Resound Omnia 9 battery problem

[jim_lewis]

@jim_lewis

When the wife gets home from work, I’ll see if she’ll humor me with an experiment to see if the MFi mic toggle actually does anything in the course of a phone call.

I tried several phone call experiments with my wife. It didn’t seem to matter whether I turned my HA mics ON or OFF in the Smart 3D app (see picture below). When she called me, if I picked the ON option in the Mic Input control in the MFI Hearing Devices widget, she said my voice sound faint and far away, like I was talking down a long tunnel. Paradoxically, if I picked Mic Input to be OFF, she said my voice came through loud and clear, and it didn’t seem to matter if I were near my iPhone or not. Covering up the bottom of the phone with my hand didn’t seem to interfere with her perception of my voice.

I made a brief effort to look in Apple Support to see what the Mic Input control is supposed to do, but I haven’t found a description of the control function yet. I will keep looking. Maybe someone else uses the control and, unlike me, knows what it does (or is supposed to do when it’s working correctly!)?

Edit_Update: According to Bing ChatGPT, the Mic Input toggle controls the microphone input when using Live Listen. However, when I turn on Live Listen, the Mic Input toggle disappears from the Hearing Devices widget. Initially, when I had Mic Input OFF, Live Listen did not seem to work, but after a while, it didn’t matter to Live Listen function whether Mic Input was ON or OFF prior to turning on Live Listen?! I do not fully trust Bing ChatGPT’s answer. Still looking for direct from Apple info. SEE THE NEXT POST FROM ME. FOUND THE ILLUSTRATED ANSWER ON A STARKEY WEB PAGE:

Click on the picture to enlarge it, if you want.

[jim_lewis]

@jim_lewis

Maybe someone else uses the control and, unlike me, knows what it does (or is supposed to do when it’s working correctly!)?

I found the answer on a Starkey web page. At least with Starkey HA’s, the Mic Input control determines whether the HA mics are used to speak to a caller during a phone call. The setting CAN NOT BE CHANGED DURING A PHONE CALL. If the setting is Mic Input ON, the HA mics will be used. If the setting is Mic Input OFF, the iPhone mic will be used.

So, for at least one MFi HA brand, you have your choice between using HA mics and the phone mic in taking a call.

Apple Device Setup

2-Way Audio is solely controlled via Apple native controls. Native controls can be accessed via a triple-click or from Control Center. 2-Way Audio is labeled “Mic Input”.

2-Way Audio Mic Input Options

On: iOS is using the hearing aid microphone for voice pick-up during a call.
Off: Hearing aid user is required to speak into iPhone or iPad microphone during calls. Call audio is still streamed to the hearing aids.

NOTE: This setting cannot be changed during an active phone call.

How to Use 2-Way Audio | Starkey Support

[prodigyplace]

@jim_lewis

Native controls can be accessed via a triple-click

Triple-click function is a configurable setting. From the control center you can click on the ear icon near the bottom.

[jim_lewis]

@prodigyplace

From the control center you can click on the ear icon near the bottom.

Yes, in the post above, I just copied and pasted Starkey’s language describing how to access the Mic Input toggle and its purpose. Quite a bit earlier in the thread, lost in all my blather, was advice on accessing the Mic Input toggle via the Ear symbol in the Control Center set of widgets. Good to remind people how to do that and that the triple click only works if configured in Settings, Accessibility, Accessibility Shortcut by picking Hearing Devices as the desired Accessibility Shortcut out of many Accessibility Shortcut options available. Thanks for the reminder and for pointing the triple-click option has to be configured.

@jim_lewis

If your wife swipes down from the top of her screen on the right, she should see the iOS widgets. If one taps on the ear symbol (I forget if anything is necessary to make it appear), she’ll get direct access to the MFi HA controls. Triple-clicking on the right side button also brings up those controls.

I deleted the Smart 3D app, unpaired and repaired my Omnias, and reinstalled the Smart 3D app to see if that stops the connectivity problems. At least for past major iOS updates (iOS 15 to iOS 16, etc.), there seemed to be some consensus on the forum that was a good thing to do for MFi hearing aids. The audi, in setting up my purchased Omnias, just unpaired the trial Omnias, paired my purchased Omnias in Hearing Devices settings, then connected my new Omnias with the Smart 3D app. I’ll see if more of a “fresh start” makes for more stable connectivity.

