I want to create a small wireless network with a Windows 8.1 laptop as the "hub," connected to up to 8 Android devices. I need to transfer files in both directions, between the laptop and the devices.
This needs to be a system that requires minimal setup since it will be distributed to the laptop owners. The developer will not be available to help. Minimal hardware and software requirements can be specified, but not actual models of laptops and devices.
It seems to me that Wi-Fi Direct is the best option to do this. I know VB.Net best, so I would like to use that for development. Does anyone have sample code that could get me started? Would I also need an app to run on the devices to set up the pairing and network?
Thanks!
Related
Can some please explain how Windows detect near by printer as Mac OS uses Bonjour to detect them. I want my android device to be detected as printer in the nearby list of Windows. I am using NSD to register a network service with ipp protocol and it works fine in Mac OS. Now I want the same functionality for Windows as well. Please help me here.
As of Windows Vista, I believe it uses Web Services Dynamic Discovery (WS-Discovery).
The component WSDMON in Windows 7 and later uses WS-Discovery to automatically discover WSD-enabled network printers, which show in Network in Windows Explorer, and can be installed by double-clicking on them. In Windows 8 or later installation is automatic. WS-Discovery is enabled by default in networked HP printers since circa 2008.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WS-Discovery
Earlier versions of Windows used NetBIOS and SMB but I presume we're talking modern Windows here.
I currently work a technical support position - Windows is not guaranteed to find anything actually. You could have multiple printers on a network, shared in different methods. Printers may also be on separate vlans and you network can also have rules and devices which interfere with these protocols operating.
Instead of relying on the integrity of the users network (which is improbable to account for), you should find your users devices IP address and give the user instructions on how to connect a Windows device to your app.
If you would like to fight Goliath however, read this: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc783789%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
Im developing an application for a manufacturing plant. They want to connect a scale, printer and meter counter to an android tablet.
They use rs232 ports.
Im planning on using the galaxy view tablets that have a Micro Usb port, then hook that up to usb hub and then use a rs232 converter.
My question is will this be able to communicate to the tablet? At least show the raw values and will it know its 3 separate pieces of hardware?
I have a similar problem but only part of your problem here:
Connecting external hardware to Android Phone
You need to ask those hardware manufacturer to send you the Android driver to include in your Android app. It will run on some phone but may not work on all phone. Most software developer will refuse to provide support for Android as there are so many manufacturers and possibly compliance issue. Your best bet will be to ask the hardware manufacturer which phone/tablet they have tested the device on. In any case you still need a hardware driver like the one for windows.
at the moment I'm planning to build an cross-plattform app (iOS/android) that streams music from one device to others without internet. Now I'm considering which network technology is best for this use case. By the way I'm sorry I didn't say hello to you, it disappears all the time.
Existing wifi network:
I don't wanna use this because I want my app to work everywhere.
Wifi-Direct:
Not supported by iOS (tell me if I'm wrong).
Bluetooth:
Here I've found kind of conflicting information.
Bluetooth 2.1 is supported by both iOS and android but iOS has its own protocols and doesn't support the common ones.
Bluetooth Low Energy provides a data rate that is too slow for high quality music streaming (1Mbit) and is supported by iOS but on the android side version 4.3 is required which suspends about half of all users.
What I'm not sure about is the "normal" (not LE) usage of Bluetooth 4.0. Does anyone have experience/information about this?
Creating a wifi hotspot:
This was my first idea and probably it's the best. But there are several issue:
Some carriers do not allow hotspots
It's not possible to create a hotspot without cell reception on the iPhone and some (I don't know which exactly) android devices.
It's not possible to create a hotspot without cellular data activated on an iPhone; I don't know what about android devices (Nexus 4: no problem, SGS3 mini: cellular data can be switched off after creating the hotspot)
-> that's a problem for those who don't have an internet unlimited plan or for those who don't want to share their internet connection (as this dissipates the high speed volume) but see the next point for that.
In order that everyone can use his own cellular data connection the wifi settings can be manually edited on iOS (remove router, DNS and search domains entries). Is there a way to do so on android as well? Is there way to automize this process?
https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/173894/can-i-connect-to-wifi-but-still-use-cellular
Is there any way to create a wifi network programmatically (not just enable the normal wifi hotspot)?
