I created a transmitter app with this Error code 2 in beacon transmitter for Android Beacon library code and able to transmit as iBeacon.
Problem 1: The app no longer able to transmit if i killed the app from recents(Should i call this from foreground service? Any in-built API from altbeacons library?)
Problem 2: I need to send a 10 character String to scanner after connection established, but setDataFields() only allowing for 6 digits.
It is a bit tricky to keep an Android app running in the background, which what you need to do to keep a transmitter going.
The Android Beacon Library does this automatically for scanning purposes, so you could use the library's reference app as a starting point and put the transmission start in the onCreate method of the Application class.
This would keep the transmitter going pretty much forever on Android 5-7. On Android 8 you are limited to running in the background for about 5 minutes out of every 15 unless you build a foreground service.
EDIT
If you wish to advertise several bytes of data, your best bet is to encode it in the 16 byte ID1 (ProximityUUID) field. You can reserve the first few bytes for determining if the beacon is yours, then use the last 10 bytes or so to encode your data. On the receiver side you can use identifier.getBytes() to convert your first identifier to a byte array so you can access data elements inside of it.
Related
I use android phone to detect a beacon using startScan method, the interval time of beacon adversing is 800ms, but I got the beacon data from callback of startScan every 3~10 seconds. My expectation is I can get the data every 1 second.
Below is my codes. So is there any other ways to get my expectation. Or someone can explain why the interval time is not the same as the adversing time ?
ScanSettings.Builder builder = new ScanSettings.Builder()
.setScanMode(ScanSettings.SCAN_MODE_LOW_LATENCY);
// scan filters has been set the right value.
bluetoothLeScanner.startScan(scanFilters, builder.build(), scanCallback);
Nothing about the code shown is a problem. I can confirm your expectation is met with equivalent code in other apps on other devices. This suggests a problem with :
Your BLE device not advertising as often as you expect
Your Android phone (possible but unlikely)
Some other aspect of your code that you did not show in your question.
Is you BLE device a beacon? If so, I suggest:
Install BeaconScope on the same phone, scan for your beacon, then check the PPS rating (Packets Per Second -- scan for at least 30 seconds until the measurement stabilizes). If you see a value of 0.1-0.3 then the problem is NOT with your code and must be (1) or (2). If you see a much higher PPS value, the problem is with some other aspect of your code not shown.
Use a second Android phone with BeaconScope as a transmitter and transmit a beacon at the 10 Hz default rate. Does your app get a packet every 100-200ms? If so, you have confirmed the problem is with your BLE device not transmitting as much as you expect.
If your BLE device is not a beacon you can at least perform the second test.
It's recommended to use 'SCAN_MODE_LOW_LATENCY' mode only hen the application is running in the foreground.
Incase you are in background, you can run a sticky foreground service and set a periodic frequency of 1 sec for your service.
Also scanning Ble for every 1 sec might be extremely heavy for the app.
I'm working on a project which using bluetooth to send two bytes data to HC-05 module and receive from it. Everything is going well but there's one thing that I can't bear with, which is stated below.
I use System.currentTimeMills() to get the time interval between sending data and receiving ,and it takes no more than 1ms`` to detect whether there's data in the buffer ofinputStream. However, it takes about30~200msto readtwo bytesof data from thebluetooth` chip on my cell phone.
Dose anyone know how to reduce the time ? Or it's insolvable?
The primary bottleneck should be the protocol scheduling. I don't know how this particular module works, but in Bluetooth in general you have to wait for your timeslot to send or receive.
Suggestions:
Check if you can send more than 2 bytes at the time. The read time is stable, but you get more data transmitted each time.
Check if the API gives you scheduling options, so the wait time goes down.
For your use case I think things would be simpler with Bluetooth low energy (BLE). You will need another module, but IMO it is worth it.
I'm writing an BLE application, where need to track if peripherals device is advertising or has stop.
I followed getting peripherals without duplications this and BLE Filtering behaviour of startLeScan() and I completely agree over here.
To make it feasible I kept timer which re-scan for peripherals after certain time (3 sec). But with new device available on market(with 5.0 update), some time re-scan take bit time to find peripherals.
