Windows and Microsoft Teams hijacks connection to bonded BLE peripheral, preventing custom Windows application access

RE: Windows and Microsoft Teams hijacks connection to bonded BLE peripheral, preventing custom Windows application access

SwRa — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 13:13:11 GMT

Hi Bret,

Thank you for sharing the workaround..

Regards,

Swathy

RE: Windows and Microsoft Teams hijacks connection to bonded BLE peripheral, preventing custom Windows application access

BretH — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 20:09:16 GMT

We've found a workaround using the Windows API. Our Windows code was using a BluetoothLEAdvertisementWatcher, but if MS Teams connects, there is no way for this watcher to receive an advertisement. Instead, a DeviceInformation watcher can obtain a handle to an already connected device, allowing the ability to create the BluetoothLEDevice

RE: Windows and Microsoft Teams hijacks connection to bonded BLE peripheral, preventing custom Windows application access

BretH — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 14:21:02 GMT

Our team had a discussion with MS Teams support, but they claimed innocence because it "could not be a Teams issue because Teams is not a BT device" which we've shown is demonstrably false (behavior is 100% correlated and reproducible to teams being open or not). Teams isn't necessarily doing anything illegal, but it also isn't being a good neighbor by requesting connections to peripherals it never uses. It's also possible that the Windows OS is doing something strange based on the APIs used by MS Teams.

Regardless, we've found an alternative Windows API using the DeviceInformation class that allows our Windows application to "connect" and obtain a handle to our BLE peripheral even when Windows has already connected to our peripheral from outside of our Windows application.

RE: Windows and Microsoft Teams hijacks connection to bonded BLE peripheral, preventing custom Windows application access

BretH — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 14:13:50 GMT

[quote userid="107732" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/92012/windows-and-microsoft-teams-hijacks-connection-to-bonded-ble-peripheral-preventing-custom-windows-application-access/389433"]Could you tell me what the BT audio device is connected to.? To your PC.?[/quote]

Windows 10/11 PC and any classic BT audio device such as air pods, a wireless headset, speaker, etc.

RE: Windows and Microsoft Teams hijacks connection to bonded BLE peripheral, preventing custom Windows application access

SwRa — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 13:38:05 GMT

Hi Bret,

[quote user=""]we have observed that if another BT audio device is connected AND Microsoft teams is open[/quote]

Could you tell me what the BT audio device is connected to.? To your PC.?

Regards,

Swathy

RE: Windows and Microsoft Teams hijacks connection to bonded BLE peripheral, preventing custom Windows application access

BretH — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 20:36:36 GMT

I have reproduced this issue using Nordic example projects and the NRF52840DK. I tried ble_app_hrs and MS Teams always auto-connected to the nordic peripheral. If I quit MS Teams, Windows drops the connection and will not attempt to reconnect.

I also modified the ble_app_hrs example to advertise with the NUS service and only include NUS in the GATT table. Same results. I did this rather than using ble_app_uart because I wanted bonding.

RE: Windows and Microsoft Teams hijacks connection to bonded BLE peripheral, preventing custom Windows application access

SwRa — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 13:24:17 GMT

Hi Bret,

I discussed it with a few of my colleagues and they have not observed this issue before.. I will however ask around a bit more..

Regards,

Swathy