I hope this article would be helpful to you, still the results may change in future, depending on the improvements may made by the smartphone and app developers. If you have any further or other questions in your mind, please feel free to contact me.

Here is the detailed chart of what we tested and the results. (as of 2024.9.30)

Old results

Here is the detailed chart of what we tested and the results. (as of 2024.6.10)

Although the PEBLWEAR TN1 is a minimal product for controlling audio, I can imagine that there are choices of music services and as many different speakers in everybody’s houses to pair it with.

For example, I use Spotify and iTunes, with my favorite SONY Bluetooth speaker for everyday listening, also having a Bose monitor speaker connected to Airplay on the piano, and HiFi bookshelf speakers with amplifier at our living room.

We notice that there is more and more variety in this topic. After running this project, I was asked if the TN1 can work with Sonos system, or even with Mac or PCs. So, in this update I decided to summarize some technical things behind the audio control.

(If you are interested, please continue reading)

First, let’s talk about how the TN1 controls the audio.

TN1 is a wireless controller that connects to devices using the BLE standard, just like a wireless keyboard. On the keyboard, you might have a media key like a play / skip / volume, the TN1 works just like those keys without unlocking your smartphone. And technically, that’s it.

A very simple, beautifully designed interface for wireless audio.

Note:
Typically, a keyboard unlocks the lock screen and hides your phone’s software keyboard, but the TN1 doesn’t. This is the only, but very important difference between wireless keyboard and TN1. I hope you can imagine the problem if TN1 unlocks and hides the software keyboard on your screen. We are engineering in this kind of detail for this product, while many of media remote controls in the market do not do so.

How does TN1 control your favorite music app?

Most music apps can capture the user input from standard input hardware. For example, if you press the side switch on your smartphone, the volume will increase. And if you tap the button on your earbuds, the song will be skipped. This is actually done by the hardware switch support of the app. It sounds obvious, but this support is a technical must for the hardware switch to work as expected. If you are curious if your favorite app has this feature, you can check it immediately by pressing the side switch (for volume). Or by connecting earbuds (or a keyboard) and pressing the media button (like play/pause and skip songs) while connected with your favorite audio system.

So, can TN1 control the music from my speakers?

Absolutely! If you are using a music application that supports standard input hardware and your speaker outputs the audio stream directly from the device. 
For example, Spotify with a Bluetooth speaker. Works very well.
If you prefer to use it with a wifi connected speaker, things get more complicated as the audio stream will be indirect from your smartphone.

Bluetooth audio, is a direct audio stream from your smartphone, and the TN1 becomes a remote for the smartphone and its music app. Very simple configuration, should work as expected like an earbuds with remote.

Wi-Fi audio, is an indirect audio stream from your smartphone, the smartphone acts like a remote for the audio stream. In this case, we observed limitations depending on what service you use, and how you send the audio to the speaker. The music app may lack hardware input support, and the smartphone may not be sure which volume to control (your phone, or indirectly connected speaker??) Operation response may be unstable, compared to Bluetooth audio.

I recently purchased Sonos, adding to my audio system. And tested most of the cases for Wi-Fi audio in the hopes that the information may be helpful in your case.

Overall Summary of TN1 audio control

• iPhone and Android, with Bluetooth audio should work as expected (since the major music apps supports hardware input)

• iPhone + Wi-Fi audio: Better use Airplay if you can. Apps and the iOS had nice support all around, but the apps tends to remove the hardware volume control support.

• Android + Wi-Fi audio: There are some limitations depending on the app and audio system you use. Especially the Amazon music could not be controlled with TN1 while casting the audio to Wi-Fi speakers. Still, the Google Cast audio (Chromecast) may be the best choice if you prefer Wi-Fi audio, so give a try. 

• Details of Wi-Fi audio control:
  – Overall response to the control will have latency compared with Bluetooth.
  – Apple Music has nice support for hardware control, for both iPhone and Android, even while streaming Wi-Fi audio streaming control from your phone. 
  – iOS Spotify has limitation when you use it with Spotify connect. Better controls using with Airplay. Android Spotify has nice support for hardware control.
  – Amazon Music has limitation when you use it with Android device.
  – Sonos app (does not support hardware input) will not work with TN1. Suggest using Airplay or Spotify with Sonos audio system. It seems Sonos has made a drastic change in their app, and unfortunately the hardware input has been removed (see this article)
  (!) Recently, we observed iOS Spotify have dropped the function to control volume of Wifi connected speakers. (Refer to this article)
  It maybe better use Airplay if you use iOS device with Wifi Audio system.

I hope this article would be helpful to you and the results may change in future, depending on the improvements may made by the smartphone and app developers.
If you have any further or other questions in your mind, please feel free to contact me.

Here is the detailed chart of what we tested and the results.