Any suggestion or if anyone have achieved this?
Sounds like you're interested in scanning advertisements rather than connecting to devices. This is the "observer" role in Bluetooth Low Evergy, and corresponds to the "broadcaster" role more commonly known as a Beacon. (Bluetooth Core 4.1 Vol 1 Part A Section 6.2)
Typically you enable passive scanning, looking for ADV_IND packets broadcast by beacons. These may or may not contain a UUID. Alternatively, you can active scan by transmitting SCAN_REQ to which you may receive a SCAN_RSP. Many devices use different advertising content in ADV_IND and SCAN_RSP to increase the amount of information that can be broadcast - you could, for instance, fit a UUID128 into the ADV_IND followed by the Device Name in the SCAN_RSP. (Bluetooth Core 4.1 Vol 2 Part E Section 7.8.10)
Now you need to define "go away" - are you expecting the advertisements to stop or to fade away? You will get a Receive Signal Strength Indication "RSSI" with each advertisement (Bluetooth Core 4.1 Vol 2 Part E Section 7.7.65.2) - this is how iBeacon positioning works and there's plenty of support for beacon receivers in Android.
Alternatively you wait for N seconds for an advertisement that should be transmitted every T seconds where N>2T. The downside of the timed approach is that probably not receiving a beacon isn't the same as definitely receiving a weak beacon; to be sure you need N to be large and that impacts the latency between the broadcaster being switched off or moving out of range and your app detecting it.
One more thing - watch out that Advertising stops if something connects to a Peripheral (if you really are scanning for peripherals) another good reason to monitor RSSI.
First scenario: Bonded Devices
We know that if a bond is made, then most of the commercially available devices send directed advertisements in during re-connection. In situations such as this, according to BLE 4.0 specification, you cannot scan these devices on any BLE sniffer.
Second scenario: Connectable Devices
Peripheral devices are usually in this mode when they are initially in the reset phase. The central sends a connect initiator in response to an advertisement packet. This scenario offers you a lot of flexibility since you can play around with two predominant configuration options to alter connection time. These are: slavelatency on the peripheral and conninterval on the central. Now, I don't know how much effort it's going to take get it working on the Android platform, but if you use the Bluez BLE stack and a configurable peripheral such as a TI Sensor tag, then you can play around with these values.
Third scenario: Beacon devices
Since this is what your question revolves around, according to the BLE architecture, there are no parameters to play with. In this scenario, the central is just a dumb device left at the mercy of when a peripheral chooses to send it's beaconing signal.
Reference:
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Bluetooth-Communications-Sensing-Library/dp/1608075796/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_z
http://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Low-Energy-Developers-Handbook/dp/013288836X/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_y
Edit: I forgot, have you tried setting the advertiser to non-connectable? That way you should be able to get duplicate scan results
I am dealing with a similar issue, that is, reliably track the RSSI values of multiple advertising devices over time.
It is sad, the most reliable way i found is not nice, rather dirty and battery consuming. It seems due to the number of android devices that handle BLE differently the most reliable.
I start LE scan, as soon as i get a callback i set a flag to stop and start scan again. That way you work around that DUPLICATE_PACKET filter issue since it resets whenever you start a fresh scan.
The ScanResults i dump into a sqlite db wich i shrink and evaluate once every x seconds.
It should be easy to adapt the shrinking to your use case, i.e. removing entries that are older than X, and then query for existance of a device to find out if you received a ScanResult in the last X seconds. However dont put that X value too low, as you must take into account that you still lose alot of advertisement packets on android LE scan, compared to a BLE scan on i.e. bluez..
Edit:
I can add some information i already found for speeding up the performance on Advertisement discovery. It involves modifying and compiling the bluedroid sources and root access to the device. Easiest would be building a full android yourself, i.e. Cyanogenmod.
When a LE scan is running, the bluetooth module sends the scan sesponse via HCI to the bluedroid stack. There various checks are done until it finally gets handed to the Java onScanResult(...) which is accessed via JNI.
