At the beginning of the year 2020 the SIG (bluetooth special interes group) opened up their plans for some new functions in bluetooth.
They got the idea of a unlimited broadcast at different devices.
Bluetooth was a good technical invention in the past because since you can transfer music or data easy and without some cable connections. I’m also a huge fan of it, because I sit a lot at my computer and listen to music. Cables make me really mad and after a while I bought a wireless headset. It’s much more comfortable to work now.
A lot of people got this idea of using different devices before and tried different possibilities like using apps to solve this problem of only 1:1 connection. But the SIG wants now to fix this problem and they call it Auracast. This planned new function shall be established in the specifications for the next bluetooth version Bluetooth LE Audio.
But what are the new function are able to an when should it come?
The first thing is, it’s written in their part of “Bluetooth LE Audio” what means that this part is oriented on audio broadcasts. For example you and you friends wants to share some audiobooks, podcasts or another stream where audio is involved (like twitch.tv – did you know that I stream sometimes? Here you can find my channel (I’ll do it again when I have more time )).
In this case you could share an unlimited amount of headphones or speakers from only one device. Sure you are limited by the reach of the bluetooth signal, but most of the time this shouldn’t be a problem.
But wait… there is more!
It’s cool to share that streams with others but that’s not all. The SIG thinks a bit further than that, because they also think about the possibility that the technology can make things hearable what was dumb, like the audio from devices at the main stations, at big places, airports, ante rooms, restaurants and so on. Also it could be possible to use it at cinemas, at meetings or deaf aids.
When will it come? They say it will be in the next months available and here is the big ‘but’. For your cellphone it looks like you can use it this year and that will work out for most of us. However for other new equipment it’s unclear when it will released. That means when you buy TV’s, notebooks, cellphones and others you will have possible an old bluetooth version and not the new one.
But I think in the next year it will come out step by step. Maybe they roll out an update to some ‘older’ devices.
I’m really happy about this because that solve a big problem and doesn’t need an extra solution.
Do you know that a lot of devices using an old bluetooth version?
Most of the time we don’t think about what we use. If it works, everything is fine.
But a lot of gadgets we use contain an older bluetooth version. Sometimes we can update them like on our cellphone or computer. Headphones on the other hand we can’t rarely update and that is a big problem, because the old version(s) are vulnerable – the CCC (chaos computer club) showed this in the past.
Sometimes the companies doesn’t know that this problem is available in their older codes and so they don’t fix it.
If you are able to find out which version of bluetooth versions you use at your devices try out to update them (sometimes they want that you do it manual but doesn’t let you know this).
In the future I’ll try to make some more about it.
