Related: Nordic Semi nRF52840 announced today, with BT 5 support and additional on-board peripherals (including ZigBee)
Bluetooth 5 Now Available
31–40 of 170 posts
Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available
#32Why is general bluetooth connectivity so "buggy"? Why am I always struggling connecting my iPhone 6s to my bose bluetooth speaker? I would love to understand that.
In my experience, Bluetooth audio devices have been the most stable.
SPP (serial port) on the other hand has never worked reliably for me. I mean, I have seen it work. I just never take it as granted that it will work, and thus far have not been disappointed.
Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we'd need an RF engineer to answer this more thoroughly, but it's my understanding that there are a lot of materials capable of absorbing the low-energy microwaves that it uses as its transmission medium. Water is a big one, which I think is one reason that having my phone in my back pocket almost always results in a dropped connection to my headphones over the course of working outside for a few hours, compa…
Hi! RF Engineer here. Bluetooth sucks for a number of reasons, only a few of which actually relate to RF. First, we're bad at naming things. Is it BLE? Bluetooth Smart? BTLE? Bluetooth 4.0, or Bluetooth 4 Low Energy? And what does this have to do with ANT+? This doesn't seem to be a big problem, but it's a sign of deeper problems with the spec. In the long run it makes it very difficult for developers to implement. B…
Very informative, thanks! I had no idea the naming conventions were that wonky.
Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available
#34Why is general bluetooth connectivity so "buggy"? Why am I always struggling connecting my iPhone 6s to my bose bluetooth speaker? I would love to understand that.
I think we'd need an RF engineer to answer this more thoroughly, but it's my understanding that there are a lot of materials capable of absorbing the low-energy microwaves that it uses as its transmission medium. Water is a big one, which I think is one reason that having my phone in my back pocket almost always results in a dropped connection to my headphones over the course of working outside for a few hours, compa…
As long as you're within the communication range and in whatever your protocol calls a "reasonable" environment (e.g. not underwater), you're OK. The strength of the signals isn't chosen at random, it's chosen so that it allows devices to function well (within the design constraints -- range, environment conditions etc.) -- and so that it meets the power consumption constraints imposed by size, design, cost and technology.
tl;dr when someone decided to use a 4 dBm transceiver, they (should have) made a conscious choice about it and would have verified that it's enough.
Quite plainly, if the connection drops when it shouldn't, it's either bad software or bad design.
Bad software is either the Bluetooth stack (especially in legacy Bluetooth devices; newer stacks tend to fare better) or the firmware that talks to the Bluetooth stack (if it's BLE, this is the safer bet).
Bad design on the hardware level is less excusable than it would seem, because a Bluetooth device is not exactly a long-haul wireless link that has to work during the mother of all thunderstorms. There's a wealth of information and modeling tools that help you with this stuff, too. Bad antenna design, bad filtering, bad casing are all common culprits, but I've seen a lot of electronic engineers who wouldn't call themselves RF engineers get it right by just following common sense and doing the math.
Sometimes (but even less often), it's not a design problem, it's a manufacturing problem (e.g. PCB antennas that get damaged or don't get etched right. But this is pretty rare.
Certainly, the operating environment plays a role, but that's why you consider it while you're designing the whole gizmo. You don't (or shouldn't) get to shrug and say hey, it's not my fault we're basically walking cucumbers.
So if a pair of super high-end Bose speakers and a super trendy iPhone keep dropping connection while they're within range, not inside and, respectively, outside a Farady cage or whatever, the reason isn't the black magic that RF design is, it's Bose's and Apple's profit margin.
Edit: I do concur with the other fellow who posted here, Bluetooth really is complex and the band it operates in isn't exactly a charm to work with, but frankly, neither of these reasons account for the huge range of devices that are simply badly designed and/or run bad software. There are a lot of Bluetooth devices that work just fine, a lot of other protocols that operate in the 2.4 GHz band and work just fine, a lot of other protocols that operate in similarly noisy bands and work just fine and a lot of protocols that are more complex and work just fine.
Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The range is quite important, a 4x improvement is a pretty big accomplishment. Although, obstacle/wall penetration is probably still fairly poor. The range is really the limiting factor in IoT uses IMO...
If the range can reliably get from my front pocket to my earbuds I'll be much happier with it.
You earbuds are not low-energy, so no change for you.
Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available
#362x the speed. 4x the range. 8x the capacity "to send messages" Not using the x.x versioning anymore. Just Bluetooth 5 and the next will be 6. Also, apprently, there's 30.000 companies in the 'Bluetooth Special Interests Group' ? [Thanks Krasin, gerardnll for correcting me]
Does Bluetooth 5 improve the reliability, latency, or the UX? I didn't need more speed, range or capacity from Bluetooth. But I did want it to cease being synonymous in my household with lag, dropouts and pairing failures.
well I mean, 4x range bumps it to over 100 ft, where as it used to be 30 right? (Or am I just out of date?)
But lag and dropouts is definitely my same concern with Bluetooth as well..
That said, it's still my preference if only because it's a standard - but it's getting damn hard to find decent Bluetooth mice now
Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available
#37Haven't look at the spec yet, but curious if they've improved the security side of communications. edit: Here's what I'm referring to, bluetooth 4 LE mode is vulnerable to certain attacks: https://lacklustre.net/bluetooth/Ryan_Bluetooth_Low_Energy_U... https://pomcor.com/2015/06/03/has-bluetooth-become-secure/
I was not aware of this[1], thanks for linking. Do you know whether the same is true for non-LE connections? I always thought those were secure, provided there are no bugs in the implementations. [1] The paper's conclusion summarizes very nicely, though they write it formally and a little confusingly: the thing is utterly broken. They can read contents, even if they key exchange was not observed/captured, and they ca…
The non-LE protocol has been pretty difficult to breach from the hacker-hobbyist level. The communication protocol is incredibly complex, and the hardware simply doesn't exist to interface well with it. A lot of BT2.0 (ie: non LE) "security" comes from the fact it's just darn hard to interface with it.
Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we'd need an RF engineer to answer this more thoroughly, but it's my understanding that there are a lot of materials capable of absorbing the low-energy microwaves that it uses as its transmission medium. Water is a big one, which I think is one reason that having my phone in my back pocket almost always results in a dropped connection to my headphones over the course of working outside for a few hours, compa…
Hi! RF Engineer here. Bluetooth sucks for a number of reasons, only a few of which actually relate to RF. First, we're bad at naming things. Is it BLE? Bluetooth Smart? BTLE? Bluetooth 4.0, or Bluetooth 4 Low Energy? And what does this have to do with ANT+? This doesn't seem to be a big problem, but it's a sign of deeper problems with the spec. In the long run it makes it very difficult for developers to implement. B…
Another RF engineer here. What the bipolar junction transistor parent has written is exactly correct.
Here is another discussion of Bluetooth vs. Ant as written by someone in my industry (fitness): http://keithhack.blogspot.fr/2016/11/why-hasnt-ant-been-crus...
Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi! RF Engineer here. Bluetooth sucks for a number of reasons, only a few of which actually relate to RF. First, we're bad at naming things. Is it BLE? Bluetooth Smart? BTLE? Bluetooth 4.0, or Bluetooth 4 Low Energy? And what does this have to do with ANT+? This doesn't seem to be a big problem, but it's a sign of deeper problems with the spec. In the long run it makes it very difficult for developers to implement. B…
Another RF engineer here. What the bipolar junction transistor parent has written is exactly correct. Here is another discussion of Bluetooth vs. Ant as written by someone in my industry (fitness): http://keithhack.blogspot.fr/2016/11/why-hasnt-ant-been-crus...
Ironically... I'm awful at analog design. I don't deserve this handle :(
Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available
#40I cannot think of a single way in which Bluetooth has changed my life. Of the Bluetooth devices I have, I do exactly the same things I've always done, just with slightly more annoyance. My smartphone let me answer emails and burning questions on the go, while also letting me give up my car. My VR headset is making me completely rethink what User Experience means to the point of making the current usage of the term UX…
BLE devices actually tend to work quite well. If you try a Logitech MX Master Mouse, or an Apple Pencil, or a Microsoft mobile keyboard, you will find that they all perform very well. And most importantly, the dreaded "pairing" is only done once, ever.
My Apple Pencil has to be repaired sometimes, though I haven't figured out what triggers it. Since all that means is plugging it into the iPad's lightning port for about a second, I haven't cared enough to look into it.
Much less annoying than headphones/earbuds where the process is something like 1) Turn off earbuds. 2) Turn on earbuds. 3) Keep holding the power button for another 5 seconds to go into pairing mode. 4) Open settings app, go to bluetooth page, reconnect to device