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Bluetooth

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I started playing around some more with the Bluetooth interface and tried to see if I could see it from my netbook. Sadly I did not see an A2DP profile for it. Hopefully this will be addressed in the future. I also tried to see if my model S would see a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Again, it did not see it. The model S also did not see my netbook.

I was hoping I could stream music from my netbook over Bluetooth since there's no audio input connector.
 
It works fine with my Samsung Galaxy Nexus as well. I have the latest Bluetooth drivers for both Windows 7 and Linux. Both saw the Tesla but did not see any services they supported. For the hell of it I also tried a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The Model S saw them but could not add them. I'm mostly just experimenting to see what works and what doesn't. I found, for example, that EXT4 formatted USB hard drives work fine for media. I've also tried various media formats. Most work but sadly no 5.1 audio FLAC files.
 
captain_zap wondering if your galaxy III displays artwork? Mine streams audio but no song artist or artwork. Thanks...

No artwork displayed with either Pandora or local music files on the phone as the source...but I wouldn't expect this. The A2DP Bluetooth profile doesn't address a method of transmitting anything other than audio and control signals. It is technically possible, of course, to open a second Bluetooth data connection to the phone for this info, but that would require an app on both the MS and phone side that knows how to do this. There's just no standardized way of doing it yet. Maybe a good project for someone when they open up the MS platform for developers.
 
As an FYI, with my iPhone 5, I can stream BT audio from Spotify, and the album artwork is displayed. So it is possible.

Interesting. So the Spotify app must be sending the artist/album/track info over Bluetooth AVRCP (audio/video remote control protocol), then the Model S must be pulling the album art over the 3G connection. I have noticed that HD FM displays album art, too, but I don't think the artwork comes over the FM airwaves, it is retrieved over 3G.

Based on this info, it seems like the Pandora app could be updated to display the album art and song info.
 
Interesting. So the Spotify app must be sending the artist/album/track info over Bluetooth AVRCP (audio/video remote control protocol), then the Model S must be pulling the album art over the 3G connection. I have noticed that HD FM displays album art, too, but I don't think the artwork comes over the FM airwaves, it is retrieved over 3G.

Based on this info, it seems like the Pandora app could be updated to display the album art and song info.

I don't believe the album art is coming over 3G, and here's why I think that. :smile:

With a paid subscription, Spotify allows you to cache music locally. I have about 500 or so songs cached on my iPhone. I can randomly pick any song from that, and the album art shows instantaneously. There's no way any internet connection could be that fast to know what song I was going to pick next, do a look-up, and then show the album art at the exact time that I clicked play. Playing internet streamed music from Spotify is different. Even then, the native iPhone app itself at times doesn't get the album art fast enough, and it displays a default music note tile. Usually a little bit later, it'll have the art downloaded.

I can do some more experimentation (for science of course) once I have my Model S back from the shop on Wednesday. I have a bunch of podcasts on my phone as well. Now curiosity is killing me to know if the podcast "album art" shows up as well.
 
If you are playing a Spotify tune on your iPhone that you know is cached, and streaming it over Bluetooth, it will be very interesting to see what the delay is for the album art to show up on the Model S display. An interesting experiment would be to disable 3G, possibly by covering the antennas in the side view mirrors with foil or something, and repeat the test, thus determining the origin of the album art.
 
Based on the album art I see, I'd say it has to be coming from 3G because some of the art does not match the art that's linked to the file (thumb drive) or the artist/album, and even more just displays the question mark rather than any art (yet there is art in the file).
 
Based on the album art I see, I'd say it has to be coming from 3G because some of the art does not match the art that's linked to the file (thumb drive) or the artist/album, and even more just displays the question mark rather than any art (yet there is art in the file).


I never gave it any thought that the metadata might becoming over 3G. I just assumed my thumb drive was the source. I wonder how I can test this??????
 
As an aside, are others still having problems with the Bluetooth connection cutting out while listening to music from their phone? I frequently have to re-select my iPhone 5 when playing music or Audible books via Bluetooth. (I can start another thread if you think this is too far off topic.)
 
Based on the album art I see, I'd say it has to be coming from 3G because some of the art does not match the art that's linked to the file (thumb drive) or the artist/album, and even more just displays the question mark rather than any art (yet there is art in the file).

That seems to be what I'm seeing as well.
I use Instacast on my iPhone to listen to podcasts. The Tesla display does show the program description, and above that, it seems to show some random album art. I'm assuming it's parsing the podcast title text and getting a best match. Obviously it's never correct!
 
As an aside, are others still having problems with the Bluetooth connection cutting out while listening to music from their phone? I frequently have to re-select my iPhone 5 when playing music or Audible books via Bluetooth. (I can start another thread if you think this is too far off topic.)

Yes, for best Bluetooth performance my phone has to be sitting in the center console well. It's funny because it seems like a weak signal problem, but the phone will connect to the car (in the garage) when it's elsewhere in the house.
 
Ok, I take back what I said before. I must have just either had a good connection or wasn't paying attention enough.

Got my car back last night, and had new music cached from Spotify. I did see a delay where just the music icon was shown at first, then I got entirely different album artwork than what was shown on my iPhone. So it's definitely not being passed over BT from the Spotify app to the car. 3G is the only way that the Model S could have come up with it's own album artwork.

That's still pretty interesting though. There's a thread in the Linux OS of the infotainment that's sole job is to take what bits of ID3/song title/artist info it has access to and find cover art. I wonder what database they are using for the artwork because some of the artwork was pretty atrocious. Even though the song was on 'Now that's what I call music', it would be nice to have the actual album cover from the artists own album. :rolleyes: