Bluetooth Range / Extenders external Antennas

[Thomas Fichtner]

Hello,
I often need to use wireless, battery-powered Bluetooth devices such as MIDI keyboards, footswitches, or small Bluetooth speakers in stage situations, as this has been determined within the artistic process. These devices mostly control cues from QLab or Ableton running on a Mac Mini. While this is relatively manageable in smaller venues, I'm concerned about connection issues over longer distances. Does anyone have experience or an idea for some kind of external Bluetooth antenna or similar that works with Mac? Thank you! Thomas

[TheChri...@aol.com]

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I often need to use wireless, battery-powered Bluetooth devices such as MIDI keyboards, footswitches, or small Bluetooth speakers in stage situations, as this has been determined within the artistic process. These devices mostly control cues from QLab or Ableton running on a Mac Mini. While this is relatively manageable in smaller venues, I'm concerned about connection issues over longer distances. Does anyone have experience or an idea for some kind of external Bluetooth antenna or similar that works with Mac? Thank you! Thomas

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Hi Thomas,

 

I researched the topic of “long distance Bluetooth” about 6 months ago to find a transmitter to use onstage with some Bluetooth loudspeakers (such as a crying baby effect).  For that, I ended up purchasing the B03Plus from 1Mii, and have been extremely happy with it:

 

https://1mii.shop/collections/bluetooth-adapter

 

I believe all of their gear is audio only, however.

 

In my research, I had also come across AIRcable, which I think is what you are looking for:

 

https://aircable.co/shop/category/long-range-4

 

Finally, here is a basic description of the various classes of Bluetooth transmitters:

 

https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/what-is-the-range-of-bluetooth-and-how-can-it-be-extended.html

 

 

Hope some of this helps!

 

Chris

 

 

Chris Walters

TheChri...@aol.com

772-559-9392

[Christopher Dean]

It’s not that easy…

Bluetooth is bidirectional. Even if you’re “just sending midi” or “just sending audio”, both ends are talking to each other constantly. This means that whatever you do to extend the range has to both increase the effective transmitter power and also increase the effective receiver sensitivity.

Problem is, that anything that increases the transmit power also increases interference to other devices. There are regulatory compliance restrictions on radiated power.

Anything that increases receive sensitivity also makes the receiver more sensitive to interference from other devices. These don’t even have to be Bluetooth devices and can be anything using the 2.4GHz band (and that’s a whole lot of devices these days).

Even if not “connected”, devices often go hunting. Cell phones are often always transmitting, looking for things to talk to via wifi, Bluetooth, etc.

Bluetooth is designed to be short range. That’s the whole point of it. For longer range, there’s other communication methods designed for the purpose. 

That’s one reason why Bluetooth devices don’t come with detachable external antennas. These would also violate regulatory limits as antenna gain increases effective radiated power.

Perhaps something like this would do for control:

https://midi.org/rtp-midi-or-midi-over-networks

Then an audio over wifi or local streaming solution for sending to speakers.

There’s lots of ways of controlling QLab remotely. I did one show that had 4 simultaneous scenes occurring simultaneously in 4 different rooms in the theatre, even stairwells and the coat check. We ended up using 6 QLab laptops, all networked. one “master”, one in each room and one running Remote desktop to watch them all, override if needed and also edit during tech and rehearsals.

It may require some creativity and cooperation from Sets and Props but it can be done. Raspberry Pi or even ESP32 DIY solutions exist that could be run from batteries and would be quite small and relatively inexpensive.

Christopher

[page daniel]

Hello,

Bluetooth is an incredible bargain. But it comes with a little latency
tax and range restrictions as well. Use in longer range situations
might be over come by use in a little copper for part of the path.

I am still using Lectrosonics transmitters and receivers for sends to
powered mixers. Not cheap, but very low latency digital and rock solid.
Good antennas at each end can get one more than a quarter of a mile.

For battery powered receivers the R1a's that are analog are inexpensive
and work very well.

Oh the lighting, set builders, and painters love to have a sound system
that takes Bluetooth.

page daniel