[prodigyplace]

Somewhere here I posted how to set up the triple click. Need me to find it again? If I recall correctly when I set mine up 10 years ago it was not the default.

[jim_lewis]

@stu

I think I know what my Omnias are doing in the most extreme form of disconnection from my iPhone 14 Pro Max, i.e. when neither force-killing and relaunching the ReSound Smart 3D app (not recommended by ReSound as a good thing to do) nor rebooting the iPhone works to re-establish HA connectivity. In such a disconnect, only turning the affected HA('s) off and on again re-establishes iPhone connectivity for me.

For me, such a disconnected Omnia seems to have gone into Flight Mode, in which all Bluetooth is turned off. If one reads the Omnia manual, the way to exit Flight Mode is to turn an HA off, then on again. And that’s what re-establishes connectivity and HA BT broadcasting for me.

For me, disconnection seems to be triggered by “iPhone separation.” If I leave my iPhone somewhere and stay away from it for a fairly long time (>10 min) by going outside into the yard or by going to a far corner of the house when I return to the iPhone, that’s when I’m most likely to enter the Flight Mode-like state. The HA’s are still functioning ~normally in letting me hear room sounds, but because there’s no BT, they can’t be controlled by my iPhone, and they don’t show up as connected in Settings, Accessibility, Hearing Devices, MFi Hearing Devices, either.

They also don’t show up as broadcasting in the Smart 3D app Find My Hearing Aids applet: no signal strength is registered on the meter for any disconnected HA. Any disconnected HA doesn’t show up as broadcasting Bluetooth in any of three iPhone BT scanner apps: nRF Connect, BLE Hero, or BLE Scanner. As soon as an affected hearing aid is turned off, then on again, the rebooted HA shows up broadcasting Bluetooth as it should in all of the above tests, including the Find My Hearing Aids applet and in MFi Hearing Devices. I will write GN Support that they seem to have a very annoying bug in Omnia firmware. If it’s something caused by interacting with iOS 16, ReSound needs to get with Apple and literally iron out the bugs.

I don’t know if there’s any relation, but I found a separate Omnia Flight Mode bug that I’ve discussed in another thread. Normally, in the standard setup of the ReSound Smart Fit fitting software, the ability to enter Flight Mode is not enabled by default in the U.S. The FAA no longer requires hearing aid users to turn off BT connectivity in flight. When I have the ability to enter Flight Mode enabled for my Omnias, I cannot deliberately enter Flight Mode in the prescribed manual way for Omnia 962s with disposable batteries. That is, open and close the battery door of an Omnia three times within 10 seconds. Both of my Omnias, when I do that, still remain in normal operating mode, broadcasting BT by all of the above tests. Resound Omnia 961 rechargeable versus 962 with 13 zinc-air battery - #24 by jim_lewis

So that’s hilarious. I can’t enter Flight Mode when I want to, but accidentally, about once a day, usually during an “iPhone separation,” one or both of my HA’s may decide to enter a state functionally akin to Flight Mode.

So, @stu, if your wife has rechargeable Omnias, if Flight Mode entry were enabled by her HCP in Smart Fit, she could enter and leave Flight Mode in the following way (from the manual for the rechargeables):

Turning off wireless communication (activating Flight Mode)

1. Turn off your hearing aid.
2. Press the button for 9 seconds.
3. Your hearing aid will double-flash four times. If you are wearing your hearing aids at the time, you will hear
   double tones ( ) for about 10 seconds, meaning the hearing aid is now in Flight Mode.

Activating wireless communication (turning off Flight Mode)

1. Turn your hearing aid off and then on.
2. Wireless communication will be activated after 10 seconds.

It would be interesting to know if your wife’s rechargeable Omnias can be deliberately put in Flight Mode. Maybe there’s a ReSound/Apple MFi BT connectivity bug that prevents the deliberate triggering of Flight Mode but causes Flight Mode to accidentally occur at random times, perhaps triggered by “iPhone separation?”

[prodigyplace]

@jim_lewis

In such a disconnect, only turning the affected HA('s) off and on again re-establishes iPhone connectivity for me.

Have you tried going in to the phone Settings and drilling down to select the aids? On that screen try disabling and then re-enabling streaming for each aid. That has generally worked well for the couple of different brands I have used.

