High-power Bluetooth Communication

Posted by cashton.
2:33 pm
07/03/2025

Hello all!

You may have seen my project in #self-promotion, but if you didn’t, here’s a quick explanation. My project, named Sledscreen, is a 7″ touchscreen “tablet” replacement dashboard for a snowmobile. The current Sledscreen prototype hardware runs off a Raspberry Pi 5 ( Raspbian / Linux ) running a custpm Electron GUI with pure Javascript. The system features a map, this is where I need assistance. I need to integrate a high-power Bluetooth system for communication between Sledscreen devices, this will allow for location sharing between the dashboards, ultimately so you can see your friends location on the map.

I have never worked with Bluetooth at all and I definitely need help implementing this into my project, and assistance choosing high-power Bluetooth hardware that will allow for long-distance communications.

Another Bluetooth function I need to implement is communication with a cellphone, music controls, phone controls, notifications and more.

Thanks for any help.

techielew#0000

March 7, 2025 at 2:33 pm

@umeshlokhande @andrukhan any thoughts

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insightmike#0000

March 7, 2025 at 2:33 pm

Hi Cashton – sounds like a fun project. Before you get too deep with Bluetooth, I’d start by validating that you can get the range you need. When you describe “high power Bluetooth” – you might be referring to the newer “Coded PHY” protocol for BLE. With great antenna design, this can get you into the 1km ballpark in ideal line-of-sight conditions. But its 2.4GHz, which is particularly poor for moisture. I’d do some snowy field-testing to see if you could get a signal further than you can actually see. Wooded areas and snow covered hills are likely to be problems. *If* the range turns out to be inadequate, the next technology to look at would be LoRaWAN. It gets you to a lower frequency which does much better in non-line of sight conditions, but much lower data rate, and not as clean of an architecture for your application. Look forward to hearing more about the project!

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cashton.#0000

March 7, 2025 at 2:33 pm

Thank you for the help. I am going to start off with testing BLE and Coded PHY like you recommended. I will post an update here once I get the results. I am definitely interested in LoRa as well, but I need to do more research on it and figure out exactly how it would work. Again, many thanks for your assistance.

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