Bluetooth Upgrade Boosts Precision Tracking and Device Efficiency 55
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has released version 6.0 of the Bluetooth Core Specification, introducing several new features and enhancements. The update includes Bluetooth Channel Sounding, which brings true distance awareness to devices, potentially improving "Find My" solutions and digital key security.
Other additions include decision-based advertising filtering to improve scanning efficiency, and a monitoring advertisers feature to inform devices when other Bluetooth units move in and out of range. The specification also enhances the Isochronous Adaptation Layer to reduce latency in certain use cases. Version 6.0 expands the Link Layer Extended Feature Set to support a larger number of features, reflecting Bluetooth LE's growing sophistication. Additionally, it introduces negotiable frame spacing in connections and connected isochronous streams, moving away from the fixed 150 us value in previous versions.
Other additions include decision-based advertising filtering to improve scanning efficiency, and a monitoring advertisers feature to inform devices when other Bluetooth units move in and out of range. The specification also enhances the Isochronous Adaptation Layer to reduce latency in certain use cases. Version 6.0 expands the Link Layer Extended Feature Set to support a larger number of features, reflecting Bluetooth LE's growing sophistication. Additionally, it introduces negotiable frame spacing in connections and connected isochronous streams, moving away from the fixed 150 us value in previous versions.
How long until we see devices? (Score:3)
I'm *still* waiting for auracast audio devices and that was introduced in 5.2.
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You can buy right now if you want:
https://www.moor-audio.com/pro... [moor-audio.com]
But you'll be waiting a while. The reality is the requirement for that product is somewhat niche. Just because a technology exists doesn't mean there's a market for it to be included in all general purpose consumer toys.
Feature request! (Score:2)
Here's a feature request: Can we please have a version of bluetooth that works reliably
By that, I mean that every time I drive my car somehwre, the phone always connects, always displays the name associated with incoming calls... that sort of thing.
I'm not so bothered by whiz-bang new features. Just get it to work reliably.
Re: Feature request! (Score:2)
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Not sure if the fix for that belongs in the bluetooth spec or the car's implementation of it. BLE already has a rudimentary way to figure out your distance (though not as great as Bluetooth 6 will have). It should be able to figure out your phone is not in the car before switching the audio.
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It's fine IMO if it goes ahead and connects but I hate that it tries to 'help' me by auto-switching the audio without even asking. Triple ungood when as noted, I'm actually in the middle of a communication. My last car would grab my BT if I just unlocked the door to get something from inside the car. Very naughty.
Re: Feature request! (Score:2, Informative)
30 years of trying to replace the serial cable. Still not even close.
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So this my headphones often lose connection briefly when walking by other bluetooth headphones
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I have encountered this with some lower quality BT headphones that I own (Skullcandy brand specifically).
I have never had any issue whatsoever with the Aftershokz that I have.
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I have the opposite problem. If I'm in my car using Bluetooth audio, and I happen to get too close to my wife's car (because we had to drive separately), it drops the connection to my car and connects to hers, every time, even if there's no issue with the current connection in my car. There's no way to set a setting somewhere that says not to try to connect to another device automatically, if I'm already connected.
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The solution is to forget the pairing to your wife's car on your device.
I run into this as well. Her Samsung is way more aggressive about BT pairing than my Pixel so her phone will always be the first one to pair if both are within range at the same time.
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Yeah I know, I used "forget" to keep this from happening. But that's annoying because whenever I do want to connect to that vehicle's Bluetooth, I have to re-pair. And car-based electronics are notoriously clunky and unnecessarily difficult to do anything.
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This. I tell my phone to forget the pairing to my wife's car. Then the next time we go on a long trip and she tells me to put on a podcast... "Pairing is disabled while the car is in motion." Which is itself a whole other rant about dumb-ass user interfaces.
"Doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "Then don't do that." A perfect description of "forget pairing" as a solution.
Re: Feature request! (Score:2)
That's not a solution to the stated problem, it's a bad work around. It's bad because it inconveniences the user.
Bluetooth pairing is bad in many ways. For example, pinless pairing is very poorly supported. My understanding is that it was not part of the spec but it is still possible. If it's not part of the spec, it should not be possible, but it should also be in there.
Re: Feature request! (Score:2)
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I don't think it should ever switch an active connection, unless that active connection become inactive, whether that's because it goes out of range, or is shut off.
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Or even just something between pair and forget. I would go for a toggle to mark a device as 'inactive' or disabled until I re-enable it.
