Bluetooth dongle with Auracast support - FlooGoo FMA120

DEAR Ranson
Because many hearing aids perform very poorly when using their built-in microphones during phone calls, the person on the other end often cannot hear clearly at all. Although hearing aid manufacturers promote “hands-free” functionality as convenient, the essence of a phone call is to clearly understand each other. However, using the hearing aid’s microphone often fails to meet this basic requirement reliably.

The smartphone’s microphone is definitely the most cost-effective and reliable option for capturing sound, as it’s designed for millions of users.

I’ve been looking for a way to use a traditional Bluetooth connection with PHONAK hearing aids on an Android system, so that during phone calls, I can hear the other person through my hearing aids, but my voice is picked up by the phone’s built-in microphone.

Thank you for your help!

Would you like help finding a specific solution or setting for your Android phone and PHONAK hearing aids?

JACK

Thanks for explaining the microphone performance issue.

I’ll do some testing to see if it’s feasible with the FMA120. If all goes well, I’ll share a link to a test firmware. We’ll test with a similar setup and assume it will work with Phonak, but since we don’t have any Phonak devices on hand (we only have some LE audio hearing aids), you’d eventually need to try it out with an FMA120 yourself.

DEAR Ranson
Phonak hearing aids typically use the SBC codec for audio transmission during phone calls, utilizing the Bluetooth HFP (Hands-Free Profile) mode.
Perhaps you can use any Bluetooth headset that supports SBC and HFP to test whether, during a phone call or voip app call, it’s possible to use the phone’s built-in microphone for audio input while using the Bluetooth headset to listen to the other party.
thank for your kindly help!
jack

Voice from mobile phone to HA’s via BT is problem when you are in noisy environment . It is due to interference from surrounding sound. The caller might not be able to hear you clearly because the HA’s also pick up the surrounding sound. If you are in a quiet room and Telco signal is strong, the caller will be able to hear you better.
Try to get your friend to call you when you are in a room versus when you are outside the house/street. It is different when the mobile phone near your mouth and ears.

Dear Jack,

Here’s the firmware prepared for your specific Phonak requirement. It has been tested on a Samsung S23 Ultra, with audio routed to the connected Bluetooth device and the microphone remaining active on the phone.

https://www.flairmesh.com/support/FMA120_1.1.2.1.zip8 (Other users, please avoid using this firmware unless you specifically need this feature.)

Please note that priority is determined by the mobile operating system (iOS or Android); the dongle itself cannot control which audio interface the OS selects. While we can offer some workarounds, achieving a seamless solution would ultimately require pressure on Phonak, Apple, and Google to make this functionality available to users.

As an accessory, the dongle has no control over this behavior — even on Windows, it’s the user who selects which microphone is used.

DEAR Ranson
Thank you very much for your help. I would like to ask you a few more questions:

1.In the past, I have used some apps to modify microphone routing. During VOIP calls, it was sometimes possible to listen via Bluetooth while using the phone’s built-in microphone to capture audio. However, unfortunately, in the case of cellular phone calls, Google never really intended for any app to have system-level control over these things. For cellular calls, Android seems to communicate directly with the Bluetooth device, completely bypassing its own audio routing system.
I’d like to ask: with this new firmware, is it possible during cellular phone calls to listen through Bluetooth while using the phone’s built-in microphone?

2.You also mentioned that priority is determined by the mobile operating system. In this case, can this version of the firmware operate stably?

3.When I plug the FMA120 into my phone, does this firmware route all calls (VOIP and cellular) to use Bluetooth for audio output and the phone’s built-in microphone for input?

Thank you again for all your help!
jack

For all three questions, the answer is yes.

The new firmware disables (removes) the microphone interface on the FMA120, so Android/iOS only detect it as an output device — no input channel is presented. As a result, the operating system has no choice but to use the phone’s built-in microphone. This has been tested successfully on a Samsung S23 Ultra.

Because the OS normally defaults to the USB input when one is available, we intentionally disable the FMA120’s input so the phone is forced to use its own mic. With this setup, even during calls, your Phonak operates over A2DP using SBC (likely at 48 kHz — though I don’t have a Phonak device to confirm this; you can check the rate using FlooCast on a PC). Please note that this introduces slightly higher latency, but it provides better audio quality.

Should have mentioned it above - yes, I did turn Bluetooth off on my phone and I’m power-cycling the Rexton/Signias.

I don’t think this is normal - my Jabra 20s get recognized immediately by the FMA120 and the Signias get immediately recognized by two other LE Audio devices I have.

It’s the combination of Signia with FMA120 that’s troublesome for me.

May we please have the link to that TheHearingClub video?

Is this the one you are looking for?

You can downgrade the firmware using the same procedure. Just make sure to unzip the firmware file into a local folder (not a cloud-based one like Microsoft OneDrive), and avoid placing it in a directory with non-English characters in the full path.

Also, is your Jabra device detectable by the two other LE Audio devices you mentioned?

Hi @Ranson,

I started to suspect that the Bluetooth name of the Signia HAs might be too long: Signia automatically sets the Bluetooth name of the hearing aids as
“[customer first name]'s hearing aids”.

ReSound sets it to “[customer first name]'s HAs”

My first name is 8 character’s long, so the total length of the Signia Bluetooth name is 23 characters.

I tried truncating my name to 4 characters and it worked for the first time ever! Then I went to 6 characters, then 7, and finally back to 8. It still worked!

Hmm…

It’s also notable that the first name gets shortened (the HAs might be doing that, I see the same thing on my other device), but also the last two characters also get truncated by the FMA120:

My other LE Audio device and my phone shows the HAs as “Rol_'s hearing aids”

This kinda looks like a buffer overflow bug in the FMA120 firmware. Maybe something you can look into.

Hi @Ranson,
Has anyone connecting FlooGoo 120 with Oticon Xceed 1 (+iphone 13) with Windows 11 laptop?

@wtolkien We impose a 20-byte limit for the device name (with the last byte always being 0 as a terminator). I’ll check if there’s an issue with this. The device name is captured during the pairing process and isn’t used afterward, so it shouldn’t impact the connection.