Tag: Bluetooth 5.0

Article – From the horse’s mouth

TaoTronics

TaoTronics Bluetooth Transmitter for TV 2-in-1 Wireless 3.5mm Adapter (Product Page)

My Comments

Another highly-portable Bluetooth audio adaptor worth mentioning is the TaoTronic Bluetooth Transmitter for TV. This device sells for USD$21.99 in the USA direct from TaoTronics through the product link above but Kogan are selling this in Australia for AUD$55.00 with tax and shipping included to Australia.

Can be used to stream TV audio to a pair of good headphones like these Bose QuietComfort headphones for private late-night listening

Like the Twelve South AirFly that I covered previously, this battery-operated device can stream audio content from a headphone jack that it is plugged in to to a pair of Bluetooth headphones. The obviously comes in to its own when using your Bluetooth headphones on the plane to watch a movie via the in-flight entertainment setup; working out at a fitness centre which implements an audio distribution setup for TV sound or workout music fed to headphones; or watching TV late at night with the sound via headphones.

But this device also is about being a Bluetooth receiver adaptor where you send audio content from your smartphone, tablet or laptop computer to a sound system so you can use its speakers for that music. Here, the TaoTronics adaptor has a 3.5mm stereo phone jack and comes with a patch cord with a 3.5mm stereo phone plug at each end as well as an adaptor cord that has a 3.5mm stereo phone jack at one end and two RCA plugs at the other end.

A cassette adaptor being used to play a smartphone’s audio through a car cassette player – the TaoTronics Bluetooth transmit-receive adaptor can even be about a wireless link between the phone and the adaptor

But you can use other connection devices like longer or better cables to achieve the same goal in a better way. You could even plug a cassette adaptor in to this TaoTronics adaptor and effectively stream your smartphone’s multimedia audio through that cassette player installed in your 1970s-1990s classic car. As well, for newer cars, this would be about using the car stereo’s AUX input to stream multimedia audio from your phone to the car stereo even if the Bluetooth setup is only about communications audio.

This is powered by a battery that is quoted to have a 10-hour battery runtime or via a USB power source fitted with a USB micro-B plug. Product pictures even illustrate you powering the device from one of the USB sockets on your TV that will typically be used for a Wi-Fi adaptor to to play video from a USB memory key. You can even have the device’s battery charging while you are using it to transmit sound to your headphones or play a Bluetooth audio stream through your favourite audio system.

It is user-friendly in the context that you don’t have to perform a special rigmarole with the pairing button to switch between transmit or receive modes. Rather you just flick a mode switch between “transmit” and “receive” modes. There is still a button to instigate device pairing where necessary.

The size of this device is smaller than the typical smartphone which, along with battery / USB operation, incentivises you to take it on the road more frequently. A good travel scenario that may come about is to use the adaptor with your Sony WH-1000XM4 or Bose QuietComfort 35 Bluetooth active-noise-cancelling headphones to hear a movie on the inflight entertainment system during the flight. Then, when you are at the hotel, you plug this device in to the “audio input” jack on your hotel room’s TV to play Spotify music through that TV’s speakers.

The TaoTronics Bluetooth transmit-receive adaptor can even work well with your hotel-room TV if it has an AV connection panel like this with a 3.5mm stereo mini phone jack for audio input

The TaoTronics Bluetooth audio transmit-receive adaptor supports Qualcomm aptX operation but only for one device at a time. Otherwise, it can stream audio to two headsets which can come in handy where two people are listening to the same audio source like a TV programme. It also works according to the latest Bluetooth 5.0 standard thus allowing for increased audio stability and battery efficiency along with the ability to run two headsets.

TaoTronics could have a variant of this device that works in a “communications and multimedia” mode like the Sony SBH-52 headphone adaptor that I used previously. This could earn its keep with wired headphones or automotive setups where you need to have full-on handsfree communication and audio playback with the same device.

But this is an example of a highly-compact easy-to-use device that can be about either streaming audio from your phone via Bluetooth to an existing sound system or using your favourite Bluetooth headphones to hear TV sound in private.

Articles

Wi-Fi EasyConnect to be upgraded to simplify Internet-of-things setup

Wi-Fi Alliance debuts improvements to Wi-Fi mesh and IoT device onboarding | Wi-Fi NOW

From the horse’s mouth

Wi-Fi Alliance

Wi-Fi Alliance® connects and expands home Wi-Fi® (Press Release)

My Comments

Improvements to EasyConnect

Most of us may think of Wi-Fi EasyConnect as simply scanning a QR code with your smartphone to get your smartphone on to a Wi-Fi network that you want to use. Or it could be about using a smartphine app to scan a QR code on a device you want to bring on board to your home network that your phone is connected to.

But this week the Wi-Fi Alliance have cemented in stone ways of using WI-Fi EasyConnect to bring devices on board to your network. You still have to use a “configurator” program which could be an app on your smartphone to bring devices, known as “enrollees” on board to that network or to join that network yourself.

A Wi-Fi EasyConnect setup can support multiple “configurator” programs which will cater to environments where different software has different capabilities. As well, the standard allows a “configurator” program to work with multiple networks, allowing for realities like an individual ESSID for each waveband or people who are responsible for multiple networks.

.. and to even build out Wi-Fi EasyMesh distributed-wireless networks simply

Here, NFC “tap-and-go” pairing and Bluetooth LE pairing is part of the standard. As well, you can transcribe a PIN or passcode shown on the device or attached to a label on that device to enrol the device to your home network. For cloud-driven device platforms like Amazon Echo, the cloud platform downloads the device identifying details to your computing device to facilitate binding it to your Wi-Fi network.

Android users may be familiar with NFC-based device pairing when they set up some Bluetooth headsets with their phones or tablets. That is where you touch your Android smartphone or tablet to the headset to start the pairing and setup process.

