Phoneclip+ and Windows PC

The Phone Clip+ does not require Bluetooth LE and likely would not work with that. The user guide makes no mention of Bluetooth LE, just Bluetooth.
I have paired my Phone Clip+ with HP & Dell laptops as well as a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. No pairing issues with any of them.
I just found this online.

From Govserv2

@prodigyplace said:

The Phone Clip+ does not require Bluetooth LE and likely would not work with that. The user guide makes no mention of Bluetooth LE, just Bluetooth.

That’s what I found, too. I corrected my supposition above. And the Plugable adapter specs say it’s backwards compatible and supports BT 2.x devices, too. And my Plugable adapter works with my PC+ on a Win10 computer.

@jim_lewis said:

@akaybee Guess it’s not the lack of BT 4.0 LE support in Win7. Looking up the PC+ datasheet, it says that the PC+ supports the Bluetooth specification 2.1
Hearing aids by ReSound - rechargable and streaming audio directly from AndroidTM and iOS devices

Besides using Win7, akaybee’s problem may be similar to my past problem in trying to get the same Plugable BT USB 2.0 dongle to work on a computer that didn’t come with built-in BT. If you’ve used previous BT dongles on the same computer, they don’t always get uninstalled cleanly (drivers and software) - and akaybee has been trying several dongles on the same computer now in succession to see which one works. So it pays to look over the BT section of Device Manager to see what’s installed and get rid of anything that shouldn’t be running left over from the past (recent?) history of the computer. The Plugdebug software mentioned in a post above is very powerful. I think it would help anyone even if the goal is to install a different brand USB dongle/adapter as the software’s mission is to find anything on your computer that’s been hanging around related to BT, and in the process, it provides a very detailed report on just about everything else on your computer!.

In another post somewhere, I did mention that one thing I didn’t like in using the PC+ paired to my PC BT adapter and then relaying audio to my HA’s is there is a noticeable delay of up to seven seconds (it’s variable) from the time you click the Play button on a video before you hear the audio in your HA’s. That’s another reason to recommend using headphones of some kind, if they work with your HA’s. Since headphones work for me and it takes out the middleman of the PC+ relaying to the HA’s, there is little or no delay in playing audio directly from my Plugable BT adapter to my wireless headphones (and I can use them in wired fashion also if I want to save battery and perhaps get even slightly better audio quality).

Thank you all very much for the detailed replies.

I tend to agree with jim_lewis. It may be simpler to use a over the ear BT headphone (over the hearing aids if necessary) to hear audio from players with the help of an adapter such as the Taotronics one. At least it works. To hear streaming audio or Youtube items I need to use a computer to have access to the internet, and so was trying to use a dongle to make the old PC BT enabled.

Btw, I wrote to Plugable along with the debug file and their reply (dated 4 December) was:

"The sad news I have to convey is that many hearing aids use non-standard connection methods that don’t work well in Windows, especially Windows 7, and in in interactions with other customers, we have not been able to get the Resound Phone Clip connected. Unfortunately, we don’t have one of those here to test in depth, but typically this happens because the device was designed to work with a mobile app using Bluetooth 4.0 that isn’t supported in Windows 7 (and often not in Windows 10).

_Since this likely isn’t going to work for you, please take advantage of Amazon’s 30-day return policy to receive a refund."

I did not get a reply from Zexmte although with their adapter I could see the pairing process on my computer screen which however failed.

I did return the Plugable and the Zexmte adapters.

I have come to the conclusion that trying to make an old PC with Windows 7 BT- enabled and, even more importantly, ‘pairable’ (my word) with the Phone Clip+ may be almost impossible and may not be worth it. There may be some basic difference between the capabilities of Windows 7 and 10.

Cheers.

I just spoke to 'Jeff" - an extremely helpful tech guy at Resound (1-888 735-4327). He confirmed that whether or not the PC is natively (?) BT-enabled or made so with a dongle there will be problem in pairing the PC with the Phone Clip if the OS is Windows 7.

He also confirmed that I should be able to pair it with my Mac Book Air (which is BT-enabled) in the Mac mode but not in the boot camp mode running Win 7 - I added this boot camp facility some years ago as I am more comfortable with Windows.

I am glad that this chat has saved me some pointless efforts with Win 7.

Cheers.