Bluetooth 4.0 Micro USB Dongle CSR8510 Bluetooth is a short-range personal area network technology which is used for

transferring files, contact information, connecting hands free sets and stereo headsets to

mobile phones, tablets and PCs wirelessly.

While generally touted as easy to set up and get working, for a variety of reasons often

related to the quality of the software Bluetooth stack provided with many USB Bluetooth

devices, users have often found frustration in getting things beyond just basic file

transfer working. This can be because of outdated software without profile support for

newer devices, or a lack of software altogether, leaving the user to rely on the operating

system’s default (and often somewhat limited) Bluetooth stack.

Over the years, it has made the evolution through numerous revisions each with new

benefits. The initial Bluetooth 1.0 was superseded by 1.1 which offered more robustness

against interference through adaptive frequency hopping, and higher transfer rates in

practice. Bluetooth 2.0 bought newer modulation modes which allow for higher speed

data transfer and practical battery life savings for portable devices. New pairing modes

were introduced which simplified and secured pairing. Bluetooth 3.0 bought the ability

to use Bluetooth as a signalling channel to use Wi-Fi as a higher-speed transfer medium

(although this functionality is often problematic). Finally, we come to Bluetooth 4.0

(also known as Smart and/or Low Energy) which introduces a new physical layer system

altogether which enables super-low-powered devices that run for years off a single

battery.

Unboxing

The Avantree Bluetooth 4.0 Micro USB Dongle came packed in a transparent plastic

clamshell which was held together with clear tape seals. The dongle is clearly visible

from the front and measures about 23mm from tip to tip, with the black section

measuring about 8mm. That’s pretty small!

It claims to have support for Bluetooth 4.0, as a dual mode (i.e. classic and low-energy)

device. It also supports file transfer, audio and is a Class 1 device with a 50m claimed

range. Typically most Class 1 devices advertise a 100m range (whereas Class 2 devices

with lower output power typically advertise a 10m range), however, it seems that the

50m claim may be related to the efficiency of its antenna (due to small size) and possibly

to be more in-line with real-world expectations.

The rear of the box extols its various features and specifications. It appears to support

the majority of the Bluetooth profiles available today, through the use of the CSR

Harmony Bluetooth stack. The default Windows Bluetooth stack is not this capable!

Included in the package is an 8cm mini-CD with the drivers, the USB dongle itself and a

Quick Install Guide. Please heed the instructions in the install guide! Also, you will

need to use the CD, so if you don’t have a drive in your laptop, please copy

the files off onto a USB flash drive using another computer. You will not derive

the full benefit of the dongle simply just by plugging it in (but it will work for basic uses,

but please don’t do this – you’ll find out why later).

It is supplied with CSR Harmony version 2.1.63.0. The software is for Windows only

– users of Linux will have to rely on their OS’s included bluez stack.

Unusually, the dongle itself has its flashing LED indicator on the bottom of the device

where it’s not in plain view. It’s not particularly bright, and will not distract you too

much. The dongle protrudes about 1cm from the body of the USB port, and the antenna

(a printed circuit board antenna) is on the extreme end of the dongle.

The dongle feels quite solidly built – I didn’t feel confident enough to try taking it apart

for fear of damaging it, so there won’t be any photos of the internals unfortunately.

The dongle itself has a Vendor ID of 0A12, Product ID of 0001 and a Firmware Revision

of 8891. It’s HCI and LMP version is 6.8891. Its MAC address starts with 00:1A:7D,

corresponding to Cyber-Blue (HK) Ltd. It identifies itself as a CSR8510 A10.

Installing Getting this dongle installed is no drama (in most cases) if you follow the instructions

carefully. Start by NOT plugging in the dongle into a USB port, however tempting that

might be.

The first step is to remove all previous Bluetooth stacks and driver software. This is

important to prevent the previous stacks from controlling your new Bluetooth device,

causing conflicts or limiting its abilities.

You can achieve this by removing it via the Add/Remove Programs applet inside the

Control Panel. If you have IVT Bluesoleil installed, or Broadcom/Widcomm Bluetooth

Software installed, they should be removed along with any other Bluetooth software.

Then, you can execute the set-up from the disc which involves following the prompts …

At this point, it is best to restart your computer to ensure that the software

starts up correctly, despite the wizard not requesting it. Don’t be lazy – do

it!

Then, you can now plug in the USB dongle, which should be detected and result in the

installation of a few devices and the appearance of a new Bluetooth icon in your task

tray. It should also, after the installation, pop a balloon that tells you that your Bluetooth

Device is Available.

