Develop Reference

Bluetooth Low Energy (between ESP32 and Android smartphone): Data transmission quite slow

This is my first question ever asked on this board
The project explained short:
5 sensors, connected with an esp32 board are transmitting 1000 samples/second, each sample has 16 bit. Those values should be transmitted via BLE (With the BLE Arduino library and an ESP32). The connected device (Smartphone) should read those values and do something with them (Also via BLE, with the following library: https://github.com/RobotPajamas/Blueteeth). The ESP32 is the Server! Java is used in Android Studio!
The problem:
While testing the BLE connection a simple "hello world" was transmitted as the value for a characteristic. Every time i received the "hello world" on the android-device-side, a variable was incremented: The problem is, the variable only got incremented 4 times in one second. This means (assuming 1 char in a string equals 1 byte) 11byte*4(1/s)=44byte/s are being transmitted. -> This clearly is not enough (should not BLE transmit ~2MBit/s (minus the protocol-data))
Code Fragments
ESP32: BLE-Server that transmits value
#include <BLEDevice.h>
#include <BLEUtils.h>
#include <BLEServer.h>
#define SERVICE_UUID "4fafc201-1fb5-459e-8fcc-c5c9c331914b"
#define CHARACTERISTIC_UUID "beb5483e-36e1-4688-b7f5-ea07361b26a8"
class MyCallbacks: public BLECharacteristicCallbacks {
void onWrite(BLECharacteristic *pCharacteristic) {
std::string value = pCharacteristic->getValue();
if (value.length() > 0) {
Serial.println("*********");
Serial.print("New value: ");
for (int i = 0; i < value.length(); i++)
Serial.print(value[i]);
Serial.println();
Serial.println("*********");
}
}
};
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
BLEDevice::init("MyESP32");
BLEServer *pServer = BLEDevice::createServer();
BLEService *pService = pServer->createService(SERVICE_UUID);
BLECharacteristic *pCharacteristic = pService->createCharacteristic(
CHARACTERISTIC_UUID,
BLECharacteristic::PROPERTY_READ |
BLECharacteristic::PROPERTY_WRITE
);
pCharacteristic->setCallbacks(new MyCallbacks());
pCharacteristic->setValue("Hello World");
pService->start();
BLEAdvertising *pAdvertising = pServer->getAdvertising();
pAdvertising->start();
}
void loop() {
// put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
delay(2000);
}
Android Studio Code (Snippet of the receiving source):
try
{
while(sampleBluetoothData)
{
this.selectedDevice.readCharacteristic(MainActivity.characteristicUUID, MainActivity.serviceUUID, (response, data) ->
{
if (response != BlueteethResponse.NO_ERROR) {
return;
}
Log.d("AUSGANG", new String(data) + "times: "+ i);
i++;
});
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
The write on the ESP32 side is a blank example code of the Arduino IDE, the read on the Android-side is made by the BLE-Library publisher. Yes the Log.d effects the performance, but it does not drop it that much.
The variable "data" of the Android code is the received char-array. The bluetooth-reading runs on a background thread.
Question I ask myself now:
Is the Android-Studio library the problem or the Arduino library
Is this a normal behaviour, that if a value of a characteristic does not change, it is being transmitted quite slowly.
How fast can you update a value of a characteristic
Thank you in advance!

BLE can definitely transfer much more than 4 portions of 11 bytes per second.
Approach of reading:
Generally, continuos reading all the time is NOT the expected BLE way - it's better to subscribe to data changes, so ESP32 will notify only when needed (e.g. do selectedDevice.subscribeToCharacteristic once, instead of reading in a loop, but then ESP32 code should be changed accordingly)
I guess selectedDevice.readCharacteristic requests asynchronous BLE read, and when you call it in while(sampleBluetoothData), your Bluetooth library is adding more and more read requests. Maybe it would be wise to request new read only after the previous read is done - in read callback add if(sampleBluetoothData) { this.readAgain(); }
Consider making a testing prototype from this kickstart example: BLEProof on github - Android & ESP32, read, write, notify (but it uses just system API without Bluetooth library, you approach is better, it's easier and safer to use the library).
What else to check:
Android side: are you sure that your code doesn't go inside of if (response != BlueteethResponse.NO_ERROR) ?
Android side: to ensure Bluetooth library is not overloaded with read requests, try adding a delay 50 milliseconds in the reading loop (just to check, it's not a solution)
Android side: are you sure that you don't have other BLE read/writes while you read those data?
ESP32 side: use shorter BLE connection interval (BLE throughput article) - add pAdvertising->setMinPreferred(0x06); and pAdvertising->setMaxPreferred(0x20); before pAdvertising->start(); (but that sets only "preferred" interval, Android may ignore that)

Using read requests, you are mainly limited by the connection interval for transfer speeds - that is 2 intervals for request + response.
If for example your client has a connection interval of 50ms, you should expect to read a characteristic of up to 20 bytes 10 times per second.
If another client has a connection interval of 30ms, this rate improves to 16.6 reads per second.
The fastest negotiatiable connection interval is 7.5ms for a maximum of 66.6 reads per second (10.7kbps with 20 byte reads).

