Audio Ltd. A10 Bluetooth range

[mano]

Regarding A10 Bluetooth range I finally found time to do some testing.

 

Devices: iPad (6th Gen), older Huawei P9 lite, newer Huawei P9 Smart

 

With the P9 Smart running Android 9 I could not get any connnection at all. Must be a software version problem, very annoying.

The older P9 lite needed some refreshing in the app, and the iPad found the A10 instantly.

 

I found that orientation of the A10-TX and the iPad/Huawei made a big impact on signal strength - maybe something I had overlooked in the past when not beeing able to connect and change stuff on a busy set - leading to disabling and completely forgetting about the A10s BT functionality until today.

 

The iPad had the best connection and signal strength when having the screen face TOWARDS the A10-TX. Turning it away from the TX, like you would hold it normally standing before a wired person (facing yourself), reduced signal dramatically!

When it was facing the A10, I could be 2m away - turning the iPad around mostly killed the connection.

This is a little problematic because the reception is best when facing the A10, but to operate the iPad like that you would stand in between the two devices, which again decreases the reception a lot... I managed somehow to not be in the way by holding it to the side.

 

The Huawei P9 Lite did not really care much about orientation - although I had the impression the phone liked it more when facing AWAY from the A10-TX.

More convenient but I felt the connection was a little more unstable than with the iPad.

 

Both devices had the above described reception when beeing held UPRIGHT and NOT HORIZONTAL like you would normally do when looking down on the tablet or phone in your hand. Holding them horizontal decreased signal strength drastically. I may had that wrong in the past!

 

Biggest factor:

Having the A10-TX facing TOWARDS the controlling device and having no body(!) in between the devices. When the A10 faced away or against the body, signal dropped the most.

Very important for me to know when hiding the TX - with the key hold function activated I never cared if the face was looking away from the body.

I could not find a difference with opened or closed battery door (but that would not be practically anyway when hidden under clothing, in a pouch etc.)

 

This led me to the question if the 833 with its external Bluetooth antenna, which should have pretty good range, will get the functions from the app and be able to control the A10-TX directly from the 833 over Bluetooth?

This would add some basic ZaxNet functionality to the 833/A10 package.

With the ability to maybe connect an even stronger antenna (maybe on a cart) this may be a workable solution?

I can't imagine the addition of an connector + external antenna to the 833 only to connect to the SD Remote app.

I would really like to hear what is planned for the future integration of the A10 system into the 8-series as this is really important for buying decisions right now, with so much nice stuff coming out from other manufacturers. With competition like the Nova, I really think the time of not saying what's planned is over!

 

Last but not least - not BT related but interesting:

I got the tip from my collegue Tjandra Warsosumarto to put some fabric tape around the regular whip antennas to enhance reception when bodymounted.

The idea is to create space between the body and the antenna.

I can not confirm 100%.... but I have the strongest impression it helped. At least with the last 5 sitdown interviews I did, reception did not completely fail when talent lent back in a chair, burying the TX behind the body. Happened before several times.

 

Maybe this helps someone.
Greetings from Austria

[IronFilm]

On 10/20/2019 at 10:05 AM, mano said:

This led me to the question if the 833 with its external Bluetooth antenna, which should have pretty good range, will get the functions from the app and be able to control the A10-TX directly from the 833 over Bluetooth?

This would add some basic ZaxNet functionality to the 833/A10 package.

With the ability to maybe connect an even stronger antenna (maybe on a cart) this may be a workable solution?

I can't imagine the addition of an connector + external antenna to the 833 only to connect to the SD Remote app.

I would really like to hear what is planned for the future integration of the A10 system into the 8-series as this is really important for buying decisions right now, with so much nice stuff coming out from other manufacturers. With competition like the Nova, I really think the time of not saying what's planned is over!

 

I like your thinking here!
 

[NathanWBS]

On 10/19/2019 at 10:05 PM, mano said:

Last but not least - not BT related but interesting:

I got the tip from my collegue Tjandra Warsosumarto to put some fabric tape around the regular whip antennas to enhance reception when bodymounted.

The idea is to create space between the body and the antenna.

I can not confirm 100%.... but I have the strongest impression it helped. At least with the last 5 sitdown interviews I did, reception did not completely fail when talent lent back in a chair, burying the TX behind the body. Happened before several times.

 

 

URSA make a product called Mini Foamies which are designed for this in mind. They are available in black and white.

[Max Futterman]

It’s entirely possible. Modern Bluetooth is an open standard and has a range comparable to Zaxnet. Zaxnet was invented ages ago when Bluetooth utterly sucked and was only remotely usable for those phone headsets (remember those?) and not much else. So Zaxcom was very prescient in that regard. 
 

Today, Bluetooth does have a comparable range and can easily duplicate the functionality of Zaxnet, though Zaxnet is much more transparent in operation. Manually setting group and unit codes, and setting the exact frequency aren’t exactly done on consumer Bluetooth. It will be interesting to see SD and Audio LTD’s implementation.