Develop Reference

Monitoring bluetooth activity between 2 devices

I'm trying to monitor the bluetooth activity between an android app and a lego mindstorm. I'm trying to find out what commands the app sends to let the lego mindstorm do something. Is it possible to do this by a computer program or an android app to see this? Or is there another way to do this?

Monitoring Bluetooth Traffic
Option 1: You may be able to use a Bluetooth proxy to route the bluetooth traffic through a computer. Here is one such program (requires Linux).
Option 2: If you are willing to root your Android device, you can install a packet sniffing application (example) to monitor what is going on.
Option 3: You can find a remote control program to send commands directly from your computer and monitor that instead of using an Android device.
Analyzing the Data
I have written a Wireshark protocol analyzer for EV3 that can help decode the information. Wireshark can capture the data directly from your computer (if the data is being generated by or passing through your computer) or you should be able to open the dump file created by any other packet sniffer (such as the Android one above) with Wireshark.

How to use AT commands and implement CSD in Android?

I've got a challenge: I need to implement CSD into my Android app.
Android Telephony organization is explained here
http://ytd2525.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/android-operating-system-and-radio-interface-layer/.
Since Android API doesn't include methods to work with hardware modem directly (send AT command and get back reply), I suppose I have to work with port which represents modem.
In this post AT command in Android port /dev/smd0 is recommended to use, but my Samsung Galaxy S III does not have such port.
Question: Does anybody knows how to interact with modem (what is hardware port name, how to send AT command, how to get back modem's reply)? Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.

How to get GPS data from Android phone?

Is there a method to tether (USB wired) the GPS data from and Android phone to PC? I am using a GPSTether app currently that is based on the gpsd project.
I am loooking for alternatives that give more control and is less buggy than that app. Also, is there another method of doing this without using any third party apps?
I am working on a location aware software project and want to read the GPS data periodically. The GPSTether app does exactly that on a TCP port over telnet.

The ideal situation here would be to have a serial port over USB connection between your Android phone and your PC, and to stream NMEA across it from the phone. Unfortunately Android doesn't support USB in such a way natively.
GPSTether is a "hack" using the adb forwarding debug bridge in order to create the link between phone and PC, and then reads the NMEA from the location manager and sends it over the TCP/IP link created by adb forwarding.
If you are finding GPSTether too buggy, you really only have two choices either a) implement a version of GPSTether yourself, or b) come up with a different method for doing this. Both will involve quite a bit of coding.
For b), you might want to consider - writing NMEA to a file on the phone while it is connected to the PC as a USB Mass Storage device, and reading updates to the file from the PC regularly.
Or perhaps you could get a bluetooth dongle for your PC and "tether" the phone to the PC over bluetooth, by creating a bluetooth COM port connection for the GPS using something like the Android app BlueNMEA.
Or you could copy an FTP client program, and write the file to an FTP server on your PC over a WiFi connection (which would allow you to have the phone on the other side of the world from the PC).

This can be done using ShareGPS App available in Google Play Market and Franson GPSgate Client. You will have to redirect the android GPS NMEA signal to COM ports using these tools. In addition you will require to download AndroidSDK manager.
For detailed instruction see link below.:
http://sharedroid.jillybunch.com/user.html

Use Blue-NMEA http://max.kellermann.name/projects/blue-nmea/ on your android to send GPS NMEA data on bluetooth or on a local tcp server which can be accessed on PC by usb tethering or on WI-FI connection.
use VSPE (virtual serial port emulator) by eterlogic http://www.eterlogic.com/Products.VSPE.html (look for ur version of windows) and redirect data from tcp port to a com port of your choice and u r done with the settings. now configure 'google earth' ,'see you', 'GPSdata logger' or any other soft to listen to this com port which oftenly they will do by themselves.

http://max.kellermann.name/projects/blue-nmea/
sends nmea via bt com port or on a tcp port. make sure you read the readme to avoid common obstacles.

This is really late, but I have an old LG-P350 and on device manager it shows an NMEA interface. I don't really know how to use it though.

Android 2.2. How to set up serial port(com,rfcomm) port?