I was reading BLE wikipedia page and the minimum data rate is 125Kbit/s , so I think that in your case is viable, because you only will transmit 16Kbit/s. Take a look in BLE wikipedia.

Arduino Mega receiving correct data through Serial 0, but not Serial 1-3

I currently have a HC-06 Bluetooth device connected to my Arduino Mega 2560 in order to receive strings sent from an Android device. With the HC-06 on Serial 0, I am receiving the data without error with the following code:
String inString = "";
int index = 0;
boolean stringComplete = false;
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(pwmPin, OUTPUT);
}
void loop() {
if(stringComplete) {
ParseSerialData(); // Parse the received data
inString = ""; // Reset inString to empty
stringComplete = false; // Reset the system for further input of data
}
}
void serialEvent() {
while(Serial.available() && stringComplete == false) {
char inChar = Serial.read();
inData[index] = inChar; // Store it in char array
index++;
if (inChar == '\n') { // Check for termination character
index = 0; // Reset the index
stringComplete = true; // Set completion of read to true
} else {
inString += inChar; // Also store as string
}
}
}
When I try to replace "Serial" with "Serial1" and "serialEvent()" with "serialEvent1()" and move the Bluetooth device to the TX1 and RX1, this program no longer works.
I have read that some people had similar problems when using AVR-GCC 4.4.x and solved the issue by downgrading to 4.3.x, but I have 4.3.2 (on Windows 8.1, same problem has arisen with Arduino IDE 1.0.3, 1.0.5-r2, and 1.5.6-r2).
I added the following print statements (with Serial 0 to print to the monitor on my PC) to the code with the Bluetooth device still on Serial 1:
String inString = "";
int index = 0;
boolean stringComplete = false;
void setup() {
Serial1.begin(9600);
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(pwmPin, OUTPUT);
Serial.println("Setting up...");
}
void loop() {
if(stringComplete) {
ParseSerialData();
inString = "";
stringComplete = false;
}
}
void serialEvent1() {
Serial.println("In serialEvent1...");
while(Serial1.available() && stringComplete == false) {
Serial.println("Char in...");
char inChar = Serial1.read();
Serial.println("WTF");
Serial.println(inChar);
Serial.println("WTF2");
inData[index] = inChar;
index++;
if (inChar == '\n'){
Serial.println("Termination char read...");
index = 0;
stringComplete = true;
}else{
inString += inChar;
}
}
}
Doing this, on the monitor I get:
Setting up...
In serialEvent1...
Char in...
WTF
WTF2
inChar typically prints as nothing, but during one test it was printing as an '#' character. The string sent is "s,1\n" from the Android device.
Based on the print out, the serial event is triggered by availability of serial data, but Serial1.available() remains true for only the first iteration, 's' is not read in (nor any of the other characters that do when Serial is used), and a termination character (newline char) is never read in so that I can begin parsing.
I also tried various baud rates with no difference in behavior. Based on reading Arduino documentation, serial port 1 should work just like serial port 0, and I did not miss substituting Serial for Serial1 in any part of the code.
What could be causing errors in communicating over Serial1 in the same way that has worked flawlessly on Serial0?
I also found a related Stack Overflow question, which was solved with something similar to my code (which works perfectly with Serial0 and is based on the Arduino documentation) using an expected termination character (the difference being that his code implements serial reading in the main loop, whereas mine is in a serialEvent). For some reason, it seems that both of us were having issues with Serial1 data not showing as available at the start of the next iteration. For some reason, serialEvent1 is not being called again for me. And I still don't understand why the first/only character read is not 's.' At first I was thinking that the stream was getting flushed before getting to the serial event again, but that still doesn't account for reading in an incorrect first character.
Also, I added the following Serial1 print statement to run multiple times in the Arduino setup and the Android device receives it each time with no errors, so sending data is working just fine:
Serial1.print("b,1\n");
Or even
Serial1.print("A long test message. A long test message.\n");
I'm fairly close to answering my own question now with further testing/debugging. I actually think the answer may end up being hardware-related rather than software. I wanted to find out if the problem was with the data sent from the HC-06 to port 1, or with the reading function of port 1. I basically had serial port 0 read in data, then send it serially to port 1, which would read that data, and send feedback over Bluetooth to the Android device. Serial port 1 read the data fine coming from port 0, so the issue is reading in data specifically from the HC-06. It may simply be a voltage level issue, so the answer may not belong with Stack Overflow. I will leave the question unanswered though until I definitively have found the root cause (allowing for the possibility that I might need some define statement for the HC-06 or serial port 1 for data to be read correctly, though I'm guessing a voltage level conversion may do the trick. I'm not sure why there would be such a difference between Serial0 and Serial1 though).

