Issue 619285 link

Starred by 2 users

Issue metadata

Status:	Assigned
Owner:	█ hennessywill@chromium.org Last visit > 30 days ago
Cc:	█ scottj@chromium.org r...@chromium.org █ mcchou@chromium.org █ sduraisamy@chromium.org █ vidster@chromium.org █ zelidrag@chromium.org
Components:	OS>Systems>Bluetooth
EstimatedDays:	----
NextAction:	----
OS:	Chrome
Pri:	3
Type:	Feature

Blocking:
issue 626465

Allow a user to specify BLE range (TX power)

Project Member Reported by sduraisamy@chromium.org, Jun 11 2016

Issue description

Request-
Allow a user to specify Bluetooth range for Beacon advertisements

Context-
We are working with Radius Networks, Coca-cola and Double-click to build digital signs supporting beacon advertisements using Chromebits

Controlling BLE range (Signal strength) has come up as a feature request from Radius Networks to achieve parity with other platforms.

Eventually we would like to configure this value from cPanel (as a policy setting) for Digital Signage.

Comment 1 by r...@chromium.org, Jun 21 2016

Labels: -Pri-2 -M-54 Pri-3

There is no command in the Bluetooth spec for setting the TX power.

This works on Android because vendors conforming to the Android 6.0 Bluetooth HCI requirements are required to implement a vendor specific HCI command (section 4.1.1) which allows us to set the TX power for that advertisement. This is only going to work on devices that comply with this requirement (I have no idea at all how many Chrome OS devices actually do). Given that, the best case scenario is,
a.) We implement a hack to directly use Android's vendor specific HCI commands to advertise (bypassing and disabling BlueZ's advertising).
b.) This will only work on a subset of devices (we can check if a device supports this)

Given this, I am adjusting the priority of this to P3 and removing the milestone. If this is at any point business critical, please change the priority and add a milestone.

Comment 2 by scheib@chromium.org, Jul 7 2016

Blocking: 626465

Comment 3 by r...@chromium.org, Aug 5 2016

Bluetooth 5.0 has a provision to set TX power. Unless we have a very strong reason to do this, I intend on closing this issue for 4.0 firmwares as a WontFix.

Keep in mind, to actually add this feature, we will need to coordinate with our vendors to make changes in their firmware - something that has a high lead time. So if anyone really needs this, please do let me know, soon.

If I don't hear otherwise, I plan on closing this next week.