Bluetooth 5 launched; brings higher speeds better range and a focus on IoT

Following its announcement back in June, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) has today revealed that the specification of the much-improved Bluetooth 5 technology has been finalised and is now available for manufacturers and developers to use in future devices.

The latest version of the ubiquitous wireless technology is said to offer twice the speed, four times the range and eight times the broadcast message capacity compared to Bluetooth 4.2. All of those advancements are firmly targeted at Bluetooth's increasing importance as a standard for smart appliances and the Internet of Things. The update also includes some fixes designed to limit its interference with other wireless technologies.

"Bluetooth is revolutionizing how people experience the IoT. Bluetooth 5 continues to drive this revolution by delivering reliable IoT connections and mobilizing the adoption of beacons, which in turn will decrease connection barriers and enable a seamless IoT experience," says Mark Powell, SIG's executive director.

"This means whole-home and building coverage, as well as new use cases for outdoor, industrial, and commercial applications will be a reality. With the launch of Bluetooth 5, we continue to evolve to meet the needs of IoT developers and consumers while staying true to what Bluetooth is at its core: the global wireless standard for simple, secure, connectivity."

Audio looks to be less of a focus this time, which is a bit surprising, given that smartphone manufacturers are rapidly pushing wireless headphone adoption by accelerating the end of the standard headphone jack on devices like the iPhone 7. This spec, however, is all about the internet of things. According to the official release, "Bluetooth continues to embrace technological advancements and push the unlimited potential of the IoT."

The SIG expects the first range of products equipped with Bluetooth 5 to hit the shelves early next year.


Source: Bluetooth

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Bluetooth 5 is coming: four times better speed, double range; launching on June 16

The next-gen Bluetooth standard version dubbed Bluetooth 5 is on its way with some significant improvements. Bluetooth Special Interest Group's Mark Powell announced that the fifth-generation of the omnipresent wireless standard is coming soon.

Bluetooth 5 is supposed to offer extended range and faster transfer rates than its predecessors with up to 2X the range and 4X the transfer speeds. This will make for quite the improvement in performance over what is currently available and may make Bluetooth a great way to transfer large files without any wired-connections.

Bluetooth 5 will also bring in new functionality for connection-less services such as location-relevant information and navigation. "By adding significantly more capacity to advertising transmissions, Bluetooth 5 will further propel the adoption and deployment of beacons and location-based services to users around the world," he writes.

An interesting new feature is the ability to employ larger "advertising packets". According to Bluetooth SIG's spec, an advertising packet has the ability to send info to devices even if they are not paired together. This information includes device identification like a name to be found by other devices. One of the most practical uses of this is if you just bought a Bluetooth speaker and want to pair your phone to it by finding the name of the speaker among all of the other Bluetooth devices that may be in range.

Also Check out: My Picks: Best Headphones for iPhone 7

One of the most important improvements, however, could come in Bluetooth audio, which could see a massive upgrade in quality. Current generation implementations aren’t bad, but they are not excellent either. With Bluetooth 5's promises of faster speeds and presumably higher bandwidth transfer capabilities, wireless audio could start rivaling what your audiophile friend’s equipment can produce, which would be a massive win for wireless audio solutions. Only time will tell, but it is about time wireless audio got an upgrade, and this is the perfect way to do so.

It is more than likely not possible to update current hardware to the Bluetooth 5 spec, as new Bluetooth versions usually require new hardware, but only time will tell.

Stay tuned for more details coming with the full Bluetooth 5 announcement next week.
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[Bluelog v1.1.1] Simple Bluetooth Scanner

Bluelog is a simple Bluetooth scanner designed to tell you how many discoverable devices there are in an area as quickly as possible.

It is intended to be used as a site survey tool, identifying the number of possible Bluetooth targets there are in the surrounding environment.

Changelog v1.1.1

Codename: “Marshmallow Peep Edition”

• Merged in libmackerel
• Merged in MACLIST from haraldscan
• Experimental manufacturer lookups (currently x86 only)
• Configuration options broken out into config.h
• Allow for friendly class names in verbose mode, thanks Dean
• EXPERIMENTAL: Added -e option to encode MACs with CRC32
• Updated MAN page
• Updated README
• Improved memory management, thanks Paolo
• Improved file cleanup, less idiotic

Compatibility

Bluelog has been written with portability and efficiency in mind, so it is able to run on a number of systems and hardware platforms. Basically, as long as the device can run (and get results from) “hcitool scan”, and you can compile software for it, there is a good chance Bluelog can run on it.

In addition to running on all major Linux distributions, Bluelog has been used successfully on Chrome OS (running on the CR-48 netbook), and MIPS based OpenWRT devices. For information on the OpenWRT build of Bluelog, see the “openwrt” directory.

More Information: here

Download Bluelog v1.1.1

[Spooftooph 0.5.2] Automated spoofing or cloning Bluetooth device

Spooftooph is designed to automate spoofing or cloning Bluetooth device Name, Class, and Address. Cloning this information effectively allows Bluetooth device to hide in plain site. Bluetooth scanning software will only list one of the devices if more than one device in range shares the same device information when the devices are in Discoverable Mode (specificaly the same Address).

 

Features

• Clone and log Bluetooth device information
• Generate a random new Bluetooth profile
• Change Bluetooth profile every X seconds
• Specify device information for Bluetooth interface
• Select device to clone from scan log

Usage : To modify the Bluetooth adapter, spooftooth must be run with root privileges. Spooftooph offers five modes of usage:

1) Specify NAME, CLASS and ADDR.
root@thnlab: spooftooph -i hci0 -n new_name -a 00:11:22:33:44:55 -c 0x1c010c

2) Randomly generate NAME, CLASS and ADDR.
root@thnlab: spooftooph -i hci0 -R

3) Scan for devices in range and select device to clone. Optionally dump the device information in a specified log file.
root@thnlab: spooftooph -i hci0 -s -w file.csv

4) Load in device info from log file and specify device info to clone.
root@thnlab: spooftooph -i hci0 -r file.csv

5) Clone a random devices info in range every X seconds.
root@thnlab: spooftooph -i hci0 -t 10

Download Spooftooph 0.5.2