I solved the problem enabling the pull-up resistor of the RX1 pin:
Serial1.begin(9600);
pinMode(19, INPUT);
digitalWrite(19, HIGH);
Therefore the 3 V is "overridden" by Arduino's 5 V for logical HIGH and zero is pulled down by Bluetooth's TX for logical LOW.

I did it slightly differently by using the INPUT_PULLUP feature to pull the hardware Serial3 pin HIGH:
Serial3.begin(19200);
pinMode(15, INPUT_PULLUP); // Serial3 receive pin
It works a treat. Previously my serial communications between two Arduino Mega 2560s had been mainly corruption with the occasional correct transmission. Now it is mainly the correct transmission. Previously, the time taken to receive a valid serial value was up to 2.5 seconds (due to having to repeatedly retry to get a valid transmit). Now the time taken to get a valid transmit is 20 ms. (I use a twisted pair of single core wires about 35 cm length.)

After checking the serial data lines on my oscilloscope, I was able to come up with a solution to my issue. With the setup described about the related Stack Overflow question (Bluetooth TX → RX0, TX0 → RX1, TX1 → Bluetooth RX), I checked the signals sent by the Bluetooth device and by the Arduino's serial port 0.
The Bluetooth device's signal was low at 400 mV and high at 3.68 V, while the Arduino's port 0 sent low at 0V and high at 5 V. I knew the Bluetooth device was a 3.3V level device, but the Arduino should read anything above about 3V as high, so this should have not been an issue (and it obviously wasn't on Serial 0).
Anyway, I replaced the HC-06 Bluetooth device with a backup one I had purchased and everything works fine with the code using Serial1 that I posted in my question. This Bluetooth device was transmitting low at about 160 mV and high at 3.3 V.
It seems that my problem was rooted in the hardware (voltage levels) as expected, and that for some reason Serial1 is more sensitive to changes in digital levels than is Serial0.

Sending data from arduino through bluetooth serial

I’m currently trying to design a controller that would communicate through Bluetooth to an android phone (Galaxy Nexus). I’m facing a few challenges. Also, I don’t have much practical programming experience.
At the core of the controller resides an Arduino microcontroller who scans the state of 8 digital pins and six analogue pins (10 bits) and sends the data through serial, to an HC-05 Bluetooth chip.
The android phone should then read the serial information sent through Bluetooth and either transmit the packet to another phone - That will take me a while to implement as I know very little of how the internet works - or analyse and interpret it for further action to be taken
What I’m asking for are insight as to the best way to go about doing this. Now what does best mean?
We’ll I want it to be real time so when I press a button or a combination of bottoms, boom, the android phone takes action fast enough for a human not to perceive a delay.
Then I want to be able to associate the information the phone reads in the serial buffer to the corresponding button or analogue pin. In case there is an error or to avoid that they fall out of sync
Here is what I have so far. I have not tested this code yet, partly because I’m still learning how to program the android part of this project, partly because I want some feedback as to whether I’m being silly or this is actually an effective way to go about doing this:
//Initialization
/*
This Program has three functions:
1) Scan 8 digital pins and compile their state in a single byte ( 8 bits)
2) Scans 6 Analogue inputs corresponding to the joysticks and triggers
3) Send this info as packets through seril --> Bluetooth
*/
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>// import the serial software library
#define A = 2
#define B = 3
#define X = 4
#define Y = 5
#define LB = 6
#define RB = 7
#define LJ = 8
#define RJ = 9
#define RX = 10
#define TX = 11
//Pin 12 and 13 are unused for now
SoftwareSerial Bluetooth(RX,TX); //Setup software serial using the defined constants
// declare other variables
byte state = B00000000
void setup() {
//Setup code here, to run once:
//Setup all digital pin inputs
pinMode(A,INPUT);
pinMode(B,INPUT);
pinMode(X,INPUT);
pinMode(Y,INPUT);
pinMode(LB,INPUT);
pinMode(RB,INPUT);
pinMode(LJ,INPUT);
pinMode(RJ,INPUT);
//Setup all analogue pin inputs
//setup serial bus and send validation message
Bluetooth.begin(9600);
Bluetooth.println("The controller has successfuly connected to the phone")
}
void loop() {
//Main code here, to run repeatedly:
//Loop to sum digital inputs in a byte, left shift the byte every time by 1 and add that if the pin is high
for(byte pin = 2, b = B00000001; pin < 10; pin++, b = b << 1){ if (digitalRead(pin)== HIGH) state += b; }
//Send digital state byte to serial
Bluetooth.write(state);
//Loop to read analgue pin 0 to 5 and send it to serial
for( int pin = 0, testByte = 0x8000; pin < 6 ; pin++, testByte = testByte >> 1) { Bluetooth.write(analogRead(pin)+testByte); }
}
//Adding some validation would be wise. How would I go about doing that?
// Could add a binary value of 1000_0000_0000_0000, 0100_0000_0000_0000, 0010_0000_0000_0000 ... so on and then use a simple AND statement at the other end to veryfy what analogue reading the info came from
// so say the value for analgue is 1023 and came from analgue pin 1 I would have 0100_0011_1111_1111 now using an bitwise && I could check it against 0100_0000_0000_0000 if the result is 0100_0000_0000_0000 then I know this is the analogu reading from pin 1
//could easily implement a test loop with a shiting bit on the android side
Is it pointless for me to be doing bit shifts like this? Ultimately, if I’m not mistaken, all data is sent as bytes ( 8 bits packets) so will the Bluetooth.write(analogRead(pin)+testByte) actually send two bytes or will it truncate the int data? how will it be broken down and how can I recuperate it on the android end?
How would you go about implementing this? Any insights or words of advice?

