Bluetooth HC-05 module not reliably paring in Sequoia

They are fully Bluetooth 2.0 compatible. Always were and still are - They have worked perfectly for some years and now it seems they work erratically at best in Sequoia. Sure support later versions but that is no excuse to break older versions and make lots of robotics and other project hardware useless simply because someone cannot be bother to ensure newer versions of the OS don't break what used to work. Sure Apple might want to sell you the latest earbuds or whatever, but some of us do a lot more than that and can't afford to replace lots of hardware every couple of years when there is nothing wrong with it other than OS compatibility. There is a newer BLE version but unfortunately the pinout is different so that means having new circuit boards made to suit them. And dismantling the robots to make the changes. All because of OS support becoming 'broken'. My external monitor is also not working after the machine sleeps since the Sequoia update which is equally frustrating. And the benefits of Sequoia. Well for me there are none other than pesky AI powered nonsense that trues to sell me stuff I don't want or gives unless answers to any question that is not trivial...

Sure they have updated to make it higher bandwidth and lower energy. Neither of those is relevant to the large set of in-house built robots we have for the students. The motors use vastly more power than the BT modules and the speed is not an issue since a few hundred bytes per second is more than enough. Bluetooth versions are supposed to be backward compatible - so why does an OS update effectively obsolete the hardware. The university is struggling to keep staff and does not have cash to replace hundreds of bits of equipment... But Apple doesn't care.