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Solutions related to Oticon TV adapter box issues

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Edited

Couple of things … apologies in advance for the long post … I’ve put my “solutions” first, and then my explanation…
OPN S1s (rechargable) restarting while using Oticon TV adapter - SOLUTION: make sure batteries are charged to at least 70% …
I’ve been posting about this … apologies for all that… I think I’ve FINALLY figured out what the issue is … bottom line: 90% of the time the problem occurs when the hearing aid batteries are below 60% … It’s been a long couple of months trying to figure this out - including sending aids to Oticon - they just sent some new ones; I also requested a new TV box - problem persisted… but again, last night I did a quick recharge of hearing aids when they got to about 70% and for the rest of the night, NO problem with the aids restarting… I will try it again tonight just to be sure - then I’ll probably return the new TV box to audiologist and let her know my theory about what’s causing the problem… it still doesn’t answer the question why it didn’t happen with my previous iPhone but … I will pat myself on the back for figuring this out… both Apple and Oticon were NO help; zero; zilch … both just pointed to the other …

  1. Problem connecting to Oticon App when using TV adapter box: SOLUTION: stream something else (youtube,etc) BEFORE connecting to TV adapter box.

I would always have trouble connecting to the app when using the TV adapter box - the aids would constantly disconnect from the app, take a long time to reconnect,etc … I stumbled onto what I think is the fix while reading all the reviews (mostly bad) on the app in the Apple store… one of the reviews complained about this issue, and the “developer” response mentioned streaming something else (youtube,etc) to the aids, BEFORE connecting to the TV adapter … I have tried it several times, and it actually seems to work… don’t know why, but … I will open up youtube and stream something (just a couple seconds) , and then open up the OPN app, connect to TV adapter, and the aids connect right away, stay connected, etc…

3 people in this conversation11 min readJump to latest

If it makes you feel any better my More1 aids do about the same thing. I do believe it is either the app or just a weak Bluetooth signal from the aids due to the battery limitations .

I haven’t had any restart issues with my aids

Edited

I fail to see how the TV Adapter causing your OPN S to reboot randomly (well now we know it may be due to weaker battery) has anything to do with you switching to a new iPhone. Isn’t the random reboot caused by the interaction between your TV Adapter and your OPN S? How does your new iPhone (or old iPhone for that matter) have anything to do with the random reboot of your OPN S?

Maybe it was just a coincidence that before when you had the old iPhone, the OPN S battery was still robust enough even at a lower charge that its voltage level is still high enough to prevent a reboot. But since you got a new iPhone, it just happened to be around the same time that your OPN S battery has weakened enough that if it’s depleted by 30% (70% charge left), the additional drain on the OPN S battery due to using the TV Adapter will pull the battery voltage down even further, low enough to trigger a reboot.

If this is the case, switching back to your old phone by now would still cause random reboots after 30% of the battery is depleted.

If you truly can confirm for sure that it has to be at 70% charge to avoid a random reboot when using the TV Adapter, I think this is ground to go to your audi and ask for a new set of Lithium-ion battery replacement under warranty, because the OPN S shouldn’t have to be at above 70% charge in order to work with the TV Adapter and this issue is an indication that the batteries are not performing per spec anymore. In theory, it should be able to work reliably with the TV Adapter even if it’s at 10 or 15% charge just the same.

Thanks… I understand your point, but the new OPN S1s that Oticon sent last week are doing the same thing (restarting …) they didn’t tell audiologist if they did any checks on the old ones… SO the batteries should be fine, if the new S1s are indeed “new” … audiologist said they are; not refurbished,etc … maybe it’s a coincidence… my previous S1s were approaching the 2 year mark… ( I got them in August 2019 when Oticon swapped the Z power OPNs for me at no cost) … maybe the iphone relationship is coincidental; I just know that the issue (restarting while using TV box) did NOT start until I got the iPhone 12 Pro, and , as I said, it’s happening with brand new OPN S1s … I don’t have my previous iPhone (X) as I traded it in… My daughter has an iPhone XR so I may pair the aids to her phone and see what happens with TV adapter box and hearing aid battery below 70% … if the issue does NOT happen with the XR, I think I should have enough information to go to Apple and see if they will swap out the 12 Pro … maybe there’s some glitch in my 12 Pro that’s causing it , even though phone seems to work fine … and I understand that 12 Pro and the X have the same Bluetooth hardware…

Unless they did replace brand new OPN S1s for you, BUT they didn’t have the batteries for the new OPN S1s, so they took out the old batteries from the old OPN S1s and put them in the new OPN S1s for you. I wouldn’t presume that you also got new batteries as well, unless someone can really confirm that for you.