It's great that you are learning this! Some suggestions:
Your code will be easier to read, understand and maintain if you space it out a bit, particularly by adding newlines...
void loop() {
//Main code here, to run repeatedly:
//Loop to sum digital inputs in a byte,
//left shift the byte every time by 1 and add that if the pin is high
for( byte pin = 2, b = B00000001; pin < 10; pin++, b = b << 1) {
if (digitalRead(pin)== HIGH)
state += b;
}
//Send digital state byte to serial
Bluetooth.write(state);
//Loop to read analgue pin 0 to 5 and send it to serial
for( int pin = 0, testByte = 0x8000; pin < 6 ; pin++, testByte = testByte >> 1) {
Bluetooth.write(analogRead(pin)+testByte);
}
}
Also, you can use the shift operators with values other than one. so instead of keeping a shift mask that you then add in, you just use the a simple variable. A more classic way to do what you expressing in the first looop would be something like this:
#define PIN_OFFSET 2
for ( int i=0; i < 8; i++) {
if (digitalRead( i+PIN_OFFSET)== HIGH)
state += (1 << i);
}
The second loop could be done similarly:
for( int pin = 0; pin < 6; pin++) {
short testByte = 0x8000 >> pin;
short result = analogRead(pin) + testByte;
Bluetooth.write( result >> 8);
Bluetooth.write( result & 0xFF);
}
Note that the Bluetooth.write() call sends a byte, so this code sends first the most significant byte, then the least.
Lastly, you probably want to zero your state variable at be beginning of loop() -- otherwise, once a bit is set it will never get cleared.
You may want to think about what you are sending to the phone. It will be binary data, and that can be difficult to deal with -- how do you know the start and end, and often a value will be misinterpretted as a control character messing you up big time. Consider changing it into a formatted, human readable string, with a newline at the end.
I hope that helps.

The Arduino end of this is more than fast enough to do what you want to do and you need not worry in the slightest about minimising the number of bytes you send out from the micro to the phone when you're talking about such a tiny amount of data. I'm not quite clear what you're sending to the phone; are you wanting a different value for each button so when a button is pressed it sends out something like:
Button Was Pressed, Button Number (Two bytes)
And if it's an analogue value:
Analogue Value Read, Analogue Value MSB, Analogue Value LSB (assuming the analogue value is greater than eight bits
I don't know the Arduino code you're using, but my suspicion is that this line:
Bluetooth.write(analogRead(pin)+testByte)
Would send one byte which is the addition of the analogue value and whatever testByte is.
Would you be able to post a link to the documentation for this API?
Any delay with all this will come at the phone end. Please don't concern yourself in the slightest about trying to save a byte or two at the Arduino end! (I'm currently doing a project with a Cortex M3 sending data via a Bluetooth module to Android phones and we're shipping several k of data around. I know from this experience the difference between two and twenty bytes is not of consequence in terms of delay.)

