PipeWire: Bluetooth Support Status Update
Bluetooth continues to be one of the most critically under-delivered standards, in my view. LC3, that this update discusses at the end, was announced January 2020. Over two years ago. There&#x27;s still, to my knowledge, no devices that support it. None, not a one.<p>In general I feel like we only just got Bluetooth 5.0 devices available on computers. Bluetooth 4.0 or 4.2 has been frighteningly prevalent, until very very recently. Bluetooth 5 harkens back to mid 2016, Bluetooth 5.1 was announced January 2019, 5.2 in January 2020, 5.3 (you guessed it) 2021, but I&#x27;d wager you&#x27;d need to drop numerous significant figures below 1% to account for how many laptops (much less desktops) are sold today whose bluetooth is &gt;5.0.<p>Truly one of the slowest, laggiest, least adoptable technologies on the planet. Really weird to me.<p>I can definitely accept some lag. LC3 is really using bluetooth-le, a very different scheme. At the same time, I see folks like zephyr-project already kind of making inroads into this future[1], in the open. A not small part of me thinks the way we do consumer devices is totally jank. That folks like PineBuds are living in the future, where we can compile our own OS&#x27;es for our peripherals. PineBuds[2] could, with a little zeal &amp; push, become the first LC3 device on the planet. And they could, perhaps, unlike most other devices that&#x27;ll be made in the next couple years, possibly support whatever comes next.<p>Shifting areas of interest a bit, but: another data-point in opening the future, the software Intel uses for their new PSE management engine just got open sourced[3]. It too is built on Zephyr.<p>On the positive-side, for PipeWire, incredibly sweet to see Hands-Free Profile get better. This is essentially the idea of a computer acting like a headset. This enables such vast additional degree of system flexibility, creates so many interesting situations. Phones, cars, other things are very limited in what they can do. But if we can wirelessly plug in a general purpose computer, make it act like audio system: we can do so much more. The old Nohands[4] stack is wildly out of date &amp; unsupported. PipeWire just doing the thing is 100% super sweet as the world needs to be. In general, a more amorphous world where computers can act as hosts or devices is one I thing would be vastly empowering: software is soft, and so too should be hardware, when it can.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;zephyrproject-rtos&#x2F;liblc3codec" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;zephyrproject-rtos&#x2F;liblc3codec</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pine64.org&#x2F;2022&#x2F;04&#x2F;01&#x2F;introducing-the-pinebuds-and-pinepod-seriously&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pine64.org&#x2F;2022&#x2F;04&#x2F;01&#x2F;introducing-the-pinebuds-a...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31121264" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31121264</a> (2 points, 7 days ago, 0 comments)<p>[4] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nohands.sourceforge.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;nohands.sourceforge.net&#x2F;</a>