[freeinkeroinen]

Greetings,
first of all my apoligies for my possible "green"/"newbie" approach

While planning the next "killer application" I have runned to some problems with realism of life on earth

Is it possible to write a program that would force Class 1 Bluetooth device to act as it would be Class 2 or Class 3 Bluetooth?

My need for this is:
The user need's to detect that the other phose is approaching while in Bluetooth range. The Plan was that the phones would "see" others by using normal Class 1 Bluetooth. The the other phone would then be set as Class 2 device wich would mean that the other phone would have to get closer before it would be "seen" again.
As the phone would be detected by the Class 2 Bluetooth the user could determine that the other phone has indeed gotten closer since it is now visible to the Class 2 Bluetooth. In essence a "very poor mans distance metrics with bluetooth".

Is that kind of manipulation of bluetooth even possible?
Thanks for your comments in this matter!

freeinkeroinen
-newbie student with fancy ideas-

[jimgilmour1]

You cannot measure distance accurately with bluetooth because it uses radio and gets interference from walls, and great source of interference is other phones and electronic devices. Bluetooth get round this by channel hopping and using different frequencies get past the interference,therefore the useable distance changes. If you need location fixing you need JSR 179 API which is about Location API using GPS. Class 1 is up to 1mb per second and Class 2 is up to 10mb per second and increased distance. Finally I have tried Class 1 phone and Class 2 Bt adaptor and its really bad because the BT USB dongle can see the phone, but the phone cant see the PC with the BT USB, which is why I forced my BT USB to use Class 1 not Class 2 and it works fine.
10mb transmit to 1mb receive always cause overruns and timeouts.

Class 3 well your guess is good as mine and they are not sold in UK for radio regulation reasons. They may be used in U.S.

[freeinkeroinen]

Greetings again,

Thanks for the reply!
The need is indeed concerning the location fixing. in this case however the exact distance is not important. All that is needed is the knowledge that the gap between two bluetooth phones is getting closer. Idea is to make it work with two normal bluetooth phones without gps or other extra candy.

Basic use would be that the phone will alert the user as soon as the other phone is in range of 1-10 meters. My Idea was basicly that I could use normal Class 2 bluetooth to do this. Class 1 would be too "good" for my need. I would use the Class 1 only to inform the user that the other phone is approaching but may not be in the range of 1-10 meters yet.

I take it that doing this switching of BT Classess is impossible with mobilephones?
Oh well back to the drawing board..