It may be good for you to opt for ready available bluetooth terminal apps for your android handset. On Google play, few apps are:
1) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=arduino.bluetooth.terminal&hl=en
2) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sena.bterm&hl=en
(and few more are availble on Google play).This will help you to focus only on controller side development.

Hang-up on TCP socket send call in Android native code

I have a problem with socket send (or write) function on android.
There is my network lib that I use on Linux and Android. Code is written in C.
On Android, application creates a service, which loads a native code and creates the connection with the help of my network lib. Connection is the TCP socket. When I call send (or write, no difference), code hangs in this call in most cases. Sometimes, it unhangs after 10-120 seconds. Sometimes, it waits longer (until I kill the application). Data size being sent is about 40-50 bytes. First data sending (handshake, 5 bytes) never hangs (or I am just lucky). The hanging send is, usually, next after handshake packet. Time between this first handshake packet sending and hanging sending is about 10-20 seconds.
The socket is used on another thread (I use pthread), where the recv is called. But, I do not send data to Android in this time, so recv is just waiting when I call send.
I am sure that other side is waiting for the data – I see that recv on other side returns with EAGAIN every 3 seconds (I set timeout) and immediately calls recv again. Recv is waiting 10 bytes always (minimal size of packet).
I am unable to reproduce this behavior on Linux-to-Android transfer or Linux-to-Linux, only on Adnroid-to-Linux. I am able to reproduce this with two available to me different Android devices, so I don’t think this is the problem in broken hardware of one particular device.
I tried to set SO_KEEPALIVE and TCP_NODELAY options with no success.
What can issue the hang-up on send/write calls and how can I resolve this?
Socket created with this code:
int sockfd, n;
addrinfo hints, *res, *ressave;
bzero(&hints, sizeof(addrinfo));
hints.ai_family = AF_INET;
hints.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM;
if ((n = getaddrinfo(host, serv, &hints, &res)) != 0)
{ /* stripped error handling*/ }
ressave = res;
do
{
sockfd = socket(res->ai_family, res->ai_socktype, res->ai_protocol);
if (sockfd < 0) continue;
if (connect(sockfd, res->ai_addr, res->ai_addrlen) == 0)
{
break; /* success */
}
close(sockfd); /* ignore this one */
} while ((res = res->ai_next) != NULL);
Hanging send operation is:
mWriteMutex.lock();
mSocketMutex.lockRead();
ssize_t n = send(mSocket, pArray, size, 0);
mSocketMutex.unlock();
mWriteMutex.unlock();

The problem is solved with the help of Nikolai N Fetissov in commentaries - his right question has unblocked my mind and I found a problem in RWMutex.

How do you send an extended-ascii AT-command (CCh) from Android bluetooth to a serial device?

This one really has me banging my head. I'm sending alphanumeric data from an Android app, through the BluetoothChatService, to a serial bluetooth adaptor connected to the serial input of a radio transceiver.
Everything works fine except when I try to configure the radio on-the-fly with its AT-commands. The AT+++ (enter command mode) is received OK, but the problem comes with the extended-ascii characters in the next two commands: Changing the radio destination address (which is what I'm trying to do) requires CCh 10h (plus 3 hex radio address bytes), and exiting the command mode requires CCh ATO.
I know the radio can be configured OK because I've done it on an earlier prototype with the serial commands from PIC basic, and it also can be configured by entering the commands directly from hyperterm. Both these methods somehow convert that pesky CCh into a form the radio understands.
I've have tried just about everything an Android noob could possibly come up with to finagle the encoding such as:
private void command_address() {
byte[] addrArray = {(byte) 0xCC, 16, 36, 65, 21, 13};
CharSequence addrvalues = EncodingUtils.getString(addrArray, "UTF-8");
sendMessage((String) addrvalues);
}
but no matter what, I can't seem to get that high-order byte (CCh/204/-52) to behave as it should. All other (< 127) bytes, command or data, transmit with no problem. Any help here would be greatly appreciated.
-Dave

Welll ... turns out the BluetoothChat code re-creates the byte array with message.getBytes() before sending to the service. (after all, being chat code it would normally source only regular ascii strings) As others on this site have pointed out, getBytes() can create encoding issues in some cases. So, for purposes of sending these extended-ascii commands, I don't mess with strings and just send the byte array to the service with
private void sendCommand(byte[] cmd) {
mChatService.write(cmd);
}
The so-called command array is first initialized with placeholders for the hex radio address elements
byte[] addrArray = {(byte) 0xCC, 16, 0, 0, 0, 13};
and then filled in with the help of the conversion method
radioArray = HexStringToByteArray(radioAddr1);
which can be found here: HexStringToByteArray#stackoverflow