I have a Dolphin 99ex mobile computer running Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5 Classic CE OS 5.2.29193 on a TI Cortex-A8. I'm trying to connect with Bluetooth devices with SSP quickly on the fly.
It has bluetooth V2.1 + EDR and while it works, it's dead-slow for discovery and connection. It averages something in the range of 13-17 seconds for device discovery and 6-10 seconds for connection (19-27 seconds total).
A few devices I've tried are the RN-42 and HC-05 but with the same results. I've tried using 32feet and the native bluetooth connection setup. Is this really a limitation of the hardware/OS?
It seems way too slow to be true. An iPhone 4S can discover & connect in <11 seconds, a Galaxy SIII in <13 seconds pretty reliably.
Any thoughts on how to speed this up, if at all possible? It really needs to be sub-15 seconds total and I'm pulling my hair out over it.
Bluetooth discovery was never fast, it is by design. If a device seem to perform faster discovery it is using less tiemouts and so my not find all devices in range.
You may tweak Bluetooth discovery using registry settings described here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc510632.aspx.
You may also run a background process that does BT device discovery periodically in the background and so can offer an 'always' up-to-date list of devices in range.
The fastest connection setup with a BT device is to use the known MAC address (ie by reading from the device housing and typing it in the application or by scanning a barcode. Second is often used in prof. use to pair a WM device with a printer). Then use a Bluetooth socket connection directly instead of a virtual serial port setup.