But there currently isn’t support for showing a PIN or passcode on the configuration software for you to transcribe in to your device you are intending to bring on board your Wi-FI home network. Such a procedure could come in to its own with devices that have a keypad or keyboard as part of their control surface, examples being smart locks or TVs that have “many-button” remote controls.

For people who manage enterprise and building networks, Wi-FI EasyConnect is updated also to allow you to onboard devices to your WPA3-Enterprise Wi-Fi business network. Here the network would have to support EAP-TLS and implement X.509 digital certificates. It is to cater towards a reality where business owners and building managers want to bring “Internet-of-Everything” devices which don’t have a rich user interface on to these networks while keeping these networks secure.

For that matter, users of devices running Android 10 or newer versions stand to benefit from Wi-FI EasyConnect in some ways without the need for extra apps to be downloaded from the Google Play Store. Here, they can use their smartphone or tablet to scan a QR code that represents their target network’s Wi-Fi details to accede to that network. Or they can scan a QR code on a Wi-Fi-capable device they want to bring to the network they are using as long as this device supports Wi-Fi EasyConnect.

It is part of making sure that Wi-Fi EasyConnect works as part of the Wi-Fi WPA3 link-layer security specifications which will be required for a Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6 wireless-network segment to operate to specification.

The support for Wi-Fi EasyConnect that needs to come about is to have other mobile and desktop operating systems support this standard in some capacity, preferably in a native form. This would have to include using Bluetooth as an alternative to QR codes as a method of sharing Wi-Fi network credentials from a mobile device to a laptop or tablet.

Improvements to EasyMesh

Wi-Fi EasyMesh distributed-wireless setups now support onboarding of new access points using Wi-Fi EasyConnect methods. This means that the same user interface that is needed to get a computer or IoT device on your home network applies to Wi-FI network-infrastructure devices compliant to this standard. It will also be part of making sure that a Wi-Fi EasyMesh network works to the current WPA3 security expectations.

This is in addition to each of the access points in an EasyMesh setup being able to share advanced metrics about how the network is performing as a whole. Here, it will come in to play with those Wi-Fi networks that are managed or supported by other entities like business Wi-Fi.

Conclusion

The revisions to the Wi-Fi EasyConnect and EasyMesh standards are more about simplifying the process to bring Internet-of-Things devices on board to your WPA3-compliant home or business network. It is also about simplifying the process to build out your EasyMesh-compliant distributed wireless network with multiple satellite repeater units.

But what needs to happen is for more software and hardware support for these standards in order that they become increasingly accepted within the marketplace.

Article – From the horse’s mouth

Bluetooth SIG

Press Release

My Comments

Bluetooth are to release the 5th major version of their wireless personal-network specification by between late 2016 to early 2017. But what will this offer?

This is more about increasing broadcast capacity, data bandwidth and operational range for Internet of Things applications while working with the unlicensed 2.4GHz ISM waveband. The extended range will be seen in the smart-home context as reaching beyond the walls of a typical house while there is the improved operational robustness affecting this class of application.

One of the key benefits is to reduce the need for “device + app” setup for Internet-of-Things setup. This typically requires that you go to the mobile platform’s app store to download a special “enablement” app for your Internet-Of-Things device to your smartphone or tablet and then logically associate that device with your mobile device before you can benefit from that device. This applies also to “beacon” setups where the venue has to develop a mobile-platform app to make sense of the beacons that they use for indoor navigation / location setups.

The question that could be raised is whether this will lead towards a “Web-app” setup where beacons and Internet-of-Things devices will run their own mobile Web pages for showing data about themselves or their current status. Similarly, could this also lead to the creation of a platform-detecting “interface page” which leads people to install mobile-platform apps from the correct mobile-platform app store.

There will also be the question about assuring the privacy and data security for end-users and their mobile client devices so as to prevent Bluetooth 5 beacons and IoT devices from being a malware-distribution vector. Here, it may be about implementing a “trust-based” system which is based on factors like suppliers, venues, software developers and the like. Similarly, it may be more valuable to have this kind of setup based around “pull-based” content acquisition where the end-user is involved in the process of acquiring the data rather than the data being automatically delivered to the end-user’s mobile device.

There are other use cases that can take advantage of this large data capacity in the context of beacons and the Internet Of Things especially if the “device+app” setup is still maintained. One of these would be to allow field-based software and data maintenance where a new Webpage or firmware could be supplied to a Bluetooth 5 IoT device from a mobile client. Similarly, you could upload and download operational data between the IoT device and a mobile client or portable computer with building security, data-logging or smartwatches being a key application. For example, it could be a simple and quick task to deploy a rich watch-face or app to a smartwatch while syncing data like contacts-lists and health data to your smartphone at the same time.

The Bluetooth 5 technology will benefit the smart-home, enterprise and industrial applications. Some of the use cases being called out in the form of indoor navigation for airports and shopping centres, asset or warehouse-inventory tracking, improved emergency response like the “enhanced 911” service that benefits mobile-phone users along with the ability to assist visually-impaired people around the cities. An advertising-based application may involve a beacon-type device at an event being used to provide further information like a PDF or HTML “e-brochure” hosted on that device.

Like with every evolution of the Bluetooth standard, this will require newer Bluetooth 5.0 compliant hardware on the client device and this will typically be provided with newer client devices after mid-2017. Regular computers could be upgraded to this standard thanks to USB Bluetooth modules which could be seen as a way to upgrade Windows laptops, 2-in-1s or tablets. This also applies to some embedded devices that provide some form of “after-the-fact” functionality upgrading like the Yale and Lockwood smart deadbolts that use a wireless-connectivity module for smart-home functionality.