Woe Is My BlueTooth

I've been gadgeting up the joint now that we're getting mostly settled. The Mac Mini is back on jukebox duty (I ended up giving my old 50 CD player to charity). After some fussing with the Airport Extreme, iTunes is happily talking to the speakers in the living room. What I lack is control.

I've been using Sailing Clicker for some time now as a remote control for iTunes. At the old place, it worked exactly as I needed. The new condo, however, has old walls with plaster and drywall. We're going to need two inch long nails just to hang pictures. Both the wifi and bluetooth signals get seriously shortened across rooms.

Annoying, I can use the phone pretty easily in the foyer - just not two feet into the bedroom. The wifi extends pretty much condo-wide, although it struggles a bit. I would use something like a bluetooth repeater or extender, if such a thing really existed. Apparently the best I can do is jury-rig the Mac's internal antenna into something more Frankenstein.

Now I know part of Bluetooth's design is to be short range (a kind of odd security concept) ... but I'm surprised there is no way at all to at least double the range. If I could get buetooth to behave like wifi in terms of repeating/extending a signal - I'd be golden. Anyone know of a way?



tagged: wifi, bluetooth