BlackBerry Remote Stereo Bluetooth Gateway Adapter A2DP

[jefbystereo]

Not that I can help, but I figured I would chime in and say I have this problem as well with my droid and BB gateway. I think we should have an official thread as we trouble shoot

 

[jefbystereo]

Also, how did everyone hook up the Gateway? To key on or always powered whether the key is on or off? I doubt it would make a difference, but my Gateway is powered to key on only though the cigarette lighter.

I have mine on the same fuse as the radio. I have suspected that the power loss to the gateway during ignition is a cause of some connection problems, but I haven't been able to verify this. Today, I am going to try to not plug the gateway in until the car is already on and give it an uninterrupted power supply.

 

[jefbystereo]

Ok, I did a little testing and here is what I have found. It seems that in order to automatically connect, the phones bluetooth must be on first.

My reasoning for this is that everytime I turned the BB gateway on first, then the phone, no connection was established. It seems that when the BT is activated on the phone, it does not automatically try to connect to the BB gateway, however it does try to auto connect to my BT earpiece.

See picture, this was taken when I turned on the BT. Notice that it is trying to connect to the earpiece immediately, however making no attempt to connect to the BB gateway. Therefore, if you turn the phones bluetooth on after the BB gateway is on, no automatic connection will be made and you will have to go into the menu and click connect. On the plus side, I was 5 for 5 in establishing connection that way.

So in summary: Turning the BB gateway on first, then the phones bluetooth does NOT work.

edit: I havent figured out what works 100% yet, I am still narrowing down what doesnt work first.

 

[scubasteve101]

Has anyone found a better product than this Blackberry Remote Stereo Bluetooth adapter? I'm looking to have the same setup but don't want to deal with these issues.

 

[MX_1]

I have the exact same problems with my Droid X connected to the Blackberry Gateway in my car. It usually connects automatically if the Droid X Bluetooth is already enabled when the Blackberry gateway starts.

But after some time the sound will just stop, although the player is still playing and the Bluetooth connection is still established. When this happens it is sometimes very difficult to get the sound back. Randomly disabling / enabling Bluetooth, powercycling the gateway, and restarting the player will eventually get it working again. But this is a pain to do while driving and very annoying.

Has anybody found another Bluetooth gateway that works more reliable? Or maybe is it caused by the Droid and it happens with all A2DP devices? Is Motorola aware of the problem? Maybe we should all let them know so they realize how many people are affected by this problem.

 

[akates]

I not only have this issue, I also have the sound quality of bluetooth calls connected to my car go to crap whenever the A2DP connection is active. Why does A2DP bluetooth screw up phone bluetooth? This doesn't happen on several other non Motorola Droid/X phones.

 

[yams69]

Wow, I wish I had seen this thread before I bought the Blackberry Bluetooth thing. I've been having the same problems as everyone else with it not connecting reliably. Couldn't get it to connect at all today, even though my Droid said it was.

Fortunately, shimming the Droid's headphone jack with a plastic hanging file folder tab (since I couldn't locate a straw) fixed the poor connection to my car's aux jack. Problem solved! (For now.) Thanks for the tips!

 

[markusfine]

I've always had this problem but until Froyo (2.2) at least I could always force a manual connection. With Froyo, my bluetooth settings page will often show no bluetooth devices as it is "scanning" and manually connecting once it appears doesn't always work. I have a Nokia A2DP headphone adapter and it connects much more consistently but occasionally gets flaky. I also have a A2DP device on my home stereo and it behaviors almost as poorly as the BB gateway. So, in summary, the A2DP implementation on the Droid is pretty unreliable.
I would love to make Motorola aware as it sounds like this problem may even exist on other Droid models? I'm not sure how to a log a problem with them without going through frustrating level 1 support?

Any suggestions / angry mob?

 

[MX_1]

I am now using the Kensington LiquidAUX adapter with my Droid X and it works much better. It always connects and I have never had any sudden disconnects.

Very rarely I have heard a 100 ms (1/10th of a second) dropout, which may or may not be related to the bluetooth connection. But this only happens every few hours and is therefore tolerable for me.

The only downside is that I need to press a button to turn it on. My goal was to install it hidden away so it is automatically active when the ignition is on.

But it does come with a wireless remote to skip tracks, which is kind of nice.

 

[gaming09]

I just went on to cm7 nightly builds and my bluetooth stereo gateway no longer has any issues... it connects right away i dont know if its gingerbread or CM7 modifications but it works FLAWLESSLY i cant tell you how frustrated i was before

 

[jefbystereo]

I just went to the CM7 nightly #8 yesterday (from stock 2.2 rom). Ill report if it works for me or not after a few days of testing

 

[gr8scott_o]

This is an old thread, but I thought I would post my experiences with this combination for anyone who is considering this solution.

I had a DX (now DX2) and my wife has a D1. I bought three Blackberry Bluetooth Stereo Gateways, one for each car and one for the home.

Summary:

For best experience, plug the Gateway into a power source that is constantly hot. This will minimize connection problems. If/when connection issues arise, follow steps in this order to re-establish connection: Start music playing, turn off Bluetooth, restart Bluetooth and then connect manually to the Gateway. This works 99% of the time. As a side note: Something in the Gingerbread Bluetooth stack solves this issue, and it works as expected 95% of the time, without having to take those steps.

