Web UI over bluetooth very slow

I did a bit more digging and found the nRF52840 Bluetooth 5.2 chip from nordicsemi.com which has been incorporated into USB dongles such as the GeeekPi nRF52840, and it seems like it can do Internet Protocol Support Profile (IPSP), based on a quick reading of this example from the Zephyr project. I’m guessing that IPSP with Bluetooth 5.2 would go a long way towards solving the speed issues, but I don’t know enough about this area to estimate how easy or hard it would be to get this dongle to provide functional networking over Bluetooth for MOD devices, relative to implementing Wifi connectivity.

What speaks against connecting the device directly via USB and an OTG adapter/camera connection kit to a mobile device?

In my experience it’s a bit risky to rely on BT or WiFi on stage anyway.

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That’s a fair point, although:

a) this is not really for use during performances, at least from my PoV I would want to use it to make small tweaks during rehearsals or sound checks (and anyway it’s 2020, should we really still be settling for the fact that cordless operation is unreliable?!)
b) it’s yet another cable to have to worry about forgetting or tripping over

Also, I’m not very familiar with OTG but why wouldn’t a normal USB cable suffice? Would the MOD act as the host device or the peripheral?

I have a Duo and a Duo X at the studio and for me it seems like terrible not be able to connect both of them via USB, f the IP is the problem they should get different IP automatically or at least be able to modify one of their IPs and be able to access both of them nicely…

I’ve tried an USB BT4.0 stick and it seems pretty slow. I’m looking for a 5.0BT stick, I’ll check if the performance gets a little better…

I’ve searched high and low for a dongle with Bluetooth newer than 4.0, and Web UI over bluetooth very slow is all I could find.

Ultimately I suspect that wifi connectivity will be the better path to take. Bluetooth has always been a fairly miserable user experience.

We dont have a nice way to handle multiple units connected together at the same time with dynamic IPs, it is quite the nightmare networking issue to solve (internal DNS resolvers that need to know and talk to each other…)

WiFi likely going to be the solution to go for, and seems the best for the studio.
The dynamic MAC address of the units will be problematic, but we have been making some tests on this as needed for the “composite” usb support.
This is something we have to see once the first RC of 1.10 is here.
Current plan is to have it by the time the Dwarf beta units go out, which is only a few days away now.

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Good to know! As the DuoX is something to have in a table, the scenario of having two (or more :smiley:) units in the same enviroment is something that should not be “a rare scenario”.

For example, yesterday I wanted to send the config I made from one unit to the other. The only solution was to PUBLISH the setup online and the get it to the other Mod… And talking about this, if you go to the public repo of pedalboards to get one, to which unit goes the config if you have both of them connected in Chrome?

DUOs need to be as good brothers and be able to co-exists peacefully :wink:

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We hear you.

There are a couple of things we have in our priority list (mainly everything that is a Dwarf related feature, the early/beta batch with v1.10 does not everything we want/promised).

This is something we will not forget, and becomes specially useful for those that soon will have a Duo/X unit and a Dwarf as well.

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Could a solution be to connect one of the two devices into the other one and then into the PC with some bridging involved (so that one of the device is on a subnet of the one connected to the PC ?)

I guess… but then one unit would be working extra hard, as it would basically be acting as a network switch.
not sure if this is possible to scale to more than 1+1 unit though

It looks like there have been developments on the Bluetooth 5 front recently?

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If anyone tries, please report how good (or bad) it works.

Do you know if bluetooth 5 network is faster? If considerably faster, it would be worth updating the whole stack on the MOD side.

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I just tried with the asus bt500 and it works now! Thanks a lot!

It takes a while to get into GUI and that experience is a bit slow

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Thanks for verifying!

So, good that it works, but seems it is not an improvement over bluetooth 4 or 3.
Still, now at least there is a better caching system, so while slow the first time you open via bluetooth, hopefully further usage will make its use into bearable territory.

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I haven’t tried with 3.0-4.0. The response time when twisting a knob on the duo x and seeing changes in GUI can be almost realtime I would say but sometimes slower. it’s just scrolling around and zooming in that is quite slow.

The caching system works good. much faster load time the 2nd time

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Caching is for all BT connections, right @falkTX? My DUO now seems not as slow in the normal use… Anyway the cool thing would be to be able to have 2 (or more) DUO/X/Dwarf on the same computer without them colliding…

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Best case right now for multiple devices in the same PC is through WiFi WiFi - MOD Wiki

But yes, that is an advanced setup.

Can you recommend a USB wifi stick proven to work? I’ve tried with 2 with different chipsets and I never got the error calling the concrete firmware, and one of them was a “linux proven” wifi stick…

hmm right, I remember you mentioning that. Sorry I cant be of more help there.

The one I use is a Ralink one.
This Debian page lists the usb adapters that use the same driver mine does rt2800usb - Debian Wiki