I'm writing a mobile app that will be a remote control for a PC application. What I want to do is couple them using WiFi Direct.
I read about the P2P Service Discovery feature, that allows me to look only straight for devices running a certain service (and not for all of the available WiFi Direct devices).
On the Android side I implemented it using these tips: https://developer.android.com/training/connect-devices-wirelessly/nsd-wifi-direct.html
On the Windows side I'm running this app: https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-universal-samples/tree/master/Samples/WiFiDirectServices
Unfortunately in case of the PC side, I'm not even able to start advertising my service - the Advertisement Status is automatically set to 'Aborted' just after trying to launch it.
1) Is that at all possible to couple a Windows application with the WiFi P2P NSD feature provided by Android devices? (asking if I should waste my time)
2) Is that possible for a Windows PC to support P2P Service Discovery? Here the issue of system capabilities is discussed; in case of my PC WiFi Direct is supported, and none of P2P Discovery features are. Is there any way to make it support it, either hardware or software?
WifiDirect works atleast over Windows 10 & 8.1 in UWP apps using PeerFinder library. However using this lib you can perform discovery either PC to PC OR mobile to mobile NOT PC to mobile or vice versa.
But note that It is PeerFinder library limitation NOT wifi-direct. You still can use underlying wifi-direct libraries for advertisement & discovery. It is possible and i have tested this atleast between window desktop app & windows mobile (NOT with Android).
About this problem: Advertisement Status is automatically set to 'Aborted'
I ran into the same issue. The problem was, in my case when I specified a PREFIX (Publsh Prefix: xxx ). If you enter only the service name and leave all the options in their default value, and NOI prefix, the service starts running and advertises as expected.
If you want to use prefixes you need to use the correct syntax for the prefix. Let say you want to have several services in your server, then use the following syntax for each service:
MyServer.Service1 MyServer.Service2, etc. (the period separating the words is part of the service name). THEN your prefix should be MyServer.
That was the answer in my case, but I am still struggling to get the systems to connect and do some actual work for me .... :(.
Related
Since many libraries are meant to be used with TCP/IP, I was wondering if it is possible to activate TCP/IP and therefore TCP/UDP for Bluetooth connections. I found some information already like that it is called Bluetooth PAN and piconet.
Furthermore, I noticed that my Android device created a network interface with an IP upon a connection with an iPhone (after I paired it and hit connect). Nevertheless, it appears that interface cannot be used right away. I don't have the option to root these devices so it needs to be activated programmatically somehow.
Any hints? Is it actually possible?
Thanks.
I'm actually working for a startup I'm building with two other founders. On the side I would like to develop a quick prototype to be able to deepdive into a subject I can use on my project : beacons.
Here is what I want to achieve : I want to be able to use a device as an emitter (using bluetooth, BLE, or wifi) and the other one to be able to know when it enters the first one range. I need that to be able to do indoor localization (just a check in system, not to know exactly where people are in that specific location).
I'm used to code mobile application with Ionic and I'm more a Javascript developer. I saw that there is already something which fit to my needs : Dazting which transform every device mobile as "a beacon" with either bluetooth or Wifi. Problem, I want to do it on my own but to be honest I don't really now how they manage to do that with Wifi. I know that there are some libraries to emit with BLE but what about bluetooth ?
Does it mean I'll have to code it with native code ?
This is what I want to achieve :
Coding an hybrid app (will loose less time and one app for every
platform)
Transforming the mobile device into an emitter : with bluetooth or
wifi
Be able to know the distance between a device which will emit and a
one that will receive the signal
I don't want to go with beacons : I'm not going to use macro-location and buying beacons for my project at the start is not something we would like to do.
Any ideas or suggestions on how did Datzing manage to reach that goal ?
Thanks in advance.
Datzing relies on emission of Bluetooth Classic, Bluetooth LE and WiFi packets from a mobile device that is made discoverable, either programmatically or through manual selection in settings. The unique MAC address or SSID of the device can then be used to tie the detected transmission to a registered "Beacon" on the Datzing system. Basically it just registers the unique identifier associated with a Bluetooth or WiFi transmission with the Datzing servers so they can have meaning.
Using this technology to transmit on an iOS device is severely limited due to operating system restrictions. Users essentially have to manually go to settings screens to start the emissions. Android devices are much more flexible if you have a native app granted the proper permissions.
On the detection side, iOS is also much more limited than Android due to the operating system blocking access to raw MAC addresses of bluetooth devices and preventing detecting SSIDs of WiFi access points unless the network is connected. As of Android 6.0, access to the raw MAC address is also restricted, making such a system work less well with Bluetooth on newer Android devices.
On both platforms, iOS and Android, the ability to use these techniques to the extent they are allowed by the operating system are possible with native code. Doing so with Ionic or Cordova would require cobbling together a number of plugins (if they even exist) to bridge to the native features to access WiFi SSIDs and do Bluetooth discovery and scanning. This is unlikely to be a quick protoype.