Details:

When I first got my Blackberry Bluetooth Stereo Gateway, I was on a DX with Eclair. I did not have the unit hard-wired into my system, as I was considering mounting options. The darn thing would rarely connect when I turned on my car, and it was a constant struggle to figure out how to reliably connect to this. Compounding the situation was that I had two options for plugging in the USB adapter into my car, one socket that was constant hot, and one that was tied to the accessories.

Over time, I realized that if I left the USB adapter plugged into the constantly on socket, I had far fewer connection issues, provided I started my music within the first 10 seconds of starting the car.

However, when the USB adapter was plugged into the accessories socket, I learned after much trial and error that the only way to get it to reliably connect was to follow these steps:

1. Start car.
2. Dock DX (assuming you are docking it).
3. Turn off WiFi.
4. Start music playing.
5. Open Bluetooth Settings (I placed a shortcut on my Car Home menu)
6. Shut Bluetooth off.
7. Turn Bluetooth on.
8. Scroll down and manually connect to the Blackberry Bluetooth Stereo Gateway.
9. In a few seconds when it finally connects, enjoy music.

This sounds tedious, and it kind of is. However, once you get the sequence down, it's really not that bad. I usually do them as I am sitting in the driveway still, before I start moving, takes maybe an extra 15 seconds.

When mounting my DX and hard-wiring in the Gateway, I decided that taking these steps were worth the trade off of potentially coming out to a smouldering pile of vehicle if something were to go wrong, so I opted to hard-wire the Gateway into the accessories circuit and live with the manual connect process.

Updating to Froyo on the DX did nothing to alleviate the problems.

Eventually, I went with CarHome Ultra as my auto docking screen ($1.99 for the licensed version as of this writing, 30 day free trial). It has several very cool features, including the option to stop and start Bluetooth and WiFi upon dock/undock and the option to automatically connect to a device. This eliminated steps 3, 6 & 7 for me, but I still could not get the auto device connect to work under Froyo. Like I say, CarHome Ultra has a LOT of neat features, and it blows away the Blur car home in look/feel and in functionality. Well worth the $1.99 in my book. If you get it, also get Media Keys (Free) in the market to add shortcuts to music player options on your home screen.

Finally, I got Gingerbread for the DX! This solved all of my connection issues, and with CarHome Ultra things finally worked pretty smooth. On occasion, I would still have to power cycle to Bluetooth radio and reconnect manually, but those occurrences were limited (usually to short on/offs of the car, like when filling up with gas).

Then, for better or worse, I upgraded to the DX2 (still on Froyo) and I am back to my six step program.

A couple of other notes:

• D1 on my wife's car seems to work about 50% of the time as expected. I taught her the 9 steps and she reports it "mostly" works for her.
• Since I have three devices, if they are all plugged into constantly hot sources when I am sitting in my driveway and the wife's car is there, all of the devices show up as "Blackberry Bluetooth Stereo Gateway" and it can be confusing to know which one to connect to. There is no way of changing the device name that I know of.
• I noticed that when I was in my driveway and still connected to my WiFi, when I drove out of range the music would stutter for a second (possibly as the notification for WiFi played). Also, as I would come in and out of range of WiFi devices, I would experience the same stutter. I found it best to just turn off WiFi as part of my routine. Hence, Step 3. Although I didn't try it, you might also try turning of notification for WiFi events in the Setting menu.
• Music quality is best when Music Volume is set at two "clicks" below full. Going Full Volume, you never go full volume. It distorts.
• Nav commands play through the speakers, although by default the volume is really low or off. So, if you fire up nav you can listen to your music and Biatchin' Betty will talk to you when necessary.
• Phone calls will NOT play through the Gateway, however, and I find that after answering a long phone call, I may have to go thru the six steps again.
• I use Locale with the Dock and All Volumes plug in to set volume of Navigation and Music to two clicks below Full when Car Docked. This is also quite handy.

Hopefully, this helps out someone who has been struggling with this.

 

[sheriffwoody]

Im the originator of this thread =)

THanks for the info!!!
I tried goes always hot (power) on mine, but when I start my car it looses power for a second, which puts me back to square one. (some cars when the key is put to the 'start' position remove power from radio and other sources, prby so that all power can be used for starting). I could probably find another power source that remains hot, but I am stoked that gingerbread blu tooth stack helps!!!
If I remember right they were doing an over the air update a few weeks ago, and i assumed i was in line for it (droid x)... but I never got it.
Did you get an auto update or did you root to install?
Thanks in advance!

 

[gr8scott_o]

Im the originator of this thread =)

THanks for the info!!!
I tried goes always hot (power) on mine, but when I start my car it looses power for a second, which puts me back to square one. (some cars when the key is put to the 'start' position remove power from radio and other sources, prby so that all power can be used for starting). I could probably find another power source that remains hot, but I am stoked that gingerbread blu tooth stack helps!!!
If I remember right they were doing an over the air update a few weeks ago, and i assumed i was in line for it (droid x)... but I never got it.
Did you get an auto update or did you root to install?
Thanks in advance!

Glad to help... I grabbed the OTA update, you can manually check via Settings|About Phone|System updates.

 

[gr8scott_o]

Then, for better or worse, I upgraded to the DX2 (still on Froyo) and I am back to my six step program.

If anyone cares, the Gingerbread update to the DX2 solved the problem again. Connects solidly, ever single time. Even if I step out of the car to gas up, when I fire the car back up music play resumes.

Too bad the DX2 is otherwise a POS.