bluetooth at 164 feet

[micky]

I keep hearing that bluetooth is only good for 30 feet, but look at these:

row especially

[Ralph Mowery]

The last time I looked there were 3 standard ranges of bluetooth. Less than 1 meter, less than 10 meters, and 100 meters.

There are some range extenders for BT, but I have not looked into them as I do not do anythig with BT over 10 meters.

[micky]

I never heard about the short one either. I must live in a cave.

[Clare Snyder]

transmission range. My hearing aids use class 3 to talk to each other and class 2 to talk to my I-Phone. ( 10 cm transmission) A class 1 bluetooth device can transmit up to 100 meters. Those wireless headphones excede class 2 but are not class 3. Mabee they are not TRUE bluetooth but some other semi-standard running on the 2.4Ghz band?

[Clare Snyder]

The short one is used by binaural hearing aids to communicate between ears and fir "back to back" communication between handheld devices - like sharing "business cards"

[micky]

I was checked for hearing aids too, and I think they rejected that kind for me, because the signal had to go from one ear to the other and my head was too dense.

[VanguardLH]

1 transmitting at 100 mW with a range of 100 meters or 328 feet. Class 2 transmiting at 2.5 mW with a range of 10 meters or 33 feet (most Bluetooth headsets and headphones are common Class 2 devices). Class 3 transmitting at 1 mW with a range of fewer than 10 meters.

Bluetooth 5.0, devices can use data transfer speeds of up to 2 Mbps, which is double what Bluetooth 4.2 supports. Devices can also communicate over distances of up to 800 feet (or 240 meters), which is four times the 200 feet (or 60 meters) allowed by Bluetooth 4.2.

the comparison chart)

[NY]

If you can get Bluetooth at 30 feet, you're doing *very* well. My experience with my Bluetooth headset (for listening to talking books or for hands-free phone calls) is that it starts to drop out when I walk from one side of a room to the other, even without any obstructions in between.

[Joerg Lorenz]

Am 12.02.20 um 11:14 schrieb NY:

With my Logitech-Mouse I have BT-connection over 40-50 ft through one concrete ceiling with steel reinforcment in our house.

[NY]

My headset must be faulty, then. I start to get dropouts if I walk across the room, even with nothing in the way. My wife gets much better range with hers and has reception several rooms away through several walls. I presume it's a function mainly of the BT transceiver in the peripheral rather than the one in the phone (which you can't change); a better device will have a more sensitive receiver for the phone-to-headset comms and a more powerful transmitter (for the headset-to-phone comms - flow control etc).

I've have expected better from a branded (Sony) device. But it is fairly old; maybe six or seven years - which is "ancient" in modern device terms! I wonder whether there's a record of what class of BT a device with a given model number has. I hadn't realised until I read this thread today that there was more than one class of BT. Maybe mine has the lowest class (shortest range) which is intended really for things like keyboards and mice which are normally used right next to the computer that they control.

[Ralph Mowery]

As mentioned there are several 'ranges' (really power of the transmitter) .

It is possiable that as you have a head set device it was rated for only

3 meters (just about 10 feet). Those were probably designed for using short range items like the ear buds to a cell phone where you keep the phone in your pocket and use the ear bud to talk and listen. Same for the ones in a car for hands free operation.

You have to ballance the transmitted power with the battery life and weight of the ear buds.

[gfretwell]

Logitech runs on 2.4 GZ but I don't think it is actually BT. I agree it does get out fairly well. It works all around my pool deck and that is over 40 feet. I also have LT desktop hardware on the media machine in the living room, using TVs as the monitors and that works in 3 rooms in the house were the TVs are. (HDMI splitter and 2 extended cables)

[trader_4]

There are both kinds of mice, ie BT and non. The old one I have here is not BT. IDK what the mix is of new ones today. But it makes sense for new ones to use BT, for notebooks, tablets, etc, I assume they have BT, so with a BT mouse you would not need the USB adapter.

