Product Description The Cassia Hub is a new Bluetooth router that liberates your Bluetooth devices from short range and one-to-one pairing. You can control up to 22 compatible devices in any room of your home. Cassia’s Smart Antenna extends your Bluetooth signal through walls, and up to 1000 feet in open air. From the Manufacturer Do I need a Bluetooth Router? Ever wish Bluetooth worked as easy as your Wi-Fi network? With a Bluetooth Router like the Cassia Hub, it can. It's a simple and practical way to control multiple Bluetooth devices, like speakers or smart bulbs from anywhere in your home. Using Bluetooth at home was never this easy, or this powerful. An Award Winning Breakthrough The Cassia Hub won the Best of CES 2016 award for Best Connected Home Product. It’s also a Breakthrough Award Finalist with the Bluetooth SIG, the body that oversees the development of Bluetooth standards and licensing. Move Freely Through Your Home Move freely throughout your home without losing connection to your Bluetooth devices. With extended range, you can control your Bluetooth devices from your favorite spot in any room. Connect to Multiple Devices Depending on the the type of device, the Cassia Hub can stay paired and connected to up to 22 devices. You can organize your Bluetooth devices into groups for easy access and control. Stream to Multiple Speakers With Cassia BlueStream enabled, simply connect to the Cassia Hub like you would to any Bluetooth speaker with your audio source device. Then, stream to up to three Bluetooth speakers at the same time. Cassia Hub Technical Details Cassia Hub requires an active 2.4GHz internet connection. The Cassia App is available for use on iOS7+ and Android 4.3+ mobile devices. Check Cassia Networks website for a list of compatible devices. About the Startup Describe your product in 3 words.Liberate Your BluetoothHow did you come up with the idea for this product?As a former Cisco engineer, Aruba executive, and founder of his own WiFi mesh networking company, Felix Zhao has been on the search for a universal wireless protocol for nearly two decades. Unhappy with WiFi’s effect on battery life and ZigBee and Z-wave’s lack of integration with smartphones, Felix finally settled on Bluetooth for its open standard and universal reach and compatibility. Bluetooth was a natural choice because not only is every smartphone Bluetooth enabled, but an estimated 4 billion Bluetooth enabled devices are expected to ship worldwide in 2016 according to Bluetooth's SIG annual report.What makes your product special?The Cassia Hub is truly unique and innovative. It’s the world’s first Bluetooth Router, and the only product to connect up to 3 Bluetooth Classic devices and up to 22 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices at the same time and extend their range over 1,000 feet.What has been the best part of your startup experience?The challenge for Cassia Networks at first was figuring out how to solve the problems associated with Bluetooth without requiring any changes on the end devices. The best part of the startup experience has been knowing that the improvements we are bringing to Bluetooth are going to ultimately foster a whole new class of affordable Bluetooth IoT and connected home devices online in a way that was previously not possible. With the Cassia Hub, the future of seamless Bluetooth connectivity is now here.
T**G
Won't connect, another Bluetooth Fail
I really wanted this to work because it would be super useful if it lived up to what is advertised. I read the reviews and took a chance but this product failed in several ways. (1) Did not connect over 2.4GHz wi-fi (table stakes, surely), only via ethernet, meaning that the Hub is stuck next to the router in the middle of our house; (2) Very sketchy music transmission when positioned out of direct line of sight from sound source, meaning that while the speakers can be a few hundred feet away from the Hub and it may well transmit through walls, the sound source - i.e. laptop, phone, whatever - needs to be up close to the Hub, which has to be up close to the wife router (see 1 above), which sort of defeats the object of the whole thing; (3) Amazon Echo Dot could not detect the Hub. (4) The Hub app found one of my bluetooth speakers but not the other, even though my iPhone connects with it no problem. On the plus side, it's a nice piece of kit, the sound quality on the little Cassia speaker is good and it does indeed seem to send to its own speaker a good distance away and through walls. Amazon refunded the order so no problem there. My main beef is with CES for giving this the IoT award in 2016. Did they even bother to test it? I would suggest buying v3.0 of this thing next year maybe, once they have fixed the teething troubles, and designed a better app for interacting with multiple smart-home devices, as i can only imagine what a mess they make of that if they can't figure out the basic connectivity issues.
H**U
I have to say the hub is very light and looks very cool (like a speaker)
I purchased this device for my bose speakers and Bluetooth light bulbs (cassia brand too).I have to say the hub is very light and looks very cool (like a speaker). It is very easy to install. I just plug in the power, download the cassia hub apps to my phone, and they are connected (they need to be in same 2.4Ghz wifi network). Pairing is easy too, the hub easily finds my bose speakers and Bluetooth light bulbs. Once I turn on the bluestream, I can stream music from any music app from my phone to both speakers. For the Bluetooth light bulb, I can change the light color by simply tap the color menu in the app. That is very cool! However, I have problem to turn on and off the light bulb from the apps, still trying to find out why.overall, I am very satisfied with the product, and highly recommend it to my friends.
F**D
Disappointing sound and performance
Setup is easy. The sound in the speaker is flat, not really bad, but other speakers in the same price range do better. The Blue Tooth router works okay with one speaker, but already with two speakers there is quite often lag/jitter, and with three it does not work. I haven't tried it with other blue tooth devices.
S**N
... at all and will not charge this was the worst purchase I have ever
They separated the package so I received the speaker one day and the hub a week later the speaker does not work at all and will not charge this was the worst purchase I have ever made
J**E
a great product and the only one of its kind
In theory, a great product and the only one of its kind. However, I bought the hub only, which is not available separately now but is included with this bundle. The app would not pair with the hub, their customer service did not respond, I initiated a return, send the product back, and was never credited, so this was a waste of $150 for me.
D**A
Love it!!!
love to have really good sounding music in the kitchen and outside on our decks as well as where I am gardening.I finally found the product that makes all of this possible and more.Reasons I like the Cassia Hub System:1) Small, light-weight speakers that produce excellent quality sound. It also works with another bluetooth speaker that Ihave been using to play from my iPad.2) Plays music from Pandora, Spotify, or even the audio porrtion of YouTube files. I am excited about thisbecause YouTube has performances of about anyone you can think of.3) My hub stays near the computer while the speakers are placed anywhere in our 2700 square foot houseincluding Kitchen, Bedrooms, Music Room (where I teach piano and guitar) AND outside on any oneof our decks. I can play music stored on my iPad and with airplay selected I can play from other sources.4) Just found out I can use this bluetooth system to turn lights on and off with my phone when away fromhome. So exciting!!!
G**E
Don't do it!!!
doesn't work with anything I own...JBL speakers etc. and. I emailed Cassia for refund.... Nothing/no response