Interesting… I will definitely push audiologist to get me some new batteries… Thanks…

In reply to @Volusiano

well, now I’m confused… I paired the aids to my daughter’s phone (XR) and downloaded OPN app to her phone as well… streamed from TV adapter box and NO problems whatsoever - even though aids were showing about 70% battery …no restarting at all… after about an hour, when aids were down to about 60%, I then unpaired aids from her phone, and re-paired to my phone, but I did NOT connect the aids to the app … been that way for a couple hours now, streaming from TV box, hearing aid batteries now at 40/50% - and NO restarts… .no problems … who knows? Seems to be related to the app now, except for the fact that I was connected to the app while using my daughter’s phone…

Let me recap:

  1. You connected the aids to the ON app on your new iPhone, then use them with the TV box and they rebooted.

  2. You connected the aids to your daughter’s ON app on her iPhone, then use them with the TV box and they work fine, no reboot.

  3. You re-paired your aids to your new iPhone again, except that you didn’t connect them to the ON app, then use them with the TV box and now no problem.

So there are 2 observations:

a. Your old iPhone and your daughter’s iPhone allows your aids to work fine with the TV box even when the aids are connected to the ON app on the iPhone (pairing is a given to connect to the ON app).

b. Your new iPhone will cause reboot if you connect to its ON app then use the TV box, unless you don’t connect to the ON app.

So it’s something about the connection to your new iPhone that causes the reboot while using the TV box.

Are all 3 iPhones (your old and new and your daughter’s) on the same iOS?

Good recap… Thanks… All 3 phones (my old one (X), daughter’s (XR) and my new one (12 Pro) all have 14.6 iOS …

only wrinkle is last night, when I had charged the aids , using my phone and the app, and I had no problems with rebooting …

I guess I have to decide if I want to try and fight with Apple … am tempted to request (?demand?) a replacement 12 Pro to see if the issue persists…

except Apple will tell me (as they have already when I spoke to them on the phone) it’s an issue with the OPN app… especially since I didn’t have the problem tonight when I did NOT connect to the App…

Edited

The only obvious thing I can see is that your new iPhone 12 supports 5G while your old iPhone X and your daughter’s iPhone XR only goes up to 4G LTE. It’s possible that the ON app was developed and debugged and tested using 4G LTE iPhones only, and the new 5G phones may go into the newer 5G bands at times and the ON app doesn’t know how to handle this and triggers reboots on the .

The fact that the reboots only happen while you’re using your aids with the TV box implies that the RivieraWave Bluetooth Low Energy 2.4 GHz communication used by Oticon (licensed from CEVA) to send streaming contents from the TV Box to the HAs may get interference when the new iPhone deploys the 5G bands from time to time, and this may mess up the connection between the HAs and the ON app, to a point where the ON app triggers a reboot on the HAs.

Of course all this is just conjecture and educated guess on my part. But the bottom line is that the most plausible cause as deduced from observations of the scenarios lead to suggestions that the ON app on the new 5G iPhones is the culprit. Maybe while trying to keep a good connection with the HA while the HA is busy receiving streaming contents from the TV Box, and any switch to the 5G bands on the iPhone causes interference/confusion and threw the ON app into a loop and it no longer knows how to retain the connection with the HAs so triggers a reboot commands to the HAs.

Or it could be the HAs that get overloaded between receiving streaming contents from the TV Box and maintaining connection to the ON app, which they already barely are managing. Then the signals from the new iPhone in the 5G bands cause interference and throw the HAs in a loop, forcing it to reboot.

The bottom line is that the more and more you look into it, assuming that your new iPhone 12 is not defective (very unlikely), the more it seems like it’s an issue on the Oticon side, either with the ON app or the HAs, not knowing how to handle interference from the 5G signals to the point of a forced reboot.