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^^^ This
This is what I was going to say. It should be like wifi, where there is a setting to "connect automatically" which can be turned off. Then if you WANT to connect, you just touch it. No repairing required. A priority setting might also be useful.
But yeah, I can be mowing the lawn and wearing headphones, linked to my phone, listening to music. I get in the car and start it just to move it back in the garage and wham- the car rips my connection away. The phone is then connected to the car for aud
Some unreliability is unavoidable. (Score:2)
Some of that is bad application design or bugs.
But some is unavoidable: Bluetooth uses the bands where anybody can do just about anything within certain power limits, rather than bands where you need a license that reserves your piece of spectrum to just your se
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Interesting. I don't think I have had a BT related problem in years. I use BT headphones daily and I have nearly seamless (definitely interaction free) transition (continuous audio) between headset and car audio system on both ingress and egress of the vehicle.
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I don't... Particularly between my phone and motorcycle helmet. Most of the time it works fine. But when I pass certain houses, I get a tremendous amount of interference which drops music packets. Same houses, every time. Makes me wonder if they are doing something illegal with the spectrum.
Same thing with my phone to my headset when mowing the lawn. As soon as I get to a particular spot of my yard near the southwest of my neighbor, there is interference. Doesn't do it anywhere else in my yard. The
advertising filtering? (Score:4, Funny)
"just listen to this 30s ad before using your BT headphones"
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It not that type of advertising.
Think of it as the device sending "Hi out there, I'm a (device) named (name) with (capabilities)"
A more detailed explanation is available at https://novelbits.io/bluetooth-low-energy-advertisements-part-1/ [novelbits.io]
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I think that feature is going to ruin the use of BT devices TBH.
"just listen to this 30s ad before using your BT headphones"
I was going to suggest modding your post "funny", but realized that many readers unfamiliar with the protocols would think that this has something to do with injecting commercial advertisements into blootooth connections.
(Speaking only about the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol subset of the standard, which is the part I'm familiar with:)
"Advertising" in the bluetooth specification
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It powers up only when it's time [for radio business] or if the computer is needed to do some management on the rest of the system (e.g: read sensors and add the readings to a running average).
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- "Here I am.
- My ID (maybe encrypted-and-changing to hamper bad-guy tracking, etc.) is XXX.
- If anybody wants to establish a connection to me, here's whether I'm taking calls and the parameters for how and when to try.
- (Maybe) here's a tiny bit of stuff (like a sensor reading, or my transmitted signal strength so you can get a rough estimate of the distance to me) that I send occasionally, so you don't need to connect to me to get it."
- (Maybe) and here's a
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how about that wideband codec when mic is in use? (Score:2)
One day, my grandchildren might live to see simultaneous high quality audio output and input.
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How about lower latency to the point it doesn't drive recording musicians insane.
My god.
I go nutty trying to eliminate latency in my hardwired interface. Down to 5.3 ms one way right now. I can't possibly imagine trying to record with a Bluetooth interface. WTF kind of nightmare scenario did you set yourself up for?
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I used to work with air traffic control comms. We used Ethernet. Each node sent an audio packet every 2ms... the latency was low enough that the sidetone delay was not noticeable.
How to do that sort of thing with Bluetooth escaped us. Despite quite lot of effort we never managed to provide a Bluetooth based wireless headset with acceptable performance and reliability.
Re: how about that wideband codec when mic is in (Score:2)
This is why professional headsets use something else and then do Bluetooth from a base station if they must. I use a polycom headset that uses DECT to the base, then that will do Bluetooth to my phone. (It also does phone handset and USB.)
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Sub 5ms latency is generally accepted as being reasonable for music production, e.g. hardwired MIDI.
For media consumption it's higher, more like 30ms or one frame at 30 fps for e.g. broadcast TV.
On Bluetooth the best option is LE audio (LE3) which is down to about 20ms. If the transmitter is built into the playback device then the device can just delay the video or render the audio 20ms early. Where it starts to fail is when the transmitter is separate and the system isn't aware of its latency.
bluetooth is not ready for prime time (Score:5, Informative)
i wish they’d stop cramming in features until devices can pair reliably and re-connect reliably once paired.
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Seriously? How old are your devices? I haven't seen this issue in maybe 5 years. And I live/work where presumably there are lots of bluetooth devices around.
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2-year-old BT 5.2 headphones, 1-year-old laptop. They connect successfully on the first try maybe 1 out of 4 times only.
