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I've spent the better half of 3 years building products on the 2.4ghz spectrum (WiFi and BLE). Most of the issues in this thread are related to poor hardware d

by Duhck 9y ago

I've spent the better half of 3 years building products on the 2.4ghz spectrum (WiFi and BLE). Most of the issues in this thread are related to poor hardware design more than a crowded spectrum. While the spectrum is in fact crowded in metropolitan areas, most Bluetooth communication doesn't require much bandwidth and can handle error prone areas with ease. While the frequency hopping helps a ton on BL (and WiFi for that matter), the issues people outlined are due to: 1) Shitty firmware 2) Shitty hardware Antenna design is black magic and only a few firms in the US do it well. It took us almost 10 months to fully design and test our antenna assembly(s) with a very capable third party firm. It took dozens of trips to a test chamber, a dozen computer simulations that take a day to run, and PCB samples that take days to verify. They have to be tuned every time copper or mechanical parts move as well. It's a real pain and most Bluetooth products use garbage chip antennas and baluns or reference designs for antennas. This increases the sensitivity to failure and provides a generally shitty experience. Most of your product interactions around bluetooth are budget products connected on one side of the equation (e.g. a $50 bluetooth headset). So despite how capable your Mac or iPhone is, if you have a garbage headset on the other side with poor antenna design, it'll be a disaster of an experience.

samstave 9y ago
>2) Shitty hardware Antenna design is black magic and only a few firms in the US do it well. It took us almost 10 months to fully design and test our antenna assembly(s) with a very capable third party firm. I think that you are remiss if you don't actually name the companies/produucts/devices which are designed well then.... There was a company in Aptos/Santa Cruz who was designing the antennas for a lot of Lockheed stuff back in about 2006/2007 or so who we went to for antenna designs for our active RFID devices - but I cant recall for the life of me the name of the company now...
- Duhck 9y ago
  As a rule of thumb, the notable product manufacturers like Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft, Amazon, etc, have extremely capable RF design teams. Your run of the mill bluetooth headset, mouse, or keyboard likely does not spend the time on the RF design beyond "does it work".
  - Paul_S 9y ago
    "Run of the mill bluetooth headset, mouse, or keyboard" manufactures don't make Bluetooth chips, they buy them. What part of the bt stack do you work on? You're saying nonsensical things, wifi does not do AFH. I didn't know apple made bluetooth chips? You don't even mention Nordic or TI, also not all big bt companies are in America.
    - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
      > You're saying nonsensical things, wifi does not do AFH. Many, many Wi-Fi implementations are capable of frequency hop, including my own at home.
      - Paul_S 9y ago
        That is not possible, it's not part of the spec. Maybe what you're thinking of is the wifi hotspot selecting the channel automatically when setting up a network based on the neighbours it can see. Nothing to do with frequency hopping. AFH happens between packets and maps out bad channels. Wifi does not do that, never has and never will because it's governed by different rules.
        jsmthrowaway 9y ago
        Nope, I’m thinking of when I transparently switch channels when my neighbor comes home and starts blowing up his own network. I’m aware it’s not part of the specification, which I’m sure you’re aware doesn’t mean anything except that it’s not part of the specification.
        Paul_S 9y ago
        I don't know what you're thinking of but no, you can't have that because if you had this magical hotspot your network card in your iThing would not know what to do because wifi does not do frequency hopping. Every time your hotspot changes channels it disconnects all your devices.
nikofeyn 9y ago
> So despite how capable your Mac or iPhone is this made me literally lol. my macbook pro is the shittiest bluetooth device i have ever used. just search google for macbook pro bluetooth audio issues, and you will find a slew of forum posts going back years. there's one terminal hack after another suggested just to try and get macbook pros to properly play audio over bluetooth. i don't even bother using my macbook pro these days to play audio through a bluetooth speaker. i just use my iPad or android phone.
- Duhck 9y ago
  I think you're assuming that there's an issue with the macbook's implementation instead of the device you're pairing it with. Like I had mentioned previously, if one side of the paired devices has a garbage antenna setup, it will have poor performance. Things like your soundbar, or a generic bluetooth speaker probably use reference designs for their BT setups and have not tuned them for the enclosure or use case.
  - nikofeyn 9y ago
    not an assumption. given that everything else works together, it's the macbook pro that's the odd man out. my other devices include multiple bluetooth speakers, mice, phones (android and even windows phone), surface pro, iPad, and others. they all work seemlessly with bluetooth, but the macbook pro struggles with most, especially when trying to play audio over bluetooth. like i mentioned, this is a well-documented problem if you do even a basic search.
- oneplane 9y ago
  I haven't had any issues with Bluetooth on a Mac so far, ever since the BT 1.2 days. I've used Mac OS X, macOS and Linux on PowerPC and Intel Macs with both built-in Bluetooth hardware and USB bluetooth adapters, and all of them were fine. Doesn't seem to be an issue in either the Apple-implemented bluetooth hardware or software to me...
  - Tepix 9y ago
    Apple to this day doesn't support aptX. It's plain embarassing.
vbezhenar 9y ago
I'm not sure how capable my Mac or iPhone is, because I paired them and sometimes I want to tether internet from iPhone and it's faster to use WiFi hotspot, than to connect them again.
- rconti 9y ago
  you can just select your phone from your laptop these days and it auto-pairs and turns on tethering. pretty slick.
jancsika 9y ago
> 1) Shitty firmware 2) Shitty hardware What quality is the hardware in something like this: https://tehnoetic.com/tet-bt4 https://tehnoetic.com/tet-bt4 ?