If you have Skype installed and running, it will also install a Skype plugin which allows

the CSR Bluetooth software to integrate with Skype – just one of the “perks” of a proper

Bluetooth stack, as compared to the Windows default stack.

You can now explore the settings within the Harmony stack and commence adding

devices to your system. The settings within the Harmony stack allude to many more

possibilities than offered by the default operating system Bluetooth stack, or indeed,

some aftermarket ones as well including support for Bluetooth 4.0 low-energy security

tokens. This may come in extremely useful in the future as low-energy devices become

more popular.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any supported way to update the software, aside

possibly by visiting the Vendors’ web site in the future. As a result, when devices using

newer profiles not supported by the software need to be used, you may need to upgrade

or purchase a new software stack (or dongle and software stack together).

Performance Pairing devices compared to using older Version 1.0/1.1 dongles is relatively simple

thanks to the Secure Simple Pairing. Many newer devices display a code for you to check

and accept the pairing, or pair without needing to enter any codes, making it much more

painless.

To initiate pairing, one must put their Bluetooth device into pairing mode before

initiating a device scan (either by category or all). The time-out on the scan is relatively

quick, so be sure to initiate pairing mode on your Bluetooth device before starting a

scan.

For example, to pair a headset, you would choose audio/video device, and your device

should show up in the scan shortly.

Select the device, and click next, and secure simple pairing takes care of the rest.

Drivers for your specific device should install automatically without trouble. If not,

please see the next section.

Once that succeeds, you should see a bubble indicating the connection has been

established. If you have paired a headset, the Skype integration will change the audio

devices for you automatically.

I’m glad to report no audio problems at all with this stack and the Native Union Pop

Retro Bluetooth Handset. Great stuff!

Integration with Skype also allowed for double-tapping the button to initiate a call, and

single tap to hang up.

I also had no trouble pairing my Jabra BT-135, Samsung Galaxy SIII and my Bluetooth

Keyboard to it, although A2DP Media Audio streaming from the SGSIII to the computer

curiously refused to function (even with SCMS-T turned on during installation). This

may be a compatibility issue.

File transfers to the S3 are easily accomplished by right clicking on a file and navigating

to Send To, followed by Bluetooth Device. Other than that, buttons are added into

Microsoft Office as well so that you can send a file directly from the ribbons interface.

Sending with the Bluetooth 4.0 dongle (at v2.1 EDR rates) is about three times faster

than sending with my old Bluetooth v1.1 dongle.

To test its Low-Energy radio abilities, I was able to scan for and pair with my Adonit Jot

Touch and Jot Script, although as there is no profile support, the connections are

not usable.

I later tried a serial Bluetooth GPS unit with no dramas, however, unfortunately as I

don’t have an A2DP Bluetooth Stereo set, I can’t comment on how that would perform.

However, the manual states there is apt-X support, and I would hence expect the best

Bluetooth Stereo quality you can expect.

So you ran into trouble … try this! While pairing a device, like the handset, you may have experienced a problem in

installing the device which looks like this:

As a result, the device does not work, and Harmony will not connect nor disconnect

from your device …

It turns out, it’s not only you. Further inspection of the problematic device gives

you the following:

“The name is already in use either as a service name or a service display name.” A

dreaded error. Maybe you’ve tried hitting the update driver button many times, and

installed another driver over the top which results in it claiming to be okay but still not

working …

… and now any attempt to remove it, or uninstall the Bluetooth stack never

finishes!

The reason why this might occur is if you have used a CSR Bluetooth Dongle in the past

with the Microsoft default Bluetooth Stack, and paired a device (e.g.

Handset/Handsfree) which requires a driver and allowed the installation of drivers from

Windows Update. These drivers come from CSR as a courtesy to CSR dongle

users so that they can have audio with older dongles, but these courtesy

drivers conflict with the proper drivers provided in Harmony as they use

the same service name. Unfortunately, “removing” and “uninstalling” the old dongle

through Device Manager or Devices will not solve it.

Quite a few people have this problem online, and there hasn’t been a clear way to solve

it. However, by learning a little bit about the driver framework, I’ve managed to

devise a method which seems to be able resolve this issue. Please note that

working with the Registry can cause serious damage to your system if you make any

unintended alterations. I take no responsibility for any damage you might cause to your

system – but this did work for me.