The question to Oticon would be whether they’ve tested and proven that things work OK for people with 5G iPhones and connected to them via the ON app and using the TV box at the same time. Maybe they haven’t tested out this scenarios on the new 5G iPhones yet. Maybe the ON app needs to be verified and updated with 5G iPhones while using the TV box. Or maybe the OPN S firmware needs to be verified and updated for use with 5G iPhones and the TV box in parallel.

Thanks much… Not sure about the iPhone X and 5G , since I don’t have the phone anymore… I will check my daughter’s XR and see if it supports 5G … I do see that my phone is connected to 5G - my FIOS router is supposed to automatically “choose” the best band (2.4 or 5) … it is showing 5G now… I’ll switch to the 2.4 band for the day and see what happens…

I’ll also pass along your suggestions to my audiologist to ask Oticon about the 5G issue… Appreciate it!

In reply to @Volusiano

Just found this: “All iPhone 12 models support 5G . The iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Max all include 5G support. Future iPhones will all likely support 5G , too. However, older iPhones like the iPhone 11, iPhone XS, iPhone XR, and iPhone X do not support 5G .”

In reply to @nedunla

@nedunla said:

Thanks much… Not sure about the iPhone X and 5G , since I don’t have the phone anymore… I will check my daughter’s XR and see if it supports 5G … I do see that my phone is connected to 5G - my FIOS router is supposed to automatically “choose” the best band (2.4 or 5) … it is showing 5G now… I’ll switch to the 2.4 band for the day and see what happens…

I’ll also pass along your suggestions to my audiologist to ask Oticon about the 5G issue… Appreciate it!

I want to caution you not to confuse the 5G (5th generation) support on the iPhone 12 platform with the 5 GHz wifi band that routers support (along with the 2.4 GHz wifi band. They’re completely 2 different things.

Most iPhones, even before the iPhone 12, like my iPhone 7 Plus, can connect to the wifi router’s 5 Ghz connection just fine. And this is the preferred/faster connection over the 2.4 GHz wifi connection that the router has. But 2.4 GHz wifi band still needs to be supported by wifi routers because many home automation devices like wireless camera, wireless appliance switches, wireless thermostats and appliances, wireless garage door openers, etc, mostly still only operates on the 2.4 GHz wifi band.

The 5G (fifth generation) bands I’m talking about is the cellular data connection your iPhone 12 establishes with your cell phone provider when you’re out and about on the road where there’s no wifi connection to tap into. It has several bands, from the lower 600 MHz band to much higher frequency bands, and allow much faster data transmission compared to the previous 4G/LTE predecessor.

ah… well I learned something I guess… thanks… I misunderstood… I’ll send my augiologist a clarification…

In reply to @Volusiano

SO, I have put the Oticon app in a permanent time-out for now… Last night, TV streaming - NO problems whatsoever, no re-booting,etc … and batteries were down to 30% when I turned TV off… the app is handy but I’ll wait until Oticon figures out the problems…

Edited

I feel we may never see that until Apple undiscloses all of its secrets of how MFI truly works. And I fully believe that Apple also buts it’s twist on Bluetooth also.

In reply to @nedunla

Yeah, I almost never have the need to use the ON app at all myself. If I need to balance between the TV Adapter box volume and the mic volume, a double click on my Home button brings up the MFI HA controls and I control the volume balance between the TV Adapter and the HA mics there. But because I use line audio and not Toslink from my TV source, I mostly just control the volume from my TV if I need to, so never have to touch my iPhone for TV Adapter volume control.

Folks with the OPN S and More now have the equalizer for streaming content that’s only available in the ON app (but not for the original OPN), so that’s probably the only big thing you miss out on, that is, if you use it at all. If you don’t, you won’t miss out on much.

I think the OPN S R and More R (rechargeable) doesn’t have a mute button so their owners must rely on the ON app to Mute. Either that or go to the MFI HA menu and slide the volume control all the way to the left, but that’s not Mute but 0 volume instead. Same effect but the main difference is that you can UnMute back to the original volume instantly, but with sliding the volume to 0, you can’t instantly restore the original volume to exactly where it was and would need to move the volume slider back to the same vicinity but not necessarily to the exact spot instantly.

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