bluetooth

Redmi Headphones Neo

This entry was posted in General and tagged amazon bluetooth music on by

I can’t use in-ear earphones anymore: all of them hurt my ears, so the over-ear format is a must for me.

I have just bought the Redmi Headphones Neo, Xiaomi’s budget over-ear Bluetooth headphones, for 40€ in Amazon. They usually sell for around 60€, so it was a good deal. I have always preferred wired headphones, but at 40€ they were cheap enough to take the chance.

Noise cancellation

The main reason for the purchase: my office is noisy. They have up to 42dB of adaptive Active Noise Cancellation, with three levels and an adaptive mode that adjusts automatically to the ambient noise.

The cancellation is good, filtering out the office chatter and the servers & AC hum, but it is not at the level of the 300€ Sony. For the price, it is great for working in a noisy office (or at home with a noisy daughter).

They also have a transparency mode that amplifies the outside sounds, so it is nice to go walking by the street hearing the traffic and the people around you.

The rest

  • The radio coverage is amazing: I can walk around all our huge office and they are still connected to the laptop.
  • Battery is enough for all the week
  • Dual-device connection, so they can stay connected to the laptop and the phone at the same time
  • Three microphones with noise reduction for calls
  • They weigh 263 grams, more than most over-ear headphones, noticeable after a full office day, though the protein leather cushions stay comfortable

Latency

As with every Bluetooth headphone there is audio latency, and they have no low-latency mode. For real-time audio applications I still need my wired Superlux HD681B.

Full specifications at Xiaomi. For 40€ they are a great deal, just don’t expect the silence of the 300€ flagship ones.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Abusing Apple’s Find My network

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged android apple bluetooth docker on by

Some months ago Apple was running a commercial on Spanish TV about the iPhone’s privacy, mocking users with Android devices.

Probably, iPhone users do not know that it is really easy to physically track them.

Apple’s “Find My” network was launched in 2019 and the AirTag in 2021. The AirTag emits BLE beacons with a public key that, when received by another Apple device, are sent along with the location of the device that received them to Apple servers, encrypted with the AirTag public key. The information on the Apple servers needs to be decrypted with the AirTag’s private key.

However, when the AirTag location is updated, the owner of the AirTag also knows that there is an Apple device nearby.

In theory it’s required to have an iPhone/iPad/iPod to activate an AirTag, but it’s very easy to build an AirTag clone with ESP32.

The Macless Haystack project, based on the original OpenHaystack, provides:

  • The python utility to generate AirTag key pairs
  • The firmware to flash an ESP32-WROOM-32 and convert it to an AirTag clone
  • An Android app to check the location of your fake AirTags
  • Two Docker containers needed to retrieve the info from the Apple servers, they need to be accesible by the Android app

And, of course, I built my own one:

These ESP clones are much bigger than AirTags but they are ok to track cars, suitcases or bags. There is a PR to the Macless Haystack repo alowing to use an ESP32-C3 Supermini, that makes a smaller device with a better battery duration.

Google launched the “Find My Device” network in April 2024, and the tags supporting it (i.e. the Chippolo Point or the Pebblebee) are slowly reaching the market. But the default security option only shares the location information if there are other Android devices nearby. That is much better for the privacy of Android device owners, but much worse for the owners of the tags.

So, if you own an Android device, it is still better to use AirTag clones, abusing the lack of privacy of the Apple devices.