By comparing the log of the hci data sent from the bluetooth module (can be enabled in /etc/bluetooth/bt_stack.conf) with debug output in the bluedroid stack aswell as the Java side i noticed that alot of advertisement packets are discarded, especially in some check. i dont really understand, beside that it has something to do with the bluedroid inquiry database
From the documentation of ScanResult we see that the ScanRecord includes the advertisement data plus the scan response data. So it might be that android blocks the report until it got the scan response data/ until it is clear there is no scan response data. This i could not verify, however a possibility.
As i am only interested in rapid updates on the RSSI of those packets, i simply commented that check out. It seems that way every single packet i get from the bluetooth moduly by hci is handed through to the Java side.
In file btm_ble_gap.c in function BOOLEAN btm_ble_update_inq_result(tINQ_DB_ENT *p_i, UINT8 addr_type, UINT8 evt_type, UINT8 *p)
comment out to_report = FALSE; in the following check starting on line 2265.
/* active scan, always wait until get scan_rsp to report the result */
if ((btm_cb.ble_ctr_cb.inq_var.scan_type == BTM_BLE_SCAN_MODE_ACTI &&
(evt_type == BTM_BLE_CONNECT_EVT || evt_type == BTM_BLE_DISCOVER_EVT)))
{
BTM_TRACE_DEBUG("btm_ble_update_inq_result scan_rsp=false, to_report=false,\
scan_type_active=%d", btm_cb.ble_ctr_cb.inq_var.scan_type);
p_i->scan_rsp = FALSE;
// to_report = FALSE; // to_report is initialized as TRUE, so we basically leave it to report it anyways.
}
else
p_i->scan_rsp = TRUE;
I have an android client that functions as a central and have an app on my MAC (peripheral) that this central connects to and sends data.
At this point, I need to wait almost 100ms after I call writeCharacteristic(..) to receive the onCharacteristicWrite(..) callback. I am sending strings. If I send smaller strings, the throughput is great (understandably). When the string contains about 200 characters and I send 20 byte chunks, it takes almost a second before the entire string is seen at the peripheral. When I set the write type to NO_RESPONSE before writing the characteristic, I see no data on the peripheral.
After I connect, I have done the following to improve throughput:
Stopped discovery after services are discovered because it is an expensive operation
I set the write type to default first - When I do this, I see data on the peripheral. But, there is a significant delay. When I set the writeType to NO_RESPONSE, I see no data on the peripheral. I have no logic in onCharacteristicWrite(..) either. Sometimes, I see the data getting truncated on the peripheral.
I have set the desired connection latency to low on my mac app. Is there a way to set a value (as 7.5ms perhaps?).
When I set the write type to default and send a string of 200 characters - I split the string into 20 byte chunks. I now have 10 chunks to send. If I set characteristic value and call writeCharacteristic(..) in loop, I see no data. When I add a ~100ms delay after writeCharacteristic(..) before it executes the next iteration of the loop, I see data on the peripheral.
I see a huge increase in throughput between an iOS central - iOS peripheral. I don't see why Android central - iOS peripheral shouldn't work he same way. From my understanding, Android and iOS use the same chip.
Any reason the performance is so poor? Is there anything else I can do to improve throughput?
Please have a look at the MTU size. My experience:
Using a iOS central, the central automatically starts the MTU size negotiation with some large value. I think it is larger than 200 bytes.
On most Android devices I tested this does not start automatically but you have to start the MTU size negotiation by your app (central). If you do not do that, Android cuts your data into 20 byte pieces. This has big influence on your throughput.
I have a simple and clear question: Is it possible to send a set of data packets, one packet at a time after the acknowledgement signal from the access point is received using an Android device? The type of signal is not important just the total time passed into the process( within a resolution of ns or us suits my application) is important for me and I don't know a thing about Android, but if such a task can be pulled off in Android, I will learn Android.
Thanks
You can send a System.nanoTime() value to the other device and then substract...the thing is if the 2 devices dont have exactly the same hour, this value will not be real... Anyways, you can sync. both devices sending a "test package" from a fixed distance, sou you can measure the difference according to the test package.