Blue Tipz Tip Up Alert System

[MJ1657]

I was at the Blaine ice show and wanted to know if their device would work with my Android phone. They were going to do some checking with their developer and let me know. I'm still waiting to hear from them....

[EngineerBob]

So sorry about that! Trade shows get a little hectic, and you must have slipped through the cracks. I'm the engineer (I wasn't at the trade show), but I can help you if you want to message me your phone and OS.

As a general rule, Android OS 4.3 and better should work. There are some Motorola and HTC phones that work on 4.1 and 4.2, but not many. Android didn't support the technology for BlueTipz (Bluetooth 4.0 or Bluetooth Low Energy or Bluetooth Smart (it has a lot of names)) until 4.3.

The best bet is if you download our free app, when you open it then the app will tell you if your phone will work. If it says "BLE not supported" then don't despair yet. You may be able to upgrade your phone to the latest OS to get it to work.

Android has been such a challenge this year because of inconsistent support for Bluetooth 4.0 on different phones and carriers, but iOS has been fine and next year should be fantastic. Plus we're a small company and this is a very new product, so I hope you'll excuse our few hiccups getting the ball rolling.

[borg0196]

Uploaded free app for Galaxy S3 (which is updated to 4.3)....... No go for the BLE support. That's disappointing.

[EngineerBob]

borg, possibly a silly question, but do you have Bluetooth turned on on your phone? Galaxy S3 with 4.3 we've definitely confirmed to work, so it's odd that you're still having that issue. Please message me outside this thread so we can figure out what's going on.

caman, some of the people who have emailed us have been put on our beta tester list, and they get earlier releases of the app so they can help us diagnose issues with their phone before the release gets pushed out to everyone. We don't have separate apps for people, and while the app does work for a large number of phones now, we're trying to work with customers who are having problems with systems we haven't been able to test. There really is no way we could have tested every phone and every operating system combination, and we encourage people to download the free app before they purchase so they don't get stuck with something that won't work for them (first instruction on the packaging). While we would have loved to support all Android phones out of the gate, many of them don't have the hardware required, and it wasn't until 4.3 (with some exceptions) that Android OS was even able to support the hardware that shipped with the S3 and S4 among others. We've also discovered that the carriers have not been consistently pushing updates to phones, so some people with the S3 have been stuck with really old versions of Android that just wouldn't work. We knew this year would be a little rocky, and we have done everything we could to test as many devices as we could and have a system in place to try to support those configurations we couldn't test on our own.

I totally agree that you shouldn't buy BlueTipz unless you know they work with your phone. We've never told people to buy it and we'll add support later. We're not trying to hold anyone hostage at all. And please contact us if you have a phone you're not sure about. We are trying to stay on top of our contacts, but some have slipped through the cracks.

[slurpie]

It seems you guys are really trying to figure stuff out. My buddy has a new samsung and still can not get them to work. I hope you guys figure them out would be awesome to actually use them. He emailed you guys quite a bit right away but has since given up. It is upsetting as a customer to spend $70 and then can't use them. But seems you guys are really trying good luck.