SDKs/Frameworks like Open Garden or Alljyon looked promising at the beginning but:
Firechat (which is made by the Open Garden team) promises that iOS and android devices can chat locally without existing network but actually it didn't work for me with an iPhone 6 and SGS3 mini. However they don't want to publish their SDK. The only information I got is that it works over wifi-direct and bluetooth. If anyone has an idea how this could work, please tell me.
Alljoyn does not provide direct communications between iOS and android without an existing network. (Tell me if I'm wrong)
API's:
iOS multipeer connectivity does not support android
I hope anyone can help me.
Regards Nils
If you are talking about a TVBOX device with Android, you will need the ethernet cable connected in order to create a hotspot.
Another option that I have done is:
Create a service that runs on iPhone with an interfaz, do whatever you want on that interfaz, then send what ever you need to a webservice, then in Android, just pull that info from another App as a service, or just store it in an internal sqlite.
Good luck
I want to connect my Xbee module to my android phone and communicate with it by sending AT commands.
I do know of the USB host facility provided by Android phones, but I do not know how to send data to it.
I have the java-Xbee API and I am able to talk to the Xbee using my computer but since my project involves using the Android OS, any help on this topic will be appreciated.
According to this Google Code Page, the java-Xbee API requires Java >= 5 and RXTX. Considering those two requirements:-
RXTX on android is not an out of the box lib and may require some hacking which may or may not work.
I'm not a Java VM expert, but i know desktop OS JVMs work differently from Dalvik.How well would Dalvik run code developed for JVM? Here is a nice StackOverflow topic discussing the two.
Faced with the above challanges, are you brave enough to boldly go where no man has gone before?
Could you also consider the following well documented and supported approaches:-
Ytai Ben-Tsvi & Sparkfun's IOIO-OTG
Saves you the headache writing android 3.1+ USB host code and thus allows you to use cheaper phones that run droids 1.5 to 2.3 (without hacking the latter).
Digi's WiFi to Xbee
Allows you to link your android phone (or any other programmable wifi enabled computer) to your device over the internet.
From a year ago, Is there a way to communicate with USB devices on Android? this didn't look like a common requirement, but tablets have evolved, and hopefully, the OS has, as well.
I need to operate a simple USB relay card from my Curtis LT8025 tablet, currently running 2.1 patched.
I'm also a newcomer to both Android and java, so relatively clueless!
No need for bi-directional communication, just a simple serial command out to the device.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Dave
Sadly, there is currently no standard API to achieve wired communication with Android devices. I was facing a similar issue a while back (see Android: Communicating with a USB device which acts as host ).
I was able to successfully implement the solution provided by CommonsWare. Leave a comment if you need more help regarding this and I can provide details.
Edit (more details) -
Basically, I narrowed down to two possible solutions for this problem:
Modify the Android source itself to include custom drivers for whatever purpose you need and install this in your tablet. Since its mostly based on Linux, if you develop the drivers for Linux, the same can be used in Android with a little modification. This solution is simpler to develop, but not practical commercially if you are not providing the tablet/phone yourself.
Make your USB device act as an host and implement the ADB driver/command-set in your device. When connected, you can issue "adb forward" to forward tcp ports so you can interact with your Android apps and have two way communication between the device and the app.
I used the second method and it works flawlessly. But its only practical if you are making USB host devices. for USB slaves, first method is the only way I recon.
If you are using a serial device and have the ability to talk to it over native serial, you might want to consider IOIO (see http://ytai-mer.blogspot.com/2011/04/meet-ioio-io-for-android.html for more details).
I'm building an Android custom system. I did connect several devices on the USB. I looked to connect a device on the OTG port, the one that usually gets out of a tablet on which you use ADB. I gave up. This is a nightmare. I don't think you can use ADB on the OTG USB that is currently a device and expect to be able to use another device like a USB to serial converter. That means that you loose the whole ADB toolchain for debugging when you want to use the port as a host. On top of that, the USB OTG drivers you have for your tablet was probably not very well tested in host mode since it's not really used that way. So lots of headakes.
The simple way that I found was to use the second USB port on the CPU. This one is a plain HOST port (unfortunately limited to 12 Mbit/s). Unfortunately, I don't know if there are any tablet out there with 2 USB port available from outside (One OTG and one host).
If you get a set-up with two USB port (one HOST) then it's possible to compile as a module (drivername.ko), a usb to serial converter. There are several chipset supported in the kernel source tree and I already used a few of them and it works.
hope this bit of info is helpful.