I a trying to connect my Nexus One with Android version 2.2.1 with my pc and use a terminal program such as windows terminal or hyper terminal to communicate. To do this I believe I need to set up an outgoing serial com port. I have paired the devices. When I go on my PC to Bluetooth -> settings -> "add com port" the android device does not display.
What am I missing?
Does android 2.2.1 support spp? The documentation says it does.
Do I need to root the android to add spp?
Has anyone succeeded in this?
My final goal is to write an android app that communicates with an old school bluetooth device that requires com ports? Getting the android to communicate with the pc is an interim step.
I have tried everything I can think of in my android app to connect to my pc and android device but have not been successful. My android app is essentially the same as Serial over Bluetooth submitted by xCaffeniated but with fewer comments. Any suggestions?

Try beginning with the BluetoothChat sample application. You will then have to alter the UUID used to the generic SPP UUID,
00001101-0000-1000-8000-00805F9B34FB
From this point you pretty much have everything you need.
I have had issues pairing in the BluetoothChat program. So I was required to pair to my computer using the settings menu and then entering the BluetoothChat Program. In BTChat go to the menu and hit connect to a device, choose your computer. I can only speak for windows XP SP3 which is what I'm using. At this point on my machine I receive a task bar pop up asking me if I would like to allow my device to connect as a serial port. I allow it to. Now your phone is associated as the serial port profile on the computer, which you can associate with a specific com port.

Based on bluetooth spec,
http://www.bluetooth.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/SPP_SPEC_V12.pdf,
2.3 User Requirement, "... Any legacy application may be run on either device, using the virtual serial port as if there were a real serial cable connecting the two devices (with RS232 control signalling)." In 4.3 Remote Port Negotiation, "...There is a requirement to do so if the API to the RFCOMM adaptation layer exposes to those settings (e.g. baud rate, parity)... RFCOMM as such will not artificially limit the throughput based on baud rate settings,..."
In my opinion, since Android (2.2) offers no APIs to set up and open a serial port, they may not be necessary as long as you can discover the remote BT device and make a connection to it. I have tried it and it seems working with:
...
sock = device.createRfcommSocketToServiceRecord(myUUID);
sock.connect();
...
where final UUID myUUID= UUID.fromString("00001101-0000-1000-8000-00805F9B34FB"); You may need to take care of Bluetooth Permission and Setup in your application as described in
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/wireless/bluetooth.html
There might be some issues with the connect() call, i.e. Service is not available or connect is refused, which could be resolved by making sure:
The remote BT device be discovered, and
It must be set to use PIN code (for instance 0000), and
It must be paired successfully with your Android device
These steps must be completed prior to running your application (which has connect call).
Hope this help.
George

There is definitely some funny business regarding how the AT set is implemented on the AOS. The problem is that it is hard to know if you're actually talking directly to Modem or through several abstraction layers (more likely). For a best up-to-date review of the AT Commands available on the AOS platform, plus HW, please see the post:
"How to talk to the Modem with AT commands"
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1471241

Read data from an Android USB attachment

Is there anyway to read data from an attachment through the USB port on an Android device? In particular, an EKG. Most the work can be done by the hardware of the device to simplify the output to a single number, a voltage reading. If its not possible, what about modifying an accessory that can already communicate with an android device? Thinking of devices that attach to android phones, what about sending the data as an audio signal to be read as the microphone from a headset and then analyzing the audio signal to convert it to a number that can be used to display a value.
Any ideas on how to make this work?

The Android handset can't be used as a "USB Host" (it's in the google android wishlist as a bug/enhancement request). That's what you'd need to connect regular USB devices like your EKG monitor and memory card readers, etc. to it. I wish it could do this too and star'd that enhancement to vote for it...

I'm not sure if this will work for you, but here's something I did recently for a project where I needed a smartphone to communicate with a host PC.
I used ADB on the PC to do port forwarding and then I used sockets to do the communication. Server socket on the phone, client on the PC. I can give you more details if you want.
Of course, the clear requirement here is to be able to install and execute code on the "device" which I don't think is applicable to your problem. Other than that, I found no other way to communicate over a USB connection through Android.