by Duhck 9y ago

samstave 9y ago

>2) Shitty hardware Antenna design is black magic and only a few firms in the US do it well. It took us almost 10 months to fully design and test our antenna assembly(s) with a very capable third party firm. I think that you are remiss if you don't actually name the companies/produucts/devices which are designed well then.... There was a company in Aptos/Santa Cruz who was designing the antennas for a lot of Lockheed stuff back in about 2006/2007 or so who we went to for antenna designs for our active RFID devices - but I cant recall for the life of me the name of the company now...

Duhck 9y ago
As a rule of thumb, the notable product manufacturers like Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft, Amazon, etc, have extremely capable RF design teams. Your run of the mill bluetooth headset, mouse, or keyboard likely does not spend the time on the RF design beyond "does it work".
- Paul_S 9y ago
  "Run of the mill bluetooth headset, mouse, or keyboard" manufactures don't make Bluetooth chips, they buy them. What part of the bt stack do you work on? You're saying nonsensical things, wifi does not do AFH. I didn't know apple made bluetooth chips? You don't even mention Nordic or TI, also not all big bt companies are in America.
  - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
    > You're saying nonsensical things, wifi does not do AFH. Many, many Wi-Fi implementations are capable of frequency hop, including my own at home.
    - Paul_S 9y ago
      That is not possible, it's not part of the spec. Maybe what you're thinking of is the wifi hotspot selecting the channel automatically when setting up a network based on the neighbours it can see. Nothing to do with frequency hopping. AFH happens between packets and maps out bad channels. Wifi does not do that, never has and never will because it's governed by different rules.
      - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
        Nope, I’m thinking of when I transparently switch channels when my neighbor comes home and starts blowing up his own network. I’m aware it’s not part of the specification, which I’m sure you’re aware doesn’t mean anything except that it’s not part of the specification.
        Paul_S 9y ago
        I don't know what you're thinking of but no, you can't have that because if you had this magical hotspot your network card in your iThing would not know what to do because wifi does not do frequency hopping. Every time your hotspot changes channels it disconnects all your devices.

nikofeyn 9y ago

> So despite how capable your Mac or iPhone is this made me literally lol. my macbook pro is the shittiest bluetooth device i have ever used. just search google for macbook pro bluetooth audio issues, and you will find a slew of forum posts going back years. there's one terminal hack after another suggested just to try and get macbook pros to properly play audio over bluetooth. i don't even bother using my macbook pro these days to play audio through a bluetooth speaker. i just use my iPad or android phone.

Duhck 9y ago
I think you're assuming that there's an issue with the macbook's implementation instead of the device you're pairing it with. Like I had mentioned previously, if one side of the paired devices has a garbage antenna setup, it will have poor performance. Things like your soundbar, or a generic bluetooth speaker probably use reference designs for their BT setups and have not tuned them for the enclosure or use case.
- nikofeyn 9y ago
  not an assumption. given that everything else works together, it's the macbook pro that's the odd man out. my other devices include multiple bluetooth speakers, mice, phones (android and even windows phone), surface pro, iPad, and others. they all work seemlessly with bluetooth, but the macbook pro struggles with most, especially when trying to play audio over bluetooth. like i mentioned, this is a well-documented problem if you do even a basic search.
oneplane 9y ago
I haven't had any issues with Bluetooth on a Mac so far, ever since the BT 1.2 days. I've used Mac OS X, macOS and Linux on PowerPC and Intel Macs with both built-in Bluetooth hardware and USB bluetooth adapters, and all of them were fine. Doesn't seem to be an issue in either the Apple-implemented bluetooth hardware or software to me...
- Tepix 9y ago
  Apple to this day doesn't support aptX. It's plain embarassing.

vbezhenar 9y ago

I'm not sure how capable my Mac or iPhone is, because I paired them and sometimes I want to tether internet from iPhone and it's faster to use WiFi hotspot, than to connect them again.

rconti 9y ago
you can just select your phone from your laptop these days and it auto-pairs and turns on tethering. pretty slick.

jancsika 9y ago

> 1) Shitty firmware 2) Shitty hardware What quality is the hardware in something like this: https://tehnoetic.com/tet-bt4 https://tehnoetic.com/tet-bt4 ?