[jim_lewis]

Yes, I have read your previous posts on that. At least one MFi HA has to be connected for the streaming On/Off option to show (and if at least one HA is connected, the switch shows for both HA’s). For me, when an HA is seriously disconnected, only a “searching” pinwheel shows in MFi Devices, not a battery icon for that HA. If the other HA is still connected, its battery icon will still show in MFi Devices. I’ve also tried having both HA’s controlled separately in MFi devices vs. controlled in synchrony. Switching that stuff on and off has no effect for me on the disconnected HA. I think it must be because of a difference between what’s going astray for ReSound and Oticon HA’s. And even though they both address the MFi API, so to speak, on the side of the HA’s, I would think how their chipsets operate must be quite a bit different.

I do have other states of disconnection where force-killing the Smart 3D app and relaunching or rebooting my iPhone does the trick. In the future, I should look more closely at BT broadcasting with a BT scanner before I try any fixes and see if the affected HA is still broadcasting when connectivity can just be recovered by forcing-killing the 3D app or rebooting the iPhone, etc. Before, I was only doing further tests on the state of the disconnected HA when neither of those quickie fixes worked.

[prodigyplace]

Wow! I did not consider total disconnection. It appears, at least with Oticon, that connectivity may be more consistent without the app installed.

Are you sure there are not other wireless devices in the vicinity that could be interfering at 2.4 GHz or 2.5 GHz? Wi-Fi and microwave ovens come to mind. Due to inexpensive radio parts many devices use these unlicensed frequencies.

[jim_lewis]

For me, the funny thing is if I hadn’t wasted all that time in the other thread on Flight Mode, I likely never would have had the epiphany that maybe accidentally entering Flight Mode is what responsible for my occasional states of complete disconnection even though room sounds seem normal through my external mics. Whatever it is, it’s weird!

[JordanK]

Here is another thing to check. Do you own an iPad? Apple’s icloud shares the hearing aid settings with other devices. I had an issue with my Quattro’s where one hearing aid suddenly wouldn’t connect with my iPhone. Turns out my iPad was nearby and was grabbing one or both connections to my hearing aids. I turned off Bluetooth on the iPad and the issue disappeared. Just something else to check…

Jordan

[jim_lewis]

Interesting suggestion, Jordan! I don’t own an iPad but my wife has two. I also still use my Galaxy Note 8 with my Quattros occasionally. My Omnias have never been paired with that. And we have a ton of BT devices around the house. I can’t recall having a single disconnection event with my trial Omnias, though. I reported my Flight Mode hypothesis to ReSound. We’ll see if there’s any response.

The most important observation, though, is when an Omnia is in a thoroughly disconnected state from my iPhone, it can’t be detected by a BT scanner. That just basic RF detection and shouldn’t depend on a MFi connection to the iPhone or not.

[prodigyplace]

@jim_lewis

I don’t own an iPad but my wife has two.

On the iPads go to Settings->Accessibility->Hearing Devices
Make sure both “Control Nearby Dev”and “Audio Handoff” are turned off.

[jim_lewis]

I’ll give it a try later in the day. The wife is sleeping off some flu-like bug that’s got her feeling very tired and I don’t use her iPads.

[jim_lewis]

My wife checked her BT settings on her iPads. On her old iPad Mini, stuck on iPadOS 12.7, she keeps BT turned off, and I don’t think anything is BT-paired with that iPad. Opening Accessibility, Hearing Devices, just results in a pinwheel searching, and nothing else shows. On her iPad Pro (iPadOS 16.4), she keeps BT turned on, but the only thing her Pro is paired with is her Apple Pencil. And the same is true for opening Accessibility, Hearing Devices on the Pro. The only thing that shows up there is the searching pinwheel. She tells me she keeps both devices completely off when she’s not using them, too, and the total disconnect of both my Omnias this morning occurred when both her iPads were off. Perhaps Find My is turned on for both devices but I should think that would just be occasional BT broadcasting and occasional BT listening for a “wipe this device” command.

I think I’ll just trundle along as things are and wait for ReSound or Apple to come up with a fix. I don’t feel like playing “let’s exchange the HA’s and see what happens…” game.

[Um_bongo]

If either aid has been connected to the iPad before it might still be hiding a legacy connection.

Turn the Bluetooth off. Reboot the iPad and don’t reconnect, it should sort itself out.