Please carefully follow these steps:

1. If your problem device is stuck with the “The name is already in use either as a

service name or a service display name” error, please proceed directly to Step

3.

2. If you have somehow forced the wrong driver to install anyway (e.g. the Bluetooth

Hands-Free Audio device), you will need to go to Device Manager and remove it

first. The computer may seem to be removing the driver but will never finish.

Remove power to the computer and restart it. Check that the Bluetooth Hands-

Free Audio device doesn’t show under Sound, video and game controllers. It’s

okay if it shows up with an exclamation mark somewhere else. If it still shows up,

try rebooting into Safe Mode (press F8 on booting) and back to regular mode.

3. Remove the CSR Harmony stack using the Add/Remove Programs in

Control Panel. Be a little patient, it should take 5 minutes at most. If you have

the wrong driver installed (Step 2), but failed to remove it, CSR Harmony will not

uninstall and will hang during uninstall.

4. Restart the computer.

5. If the dongle has been removed, plug it back in and go to Devices and Printers.

Findany Bluetooth devices except the dongle and right-click Uninstall and

select to delete drivers.

6. Go to Device Manager and delete the Generic Bluetooth Radio.

7. Get out Registry Editor by pressing Win+R and typing regedit and clicking OK.

You will need to grant administrative privileges for this to work.

8. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services (,

backup the entire tree to a file using the Export command, if you wish) and

delete all the folders named the following under this path (as they are

CSR dongle driver remnants, as determined by reading through the CSR

Harmony stack .INF files):

csravrcp

HFGService

csr_bthav

CsrBtPort

csrduncmdm

csrhfgcc

csrhidmini

csrpan

csrserial

csrusb

csrusbfilter

9. While you are there, also look for folders starting with bth that have sub-folders.

In the case of Bluetooth Hands-Free Audio, this is the BthAudioHF entry – delete that

too.Do not go deleting things randomly – you will mangle something serious.

Delete Bth* entries which are named with the problematic device name or

contain a driver file name which is used by the CSR provided drivers – in the

case of BthAudioHF, it points to the driver with conflicts with HFGService.

10. Reboot your computer and reinstall Harmony as before. Re-pair the device. You

should find it functions correctly.

And Linux? While not officially supported by the manufacturer for use with Linux, I threw it in with

my Linux machine running Lubuntu 13.10, and it detected the dongle immediately and

blueman was able to help me run a few file transfers just fine. Unfortunately, audio

stubbornly refused to work, but this is quite a common issue with blueman and bluez.

A comparison of file transfer speeds between the new and old dongle was made under

Linux:

Lets just say, while not as speedy as Wi-Fi, it’s a pretty decent speed increase.

Conclusion The Avantree Bluetooth 4.0 MicroUSB dongle is a solidly built Bluetooth dongle

supporting the latest Bluetooth Smart/Low Energy modes. It is based around a quality

Cambridge Silicon Radio CSR8510 A10 bundled with a fully licensed (some lower

priceddongles have issues here) and fully featured CSR Harmony Bluetooth Stack

offering full support for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows XP through to 8 installations.

The dongle also had no problems functioning under the bluez Bluetooth stack under

Lubuntu 13.10 Linux, although support for profiles beyond just file transfer (OBEX) will

depend on your distribution of Linux and troubleshooting skills (as there are many little

compatibility issues between certain Bluetooth managers (e.g. blueman) which may

cause problems).

Additionally, the software supports the apt-X codec which allows for higher quality

Bluetooth stereo audio (A2DP) with compatible CSR apt-X enabled speakers and

headsets. This is a feature which you won’t find anywhere else, although I wasn’t able to

test this given the peripherals I currently own.

The software is quite easy to use and installs correctly first time on a “fresh” machine

which has never seen Bluetooth devices before. It also installs correctly on machines

which have previously used other Bluetooth chipsets, but have had their software

removed cleanly (e.g. IVT Bluesoleil, Broadcom/Widcomm).

Unfortunately, if upgrading from a prior CSR Bluetooth device using the operating

system’s Bluetooth stack and also CSR drivers from Windows Update for

Headsets/A2DP, you may encounter driver conflicts as I did. This seems to have

affected a few others, and although I managed to work out a method to resolve this, it

doesn’t make for a seamless user experience. This is seems to be a problem with CSR

Harmony’s installer/uninstaller.

Given its capabilities, I would recommend this product based on the strength of the

Bluetooth stack software, its compact size and decent range. And as usual, Mobilezap

was quick to deliver, flawlessly as always.