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I literally have zero issues connecting any device to my laptop or desktop or phone. It sounds like you have a problem with your software or your bluetooth chip in your laptop.
Disclaimer: Typed on a bluetooth keyboard while listening to music on bluetooth speakers, and I'm about to hit the Preview button with a bluetooth mouse.
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Same.
If I connect to a Bluetooth speaker, I have to tell it to connect every time, if I had previously been connected to my Bluetooth headphones, even if the headphones are off and the speaker is on. It shows the speaker in the list, but refuses to connect, until I tap "Connect." Very frustrating.
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If I connect to a Bluetooth speaker, I have to tell it to connect every time, if I had previously been connected to my Bluetooth headphones, even if the headphones are off and the speaker is on. It shows the speaker in the list, but refuses to connect, until I tap "Connect." Very frustrating.
YMMV, but that's how I'd want it to work. Maybe that's why it works that way (cause enough other people also want it that way)?
You're implying that when you turn on your speaker, your phone should automatically connect to it and use it. That means I could be on a call, and then someone turns on the bluetooth speaker in the next room (it has multiple users), and my call suddenly jumps over to the speaker. TBH, I think that does happen already sometimes, but it's not what I'd consider to be a good feature.
OMF
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The problem here is that I'm *not* already connected to anything. I just turned on Bluetooth, it's not connected to any output device. There only one that's available to be connected to, but it refuses until I tell it explicitly to connect.
That's the opposite scenario than when I'm already literally streaming to a speaker or headphones, and come within range of another Bluetooth device (my wife's car), and that new device snatches my connection away from the already active connection.
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The problem here is that I'm *not* already connected to anything. I just turned on Bluetooth, it's not connected to any output device. There only one that's available to be connected to, but it refuses until I tell it explicitly to connect.
TBH, I can't figure out what it is you want it to do.
Here, you are saying you're not connected to anything... I take that as a hypothetical where this device has never connected to a bluetooth device before.
You just turn on bluetooth. There is a single bluetooth device in range. It doesn't automatically connect.
Are you saying you want it to automatically connect to an unknown device it has never been authorized to connect to before, and start sending sound there and receiving mic audio? If so, do you not se
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i wish they’d stop cramming in features until devices can pair reliably and re-connect reliably once paired.
Don't buy cheap Chinese shit? I literally haven't had a problem pairing bluetooth devices in decades. In fact the only issue I do have is that my 5 year old headphones can only pair to two devices at once and I really need to pair them to three so I find myself consistently unpairing and pairing to another device. Something which works 100% of the time.
I step into my car, bluetooth autoconnects 100% of the time. I go outside to work in the shed, turn on my speakers bluetooth autoconnects 100% of the time. I
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It's a firmware issue. If you have decent devices they pair easily and consistently. With BT 5 they can even pair to two devices at once, so e.g. you can listen to music on your PC but have it switch to your phone when a call comes in.
Pairing problems are down to crap firmware in either your phone, the device, or both. There isn't really any excuse for it because all the major BT chip providers offer free firmware to handle that stuff, which has been properly debugged and tested.
Stores are gonna love this... (Score:2)
School shooting (Score:2)
"Now which coat closet have all the kids hidden in with their cell phones?"
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Re: Instead of teaching kids to hide . . . (Score:2)
keep him from bringing a military killing machine to school.
An AR is a civilian varmint rifle. If you are really an "old soldier", you'd know that they are far from military grade equipment. Or you'd never have gotten old.
The M16 is the military version for .223 Remington ammo. Which was still a shit weapon when originally fielded in Vietnam.
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Designed for .556 round, .223 is a lower pressure round certainly useful for a civilian varmint rifle.
Some called it the Toy Rifle.
Sort of valid because many of the plastic parts were manufactured by Mattel.
The original version did have reliability issues as it was not well tested in an environment like Viet Nam.
Rushed into service, almost everything is....
Re: Instead of teaching kids to hide . . . (Score:2)
Designed for .556 round, .223 is a lower pressure round
5.56 NATO. As with all civilian hardware adopted by the military, the specifications sometimes go up. Or down. But they are generally more consistent, making for higher reliability and repeatability of performance.
Can this be used in reverse to track the phone? (Score:2)
bluetooth audio delay (Score:2)
Can someone explain to me how it is that with my 2 identical bluetooth earbud pairs, videos on youtube have the video stream correctly delayed to account for bluetooth audio delay, while on the other identical set (except for color), this does not happen? This would be using google chrome on win 10.