opposed to actually convenient / t…

Imagine how I feel, I don't carry or use phones, period. The level of outright indignation I experience is pretty high. People resort to levels of disgust when met with someone who openly rejects carrying around a little bother-box in their pocket as if I'm some type of unwashed knave.

Yeah that sucks. I graduated collage in 2008 and I refused to get a phone before that point. The amount of people complaining how it is inconvenient that they have to call your room phone instead of texting, how they can't make plans(in reality, it is a crutch for lack of planning), etc.

For a while, it was the same with Facebook.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#227

Post by omnibrain »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #141
blackhaz wrote: post #91

My car (Lexus) and my iPhone X: The car detects iPhone presence, like, 50% of the time. If it does detect it, it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other and begins playing "Songs of Innocence" the moment I turn the ignition on. I tried deleting this song from the iPhone, but it auto-magically restores itself somehow, as if it is in the telephone's firmware. The image of men hugging in shade is…

Haha, sorry, reminds me - my wife hates U2 with violent passion. Eventually I asked her what caused such burning rage, and she said her car starts playing a specific U2 song every time she turns it on. For years! Eventually I traced it to a promotional album U2 and apple and iTunes pushed to her devices without her knowledge. Man can these things backfire! But yeah we have a 2019 Honda and iPhones xr (not my choice;…

I feel you man...

The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) must be our most listened Song of all time.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#228

Post by Digit-Al »

I have a Philips soundbar with Bluetooth. A couple or so years ago I was playing music on it from my laptop and the connection started crackling and then just died. I could not get any of my devices to connect, and even tried a factory reset with no luck. I was thinking I would have to buy a new one, but the next day I tried it again and it connected immediately with no problem. It's happened a couple more times since then and I have found that if I just out it back on standby and leave it for an as yet undetermined amount of time it starts working again.

It's very strange.

I've also found that if my phone connects to my laptop through Bluetooth at the same time that I am streaming music via Bluetooth from my laptop to my soundbar the phone will cause interference and the music will keep crackling and dropping out.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#229

Post by knorker »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #162

The biggest relevation I had with bluetooth was seeing an actual pairing sequence and data transmission on an RF spectrum analyser. It really is low-power. Once you realize it is a rat's fart above the noise floor you have a whole new appreciation for the fact that it even works in the first place.

No, that's not it.

That's not why my bluetooth disconnects every single time I unsuspend my chromebook, about 2 minutes after connecting bluetooth it'll disconnect again, and will be permanently on the second time.

That's not why I have to reboot my phone sometimes, or reboot my headphones, to get it to "unstuck". And the fact that it works to "turn it off and on again".

It's reliably broken, not just by random patterns.

If it were signal strength then we'd be seeing dropped packets. I get some dropped packets when on the other side of the house, on a different floor, from the transmitter. Yet sometimes I can still not get anything through at all when the devices are right next to each other, until I reboot them.

And power goes down with distance squared. "Right next to each other" is at that point almost (but not quite) "so loud it could damage each other's receiver".

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#230

Post by wingworks »

badthingfactory wrote: post #73
Paul_S wrote: post #56

Let me pass on to you some ancient Chinese... er, German engineering wisdom: He who understands wireless communication uses cables.

Any time a relative asks me which printer they should buy, I tell them to get the cheapest Brother laser printer they can find without wifi. I mostly do this to save myself support calls, but it's also the printer I use in my own house.

A few years ago this is what I did. Got the cheapest Brother laser printer. Happened to have wifi, but managed to disable it. It's been working solid via cables for years.
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