Bluetooth 5 has been approved

The new Bluetooth protocol has been approved. Much longer range and more power. Now I don’t know if the Hub V2 is capable of this, but I highly doubt it. ST hasn’t activated Bluetooth in our hubs, but I guess now they surely won’t. I for one am a bit annoyed as the hub was touted to have Bluetooth, and it never happened. If it does i hope soon as waiting will make our hubs even more obsolete.

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Good news for HomeKit, among others.

Bluetooth 5 also includes updates that help reduce potential interference with other wireless technologies to ensure Bluetooth devices can coexist within the increasingly complex global IoT environment.
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Consumers can expect to see products built with Bluetooth 5 within two to six months of today’s release. With Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth continues to revolutionize how people experience the IoT.

For Apple, a company known as an early adopter of new Bluetooth technology, Bluetooth 5 is expected to start making its way into product revisions next year. The iPad Pro could be the first of Apple’s devices to integrate the technology, as a refresh is anticipated for release in the first quarter of 2017. Apple’s iPhone, due out next fall, should also make use of the updated communications standard.

Another enhancement in the new version will help enterprises use Bluetooth beacons for location. BLE has a mechanism for devices to broadcast information about what they are and what they can do so other gear can coordinate with them. Until now, those messages could only contain 31 bytes of information. Now they can be eight times that size…

I might be the only one here but honestly I think Bluetooth is a terrible protocol and it should have died and gone away a LONG time ago…

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You’re not the only one, but you’re in a very small minority. It’s an exceptionally efficient protocol, which is why there are so many battery-operated Bluetooth devices.

What do you think is terrible about it?

The “profiles” (largely gone away now) but mainly the pairing process and its inconsistency. Absolutely dreadful and terribly unuser friendly.

I don’t think the protocol is as bad as you make it sound. I think it is bad devices. Example: I have an Anker Bluetooth speaker that when paired it has a range of over 60 feet less between walls, but the sound is flawless. I have another which has a range of 30 feet and sounds horrible. I have other bluetooth devices that work great and others just plain lousy.

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The pairing process is quite simple and straightforward with the 2.1+ versions of BT. Besides, it’s something you only do once per pair of devices. What is the inconsistency issue?

Many devices become magically unpaired, some things only pair when you initiate from one direction and not the other, sometimes they don’t see each other, sometimes certain features only work when initiated/paired from one direction and so on.

It’s just plain awful, I honestly don’t know how the protocol has survived for so long other than always having a lower power consumption than WiFi. I honestly hope the low energy WiFi just kills it once and for all.

I have never had any problems with devices un-pairing. I have 4 Mac’s and each has Bluetooth devices attached, and all in same room and never a problem. I even play music over Bluetooth with no problems in that same room.

I must say that I’ve never experienced that, even with older BT implementations.

Those sound like issues with poor product implementations, not problems with the standard.

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One of them is 100% down to poor product implementation, it’s a cheap Chinese OBD-II Bluetooth module that has to be re-paired almost every single time I use it.

Another example was trying to pair a phone to a head unit on a brand new Jeep Cherokee, iP6 failed, a SGS6 and finally we got it playing music from an iP5.

So the same protocol in all 3 cases?

Well example of poor design. I had a new Honda Accord there top of the line model and it wouldn’t pair with my iPhone. When it did pair it never understood commands. The dealership tried everything they could and couldn’t get another iPhone to pair. I turned in the lease with no penalties. I leased a KIA Optima and it paired with my iPhone and My wife’s older model the first try and hasn’t lost connection once. My neighbor has devices that wouldn’t pair to his PC, I tried my keyboard from Apple no problem. His didn’t pair on his PC so I tried it on mine paired but lost connection on sleep. Made in China junk.

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In that we tried pairing all three phones via Bluetooth? Yes, although I’m assuming slightly different generations of it between the phones.

This is the point, it can be so wildly inconsistent making it unuserfriendly that I’m surprised Bluetooth has lasted this long.

What you’re saying is that manufacturers can and sometimes do implement it poorly (which is true of every standard in existence), therefor it’s a bad set of standards.

I’ve had far more trouble with WiFi devices when it comes to setup and maintaining connections than I have with BT ones. What does that say about 802.11?

True. All real-life protocols are a mess. That’s inevitable result of their ongoing development and continuous improvement. “Clean” protocols exist only in textbooks and in someone’s imagination. :slight_smile:

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[quote=“DParker, post:15, topic:67178, full:true”]What you’re saying is that manufacturers can and sometimes do implement it poorly (which is true of every standard in existence), therefor it’s a bad set of standards.

I’ve had far more trouble with WiFi devices when it comes to setup and maintaining connections than I have with BT ones. What does that say about 802.11?
[/quote]

I certainly don’t disagree with that, I’ve had my fair share of bad drivers for WiFi chipsets in laptops etc, but I’d still say the inconsistency of BT implementations fair outstrips the pains experienced with WiFi. I really hope WiFi HaLow can do better than BT and kill it off.

Be careful what you wish for…if HaLow becomes widely adopted, there’s a good chance it will interfere with Zwave. :disappointed_relieved:

Indeed, I noticed that is was ~900Mhz… and I am a big fan of Z-Wave over ZigBee…

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