Saturday, 16 July 2016
The Dash: 2.0 updates
This is turning into The Dash blog recently. Hopefully after my current 1-2 month crunch I’ll be able to get back to posting about other things!
In any case, The Dash firmware 2.0 (now “Bragi OS 2.0”), which I wrote about in my most recent post, is now released. Full release notes are here. The major version number increment is definitely deserved, as it adds a lot of features, not all of which I’ve had a chance to evaluate. The timing of these changes does seem to correlate with more general availability for the earphones.
The pairing procedure for both the Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy sides have been overhauled. Both now require pairing codes which theoretically prevent spoofing. More usefully day-to-day, you no longer need to explicitly pair the Bluetooth Low Energy side every time you want to use it. Instead, just inserting it in your ear is enough for it to show up in the app. Both audio and visual prompts during pairing are very well done. Given the design of the Bragi app, I’m pretty sure this pairing procedure was intended all along.
While not commented on in the release notes, the touch sensitivity seems less sensitive to hair brushing against it.
Microphone (hence Siri) quality is once again somewhat improved but it still sounds like you’re talking inside a tin can. The iPhone’s internal microphone is a lot better if you’re able to use it instead.
My trick to give the left and right Dash different names still works, and unfortunately you still need to rename the device twice to get it to stick.
I’ll be trying out cadence detection for cycling tomorrow; I’m not much of a swimmer.
There’s still a lot more to come — including, eventually, a SDK…
7:54 PM
