Bluetooth speakerphones

[Fuego]

I've continued my testing on this.

The F8T013 dongle (100m) is giving much more range, up to 25 metres through concrete floor and brick walls. It might go further, but I haven't tested this.

Disconnection has not proved an issue and neither has automatic reconnection, when I forced the issue for test purposes.

The Parrot Mini provides surprisingly good VR too when you do ten minutes voice training using it as your training input device.

If I get brave enough, I might open the Parrot up and put a jack socket in for a better external speaker connection, but for now the quality is good enough for my immediate purposes of extending HS announcements and providing a remote voice command point facility.

[Fuego]

Just wanted to update this post and add that, over the longer term, I have had a couple of disconnection issues, so I'm not totally convinced about my setup as a rock solid solution. I haven't completely given up hope though - it's maybe more a question of wait and see what new products come up.

[travisdh]

I know this is quite an old post, but did you have much luck with the Parrot system, i am looking to a good solution for VR around the house and am seriously looking into a few of these, or a USB speaker phone, but want to keep cost minimal (otherwise i might get a few USB communicators).

Given these seem to have DSP and so forth, they seam quite good, but in terms of them being connected to a PC. do you have to hit the call button to utilize the inbuilt mic everytime you want to use VR, or as soon as it is paired, does it stream mic to the PC regardless of if the button is pushed or not?

That is one of the main things, if it streams to the unit or not.

[Dafunktyfunk]

I am also looking for a solution for this. We don't have the luxury of running cable.

[Fuego]

I know this is quite an old post, but did you have much luck with the Parrot system, i am looking to a good solution for VR around the house and am seriously looking into a few of these, or a USB speaker phone, but want to keep cost minimal (otherwise i might get a few USB communicators).

Given these seem to have DSP and so forth, they seam quite good, but in terms of them being connected to a PC. do you have to hit the call button to utilize the inbuilt mic everytime you want to use VR, or as soon as it is paired, does it stream mic to the PC regardless of if the button is pushed or not?

That is one of the main things, if it streams to the unit or not.

Not sure what you mean by stream to the mic. The mic is an analogue audio input device and streaming is a digital process (yes, I know I am being pedantic, but your requirement could be easily misinterpreted).

Nonetheless, once the Parrot unit is paired with the Bluetooth enabled PC, you press the button once to "make a call" and the Bluetooth audio channel is established to the paired PC.

However, if the Bluetooth connection drops, which it occasionally does due to adverse conditions, you need to press the call button again to re-establish the connection, at which point Homeseer functionality continues as normal.

The call may stay up for days, or if you are unlucky hours, so it is not totally foolproof. I should stress that the unit I bought is now 3 years old - so I do not know if the tech has improved.

The unit I have could do with better voice quality and the occasional disconnects are a pain. It will also sometimes drop-out - i.e. not actually disconnect, but lose connection, then recover by itself and there are still some Homeseer speaker client stability issues. I think this is a fair assessment. You may get a feel for things by testing the process with a bluetooth mobile (cell-phone, to some), which pretty much amounts to the same thing (depending on the Bluetooth profile used).

Edit: Looking at the Parrot Minikit specs of today http://www.parrot.com/uk/products/plug-n-play-car-kits/parrot-minikit - it looks like this unit is still only Bluetooth 1.2 and 10m range. If there is another unit out there with better range and higher quality audio, then a lot of the drawbacks might disappear.

[madmellow]

MXL Rocks!

I was intrigued by this thread and decided to give it a try. I started with a Motorokor EQ5 wifi speaker/mic. After recovering from the USB/Driver mess that the wifi adapter made of my Win7 system, I got to work -- sort of. I got multiple Speaker clients running with separate microphones. I learned quickly, however, that the Wifi distance and poor reception/sound simply would not render that configuration workable.

I found a MXL AC-406 on Amazon for $20 - The price was probably a mistake as they are now $80 -- but it works like a champ. It's a USB attached speaker/mic. I've got a CAT5e USB extender on order to eliminate the distance problem. I can sit in my chair in the den and speak commands to HomeSeer. Better yet, it tells me who is calling when the phone rings (using a script with a USRobotics modem and outlook lookup synced with my iPhone address book).

I also have HS controlling my AV system though iTunes and AutoHotKey scripts driving a web front-end for Thinkflood's RedEye.

If it continues to pan out, I'll pay the $80 for a second on in the bedroom, and the $150 for the second RedEye in the bedroom.

My goal is to tell HS to set the sleep timers when I'm ready for bed and to turn on the news with I wake up.