Question on Bluetooth....

What can block bluetooth signal in home as far as walls and ceiling...basically want to know what to build with that will allow signal to get through and not block.

Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 Ghz band.
Obviously avoid metal in the walls.
I would expect that the more mass the wall has the harder it would be for bluetooth to get through.
Bluetooth was designed as a very low power, very short range communication.
As in a few yards not dozens of feet.

Bluetooth was designed as a very low power, very short range communication. As in a few yards not dozens of feet.

That's an important point that might be overlooked.

Also, water will block the signal.

They found this out with the Nintendo Switch joy-cons.

So make sure you don't have an aquarium nearby.

Actually, the human body can weaken the signal just enough to be either useless or intermittent.

originally posted by: samkent
Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 Ghz band.
Obviously avoid metal in the walls.
I would expect that the more mass the wall has the harder it would be for bluetooth to get through.
Bluetooth was designed as a very low power, very short range communication.
As in a few yards not dozens of feet.

You can get Bluetooth dongles that have an operating range of 100m, so those are worth looking out for. My headphones can definitely work at a distance of 20 meters.

a reply to: Vasa Croe

Just about everything blocks Bluetooth.



It was originally designed to only communicate at a max distance of 10 meters but with each update, the power has risen and in good conditions modern Bluetooth can work @ 100 meters.

a reply to: Vasa Croe
I use BT STP connections in my house. My house has 40cm thick brick walls inside (it´s old) and the ceiling is wood with an insulation filling (perlite).

For my AI and drone related projects I built a testdevice to check connection issues and ran it nearly 100h nonstop without any problems. I was sending the alphabet A-Z in bytes back and forth and not one single transmission was lost over that time.

I use HC-05 BT connection modules. The house has a footprint of around 12x8m. You should be fine if you´re not building it with concrete walls and iron reinforcements. If I place my notebook in the middle of the house I can still reach my concrete double-garage that is located 15m away from my house, no problems.

Line of sight 100m no problem outside.

a reply to: chr0naut
Those HC-05 are class 2 modules but I still get a halfway stable BT connection at a range of about 80-100m if both are outdoor and in sight at 57600 baud.

Either it´s mislabeled or I did a good job with the external BT antenna.

originally posted by: verschickter
a reply to: chr0naut
Those HC-05 are class 2 modules but I still get a halfway stable BT connection at a range of about 80-100m if both are outdoor and in sight at 57600 baud.

Either it´s mislabeled or I did a good job with the external BT antenna.

Actually, that sounds entirely 'in specification' for class 2 Bluetooth. People believe that BT only goes for a few feet due to the initial conservative descriptions given.

In reality, it is radio, and similar to WiFi in frequency (WiFi and wireless 'phones can also interfere with BT. The frequency band is crowded).

a reply to: chr0naut

You mean DECT (wireless phones). Yes they all (WLAN, DECT, BT) operate around 2.4GHz.

Blue tooth

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as far as building goes.... i would not let bluetooth capabilities dictate the type of house since blue tooth range extenders are cheap and easy.

If you want to block the signal they have a special paint for that too.

a reply to: samkent

My G930 headphones operate on 2.4Ghz, too, they work well into my barn, I use them there sometimes.

I just measured all three brick walls that the signal has to pass: 36cm + 40cm + 52cm massive stone wall. I wrote bricks but they are actually huge Feldsteine.

That´s 128cm of pure stone (or 50 inches) + roughly 15m. But you´re right as soon as you have iron in your walls you will run into problems.

Having such thick stonewalls is a great comfort. In summer it never get´s too warm and in winter, because it´s insulated from the inside (because historic preservation order), it´s very warm in no time.

BT is designed as a short range comms channel for the main item be it a phone/laptop etc to be able to communicate with the peripherals.

Since BT is designed to be a lot less power hungry than the usual wi-fi signal its a lot less yappy on the frequency and the 2.4/5ghz channels are wild west shall we say.

Various things affect wireless comms such as bad wiring, the type of clay used to make the bricks as that can make almost a Faraday cage etc.

We couldn't roll out wireless at one place as when the building was built in the 1960's it had marble floors which was full of iron etc and thus soaked up the signals and even within certain offices we found that the signal strength could change a lot with even a few ft's movement.

a reply to: Maxatoria

BT is designed as a short range comms channel for the main item be it a phone/laptop etc to be able to communicate with the peripherals.

Depends what short range means. BT for consumer level might be that short ranged. Industrial class 1 BT modules achieve ranges of +100m (~100mW compared to 2.5mW in class 2). Like I wrote above, with my class2 modules I reach a fairly stable connection using BT SPP (Serial Port Profile) I get a halfway stable BT connection at a range of about 80-100m if both are outdoor and in sight at 57600 baud.

Around 100m you will run into problems with conventional WLAN hardware from that time much sooner because of signal runtime collisions (that´s not the correct term).

I found BT to be much more stable than WLAN in regards to changing location constantly and the reflections that come with it. In fact I use it as datalinks to three race drones (see above post) to pull live sensor data from them. You should see them zip through my house, maybe I´ll do a video on this project someday.