iMac mid 2011. External upgrade BT 4.0 with dongle

[RoelN]

hello all!

I recently (finally... ) could buy an Imac in very good shape. I’m very glad with it. I upgraded the iMac and the specs are now as follows:

• 27inch
• I7
• High Sierra
• 250 GB SSD
• 1 TB HD
• 1GB videokaart
• 8 GB Ram

The iMac runs grate…however my bike trainer does not connect with the BT device (2.0) in the iMac. I need BT 4.0.

I read several articles and work arounds to get an extern USB BT 4.0 dongle working. After reading carefully (I think / thought) I bought this dongle:

https://www.belkin.com/nl/p/P-F8T065/

On several sites I found remarks from iMac users that this dongle would work with Apple.

I installed the Bluetooth explorer tool and managed to select the extern BT device (in stead of the build in BT adapter) and that works:

However, I can not pair with BT devices like my mouse and keyboard. Further, the bike trainer (which connects via BT and uses 4.0 (or ANT+)) is not even found. So it looks like met BT 4.0 dongle is detected but does not work:

Could anybody please advice me and help me how to solve this issue? It would be very much appreciated….



Many thanks and please give me some response and help...many many thanks



Regards

Roel

 

[USB3foriMac]

Your Belkin does not say it is Mac compatible. Likely it isn't. Mac is selective with which hardware it works with.

You find a lot of valuable resources when you compare iMac with the Mac Pro, or even other older MacBooks.
I found this thread here mentioning a lot of resources, and in the comments section, you also find people who had success with iMac.

How to Setup a Bluetooth Dongle on a Macbook Pro

How to Setup a Bluetooth Dongle on a Macbook Pro: Background: After much searching and digging through outdated forums and support threads (usually peppered with snide, and unhelpful commentary), I managed to successfully set-up a Bluetooth dongle on my Macbook. There seems to be a lot of people…

www.instructables.com

It seems a good one to choose is this one: Avantree DG40S (see comments section of above link)

Alternatively, at least choose a Bluetooth dongle where the manufacturer claims it is MacOS compliant. Without this, there is far less chance to get it working.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

If you do not mind to open the iMac and solder some cables then take a look at the thread and this post...

I just use my old iPad to work with my indoor bike trainer (Tacx Neo).