[VanguardLH]

Ralph Mowery [e-mail] wrote:

And since Bluetooth is vulnerable, you might want to consider the distance for any sensitive transmission content, like when transferring files via Bluetooth. A low-power BT device limits the distance for a connection, like within your home, while a high-power BT connection in your car means other cars on the road or folks nearby in the parking lot could snoop. With a 10 meter range for class 2 BT devices, I've seen where users relying on making/breaking a BT connection between their car's BT head unit (or a device in the car) to flag when they leave their car (they turn it off) or arrive back at their car (they turn it on) will complain that the BT trigger is quite a bit away from where they parked their car. Best is if the BT device in the car turns on and off with the ignition key, but I've seen some cars where the BT radio stays on for a while after turning off the car. For example, the user might use a BT device plugged into a power port (USB port, or cig lighter port) that stays on when the car is turned off. Plugging into a cig lighter port that gets disconnected when the car turns off makes sure the BT connection is broke with the smartphone (and the car locator app on it) while still in the car, not after walking 10 meters away. If all power ports stay on after turning off the car, you have to remember to unplug the BT device in the car to break the BT connection to the smartphone to get the BT-triggered app to mark THAT location for your car instead of some distance away. You might think 10 meters is okay to see your car in a parking lot, but not when the cars change and later some taller car blocks your view of yours. You might try using your remote lock fob to blink your car's lights or beep its horn, but not all cars have a remote fob, especially old cars, plus if it's someplace where lots of people are exiting then all of them are using their remote fobs and cars are blinking and beeping all over the place (for example, typical of everyone leaving a Disney theme park at closing and the parking lots getting flashy and noisy).

You probably don't care if it's just audio over Bluetooth, but that audio could be a link between the head unit in your car and your smartphone and that could be sensitive business or content in that call. The vulnerability doesn't even require pairing with the hacker's BT device, and why paranoids disable BT in their smartphone until they want to use it (but become vulnerable at that point). Of course, being potentially vulnerable doesn't mandate you ever are.

[gfretwell]

Logitech uses a proprietary system so you have to buy Logitech devices. One dongle will handle up to 6 or 7 tho. I am a Logitech guy, simply because I have a lot invested already. Very few of my HIDs are wired these days.

[NY]

I've never actually used BT for an IP file-transfer connection: I use wifi for that if the files are small, or a USB connection if they are large. I'm not sure how I'd configure it nor what software protocol (eg FTP or SMB) I could use.

Is BT more or less vulnerable than wifi with WPA encryption? I know that WEP is trivially easy for hackers to crack. I run my own business providing PC/internet support for people in my area, and I've found a surprisingly large number of people who have bought their own router (as opposed to using one supplied by their ISP) who have forgotten to turn on *any* encryption or have left at the factory default of "password123" or something similar.

If I had sensitive data to transfer, I'd use Ethernet if possible. And for 2 GB recorded TV programmes between recording PC and laptop, wifi is a dead loss compared with Ethernet: wifi struggles to manage 20 Mbps, as opposed to

1000 Mbps (1 Gbps) for Ethernet.

[John McGaw]

The working range is whatever the working range is -- no predictions and no guarantees. Everything depends on the quality of the equipment, the power used, the intervening space and possible interference (and, just possibly, the phase of the moon and other random crap). Take two piss-poor devices rated at 100m and put them in adjacent rooms (but with lots of metal in the intervening wall) and in an intense random RF field and you will be lucky to make it 1m. On the other hand, take two top-quality devices with the same advertised power onto a huge flat field with zero interference (go to Green Bank, WV if you need to but don't let them catch you during the test) and you will probably manage 500m+. Of course if somebody went to the trouble of making large reflectors or using external antennas then the sky is the limit.

Frankly, when my BT devices work at all at _any_ range I'm happy and try to ignore my luck in case I jinx it.

[trader_4]

Logitech - M535 Bluetooth Optical Mouse - Black

[gfretwell]

Look at the M325 and get back to me. I did say the "Logitech system", not every f****ng thing they sell.

[trader_4]

And what did I say initially? That both BT and non-BT wireless mice exist. To which you responded:

'Logitech uses a proprietary system so you have to buy Logitech devices. One dongle will handle up to 6 or 7 tho. I am a Logitech guy, simply because I have a lot invested already. Very few of my HIDs are wired these days. "

Which implied you were claiming that all Logitech are non-BT, which isn't, right, they have BT ones. I'd bet BT mice are the bigger sellers today too, for the obvious reasons I cited. So, what's your problem again?