[jim_lewis]

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve never connected to or used my wife’s iPad, but it certainly seemed like a good suggestion from everyone to check out the possibility that somehow one of her iPads was shanghaiing my iPhone’s BT connection to the Omnias. I’m still mystified as to why I didn’t experience such a problem with my trial rechargeable Omnias. Perhaps I never left the vicinity of my iPhone while I was wearing the trial Omnias if “iPhone separation” is what triggers the problem.

[Um_bongo]

No, it will have needed to be attached at some point, perhaps just to demonstrate the features. Worth a try though just to eliminate a potential issue.

[jim_lewis]

A ReSound rep suggested I follow an iOS 13 recipe for fixing ReSound BT connectivity issues. I haven’t gone more than a few days but so far the fix looks promising.

It’s basically what a lot of us have been doing to remedy MFi BT connectivity. Unpair the HA’s as MFi devices, reboot the iPhone, repair the aids as MFi devices, reinstall the app, etc. There can be various variations as to exactly how you configure the HA’s as MFi hearing devices, e.g., Chuck Kemp’s Oticon recipe: Oticon MORE firmware 1.4.0 - BT issues with iOS 16 - #407 by cvkemp. @cvkemp. I didn’t find this sort of routine very helpful with my ReSound Omnia complete disconnection problem either for iOS 16.3 or 16.4. Then I noticed a critical difference in the ReSound recipe vs. what I was doing. After the unpairing and before rebooting, ReSound instructs the user to first TURN OFF BT before rebooting, then turn it back on, obviously, after rebooting to repair the HA’s as MFi devices. And only then uninstall and reinstall the Smart 3D smartphone app after the reboot and the MFI devices repairing.

So, I’ve only gone about two days without an Omnia turning off its BT broadcasting. I have had a couple of “iPhone separation” incidents, but force-killing and relaunching the Smart 3D has re-established the 3D app BT connection. Just now, I had such an incident, and although the HA appeared disconnected in the 3D app, it was still broadcasting BT as judged by a BT scanner, and force-killing and relaunching the 3D app promptly restored BT connectivity to the app.

My ignorant theory as to why ReSound suggests turning off BT before rebooting is perhaps otherwise the existing BT stack is cached during a phone reboot whereas with BT off, it’s more of a clean boot and a fresh BT stack, which gives BT connectivity a fresh start. Perhaps someone like @ssa could comment on why ReSound recommends turning BT off before rebooting.

Another Internet article on fixing iPhone BT connectivity problems also recommends turning BT off, then rebooting. But the article claims BT should be turned off in Settings, Bluetooth. The claim is that using the Control Center toggle to uncheck BT being on doesn’t really completely turn BT off. So the toggle in Settings, Bluetooth is best

ReSound Series: App Tips and Tricks

iOS 13 Connectivity

If you updated your Apple® device to iOS 13, you may experience issues with connectivity to your
hearing aids. The best way to resolve this is to re-pair your hearing aids to your Apple device and
reinstall your ReSound app.

1. On your device, tap Settings > Accessibility > Hearing Devices > Your name/model of
   hearing aids > Forget this device. Confirm when prompted by tapping Forget again.
2. Open your hearing aid battery doors. If you have rechargeable hearing aids, place them in
   the charger.
3. Turn Bluetooth off on your mobile device, by tapping Settings > Bluetooth and switch the*
   green toggle to grey.
4. Reboot your device by turning it off and on again.
5. Once rebooted, turn Bluetooth back on by tapping Settings > Bluetooth and switch the grey
   toggle back to green.
6. Then, tap on Settings > Accessibility > Hearing Devices and then turn your hearing aids
   back on by closing the battery doors or remove them from your hearing aid charger.
7. Once your device has found your hearing aids, tap on your name/model of hearing aids.
   When prompted, tap Accept to all pairing requests.
8. Next, uninstall and reinstall your ReSound app on your phone.
   a. Delete the app by touching and holding the app icon. Tap Rearrange apps.
   b. Tap the ‘X’ next to your ReSound app and confirm you want to delete it.
   c. Go to the app store and type ‘Smart 3D’ in the search field.
   d. Tap Get and complete the download.
9. Once reinstalled, open the app and begin the connection flow by tapping Get Started.

Source: Letter (webdamdb.com)

[jim_lewis]

Well, so much for ReSound’s reboot method, described in my post above. On Day 4, my right Omnia hearing aid got disconnected and had to be rebooted to reconnect to my iPhone.