Multiple Bluetooth devices

[sleah]

Not quite theatre, but related 🙂

Our music dept. has asked about having a few (4 or 5 maybe) bluetooth speakers in practice rooms for the peri's to play backing tracks during lessons.

My concern is if we buy a few identical speakers - be that portable, wall mount, in-ceiling etc - they will all have the same ID, and that there maybe overlap between rooms. It would be preferable to have the same experience in each room, so would like to avoid buying a bunch of different speakers if possible.

Does anyone have experience of this scenario and/or have any suggestions as to kit that may have customisable ID? (though I don't see how?)

CPC do a range of bluetooth speakers that are upto around £100 per unit, wouldn't want to spend much more per room.

Edited March 4, 2022 by sleah

[J Pearce]

A valid concern!
Some units add a serial number or ID to the end of their bluetooth IDs. These are good.
Some allow renaming of the device. These are very good.
Some do not do either of these. These are not good.

Possibly not directly applicable here - but the Cloud Electronics in wall bluetooth receivers allow you to set an ID using dipswitches on the back. You could make a very nice and pretty music-teacher proof rehearsal room setup using these, but not for £100 per room.

[the kid]

I have not used them but a friend has, Ikea Symfonisk are sonos speakers and you can batch "pair" them with wifi/bluetooth so in theory you could have A room and B room with 4 speakers each. They are roughly the same price as CPC ones though. How that would work with security and avoiding students being students I am not sure. but the same goes for bluetooth. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/product-support/symfonisk/how-to-use-symfonisk-pub180e00a9 

If you have the amps and speakers already you could in theory just use a bluetooth RX on an amp.  But I have found "most" bluetooth RX take maybe 2 or 4 devices saved at most which makes it a pain.

[TomHoward]

Do the peri's always teach in the same rooms, or so some teach between rooms? Although the text ID shown is the same, most equipment handles different physical speakers differently as far as I am aware as I have a huge list of duplicates in my phone from multiple of the same devices.

However pairing would be a pain as you wouldn't know which room you were pairing with initially.

(Our peri's all teach in the same rooms, week in, week out, year in, year out)

[timsabre]

Bluetooth devices pair by MAC address (6 byte number) which are (supposed to be) unique to each device. The device name shown on the phone is just for info. As Tom says this does not help if you have a list of identical device names to pick from, but as far as the pairing is concerned they are different.

[bruce]

Disappointingly, the Denon DN200BR doesn't have a customisable ID. Guess who has half a dozen of them in adjacent rooms....

[sleah]

Yes I think the peri's teach in the same room each time.

Methinks I need to discuss the pitfalls with the Director of Music and strongly suggest the use of a good old cable 🙂

[the kid]

32 minutes ago, sleah said:

Yes I think the peri's teach in the same room each time.

Methinks I need to discuss the pitfalls with the Director of Music and strongly suggest the use of a good old cable 🙂

Be aware, a cable is going to run the risk of going missing A LOT. iPhones don't have 3.5mm often, only lighting, and many android phones have usbc now. Adapter city. 

[bruce]

I thought we'd left the days of "chaining cables down" behind.

 

But, just in case,a reminder of the "washer and padlock" trick.

Find a washer where the hole is just too small to get either end of the cable through.

Double the cable over

Push the loop through the washer

you can then secure the loop with a small padlock.

Doesn't work for thick cables that can't be bent, but we used to use that to stop the kiddies stealing the mice and keyboards from the computer.

 

Or use a plastic P-clip and a screw. You're not trying to make it completely unstealable, just preventing the "casual borrow".

[sunray]

9 hours ago, bruce said:

I thought we'd left the days of "chaining cables down" behind.

 

But, just in case,a reminder of the "washer and padlock" trick.

Find a washer where the hole is just too small to get either end of the cable through.

Double the cable over

Push the loop through the washer

you can then secure the loop with a small padlock.

Doesn't work for thick cables that can't be bent, but we used to use that to stop the kiddies stealing the mice and keyboards from the computer.

 

Or use a plastic P-clip and a screw. You're not trying to make it completely unstealable, just preventing the "casual borrow".

Just put the padlock round the cable.

[Stuart91]

My Bluetooth-related woe: some TVs now use bluetooth for their remote controls. Sharp were an early adopter. I fitted four in a venue, only to discover that the maximum number of remotes that could co-exist was two...

[bruce]

On 3/8/2022 at 10:41 PM, sunray said:

Just put the padlock round the cable.

That only works if your padlock is exactly the right size - just too small to get the cable end through. Which is fine if you have a cable with big connectors, but we're talking about 3.5mm jacks and lighting connectors here.