Word of caution: It is always a good idea to try out a system like Datzing before trying to reproduce it yourself, as limitations often cause technologies not to live up to the claims of the marketing materials.
I've started to develop a chat application for Android. This app is supposed to function without internet and, most importantly, without an access point; It has to connect Android devices in a pure P2P manner.
However I've followed the following tutorials posted in android developers guide:
http://developer.android.com/training/connect-devices-wirelessly/nsd.html
http://developer.android.com/training/connect-devices-wirelessly/wifi-direct.html#fetch
Afterwards, I've tested my app on 3 devices, the problem is one of the devices acts as an access point, preventing other devices from connecting with each other if they are connected to it.
This doesn't work for my app, because I want each user to be able to connect to multiple users at the same time.
What do you suggest I do in order to achieve pure P2P connection for my Android app?
Does the group owner acts as an access point?
EDIT
After I've done some research I found the WiFi Direct is not suitable for my project since it has to assign a device as an access point, what I'm looking for is WiFi ad hoc mode or (IBSS) in Android Anybody got any suggestion on how to start working on that?
By using bt and wifi simultaneously, you can try to extend the network further. This will require some kind of packet routing.
Also, it seems android ignores wlan cards connected to usb otg - just plugging in extra wlan dongles could allow easy extension of network.
My computer does not have any Bluetooth capability, however it has WI-Fi capability. My phone has both.
I was asking myself if there is anyway to "stream" Bluetooth over WI-Fi?
Thanks!
The short answer is no. Easiest would be to purchase a bluetooth dongle for your computer.
Yes, tunneling one type of communication through another is generally possible (within the limits of the Android Bluetooth API), but as it is an obscure need you will probably have to write the bridging server to run on the Android device yourself - this is after all a site for questions about software development. Additionally, it will work best when the app hosting the server is in the foreground, as Android makes no guarantees about keeping services running in the background.
On the PC side, this bridged Bluetooth capability will probably not trivially present as an ordinary Bluetooth adapter, so you would be limited to using custom applications which known how to talk through your bridge. The exception would be if you also spend time figuring out how to write a device driver for your host operating system which presents it with traditional Bluetooth APIs, at least to the greatest degree possible.
What is the best way for an Android app installed on two devices to communicate with each other? Can the devices connect directly without using text messaging?
You have several options, depending on your requirements and setup:
If your devices are very close to one another (up to about 10 meters), you can communicate using Bluetooth, as Derek suggested.
If your devices are somewhat further away, but within WiFi range of each other (up to about 100 meters), then they can communicate with each other using the Peer-to-Peer WiFi API, documented here (part of the Android Wireless API). This does not require a WiFi router to be present, and the devices will find each other and communicate directly. This does however require Android 4.1 or higher.
The Android Wireless API will also work if your devices are on the same local network (i.e., use the same WiFi router), even if they are not themselves within range of each other.
If none of these options are viable/guaranteed, then I agree with Derek that the easiest way would be to use ServerSocket and Socket to create a server/client interface through the Internet. Here is a sample application doing that. The main problem you might encounter is that if the server is sitting behind a NAT (such as a home internet router), you will have to configure the NAT to forward the incoming packets to your Android server.
You can connect them via bluetooth using BluetoothSockets. Android developer website has pretty good documentation on this.
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/wireless/bluetooth.html
Or if you'd rather (and have internet on both devices), you can use regular Socket's.
http://developer.android.com/reference/java/net/ServerSocket.html for server side
http://developer.android.com/reference/java/net/Socket.html for client side
If you have a large amount of data to transfer, internet sockets have a greater data capacity and will be faster. The other advantage is that there is no such thing as "out of range". You can connect the two devices wherever internet is available, whereas with bluetooth they have to be within bluetooth range of each other
you can use PubNub. it handles all networking and you should only care about messages.
it has great API to work.
(Thanks to #Ian Jennings : Can we send data from an android device to another android device directly (p2p) without server in the middle?)
Depends on what you are doing. If you have a server, you may be able to send some message to it and have it pulled by the other device (assuming both clients have the app installed). I think this would be the most intuitive way (but it really depends on what you are communicating).
Text messaging and email might work, but you (or the user) needs to know the numbers/emails associated with a device to do that.
you should have a look at WifiDirect
Wi-Fi peer-to-peer (P2P) allows Android 4.0 (API level 14) or later
devices with the appropriate hardware to connect directly to each
other via Wi-Fi without an intermediate access point.
As was already suggested, sockets are the easiest way to accomplish this if your devices are all connected to a network.
There are things to accomplish here:
Use Network Service Discovery to find devices running your app
Connect to other instances of your app using a socket
For a complete tutorial you can check this out
ShortAnswer: Yes
Data can be sent directly.
In order of range:
1 Bluetooth
2 wifidirect
3 maybe.. GSM hardware direct?
After that, options again in range order:
4 tether or network
5 Internet
The android NSD API is meant to do the exact same thing you are trying to achieve! The example bundled with SDK is self explanatory!
please check:
Android NSD API example