route notifications to Bluetooth headset (mono?)

Hi,

I am evaluating SoundAbout looking for solution to make my phone send notifications to Bluetooth headset.

Phone: Sony Xperia Z3 Compact / Android 5.1.1
Headset: Jawbone Era (new, v 1.3), with 2 Bluetooth services: phone audio and media audio
SoundAbout: 2.6.5.9

I have a new phone and miss the feature from my old HTC (battery is dead so I can't verify Android version, but I guess it was 4.4.1), which played notifications to bluetooth headset (the same I use now). Looking for solution I found SA but still could not get desired behavior. The Era BT headset is slightly different from "normal" ones: it has two BT services, traditional phone (low audio bandwidth) and media (wide audio bandwidth). This nice feature allows me to use Era to call and to listen to the music (Google Music or any other player play music with no problems). Era also sends commands to player (A2DP). SA shows Era as "Bluetooth A2DP for media." in status bar (although I've also seen "Bluetooth (mono) for...").

In the SA configuration menu I've set Alert behavior > Bluetooth (A2DP) > Notifications to: > Phone Speaker + A2DP (override) but notifications go only to speaker and when I set A2DP (override) I can't hear notifications at all. I've tried to setup also Bluetooth (mono) behavior, but is says that notifications CANNOT be sent to Bluetooth mono.

I'm sure that this BT headset CAN play notifications, because HTC does this without any extra software or configuration, so technically it is possible.

Is there any solution to send notifications to BT headset?

Brgds,
Piotr

If notifications are sent to Bluetooth, it is through the Bluetooth A2DP (wide audio bandwidth) profile.
Some phones will send notifications to both the speaker and the Bluetooth device. The "Notifications To" setting, in SoundAbout lets you change what to block. If SoundAbout tries to detect the notification and switch audio, it will be too late and the audio will have already played before the switch to Bluetooth.

The new phone, Android version, or kernel may have changed the capability of sending notifications to Bluetooth A2DP. SoundAbout cannot force audio to a channel that was not originally sent there. It can only open and close channels to redirect the audio.

Another approach is to detect the audio (don't allow notification sound) and send a separate notifications through Bluetooth. The app here uses that approach.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.grimpy.botifier

This person seems to have the opposite issue. They get the notifications but don't want it:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/moto-x-2013/420659-annoying-notification-bluetooth-connection.html

Thank you, it is very interesting and explains a lot. I thought that Android kernel allows applications like SA to "connect" to "notifications' audio stream hub" but now I see the difference.

Botifier seems to solve my problem (although TTS gets lost with multilanguage notifications I get on phone). I guess, it detects new notifications (text), converts them to sound (TTS) and plays to BT headset. Still, I do have an audio signal about new mail, and that's what I was looking for.

Thanks again!

OK, good.