I have tried looking at http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/bluetooth-le.html and searching google but I am unable to figure out the following:
If I am using a regular Bluetooth capable Android device, can I communicate with a BLE device? Thanks in advance!
Depends on the Android device. Bluetooth Low Energy is a protocol defined within Bluetooth 4.0. If you mean by "regular Bluetooth capable Android device" a Bluetooth version prior to 4.0, then it is not possible to connect. But there are Android devices shipping with BT 4.0. Those will work.
Bluetooth Low Energy is nearly a completely different thing than regular Bluetooth except for the branding. However, a lot of Bluetooth 4.0 devices support both regular Bluetooth and also LE. The only ones I've seen that don't support both are little devices that rely on low power usage.
Any cell phone with Bluetooth 4.0 will also support regular Bluetooth.
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I want to develop two Android applications out of which one application should act as a Beacon. That is, one of my application installed in one device should listen certain events from the other app installed in other device and should broadcast some information on listening those events.
I read many articles and I found that the Android device must have Bluetooth LE hardware and it must have peripheral mode enabled by the device manufacturer. But most of the manufacturer as well as Google itself has disabled peripheral mode.
So my question is there a way (a Beacon library available?), so that I can make my application to act as Beacon.
Thanks in Advance.
You can use the Android Beacon Library to make a device both transmit as a beacon and detect/decode beacon transmissions.
It is true that devices must have BLE hardware for this to work, Android 4.3+ to detect beacons and Android 5.x+ to transmit as beacons. While not all devices with 5.x+ support peripheral mode needed to transmit, most popular devices do. Google has not disabled this, and their newer Nexus and Pixel devices support transmission as well.
The library linked above has a list of devices known to support transmission, and includes example code showing how to determine this at runtime on a specific device.
If a device does not support peripheral mode, there is nothing you can do short of rooting the device and trying to write a new Bluetooth driver yourself.
Is that possible to implement iBeacon API for android 4.2 and lower with BLE?
update:
According to davidgyoung, theoretically it's possible to enable ibeacon in BLE enabled devices with android 4.3- only if building up a ibeacon API from bottom.
Bluetooth low energy technology was only added in Android 4.3+.
Prior Android devices also did not had Bluetooth chips capable of BLE (standard v4.0).
So no, you cannot make a device without a BLE chip work as a BLE chip (and even if you did, it would make no sense nor use).
Android phones must have both Bluetooth 4.0 hardware and a SDK to detect iBeacons. Generally this means Android 4.3+ and a phone made in late 2012 or later.
Samsung phones include a proprietary Bluetooth 4.0 SDK for their devices with Bluetooth 4.0 chips and Android versions 4.1 and 4.2. Devices like the Galaxy S3 shipped with this.
There is no off-the-shelf iBeacon detection library using this SDK, so if you want to detect iBeacons on these devices, you would have to roll your own.
Also, keep in mind that many if not most of these devices are already getting upgrades to Android 4.3, so this is a shrinking pool of devices for which this is possible and necessary. For non-Samsung devices and Samsung devices manufactured before late 2012, it is not possible at all due to lack of a Bluetooth 4.0 library or Bluetooth 4.0 hardware.
I am currently working on an Android project that requires Bluetooth Low Energy Peripheral mode. As of now, just targeting the Galaxy S4 with 4.2.2 on it Samsung BLE SDK at http://developer.samsung.com/ble
I followed their API docs and programming guide very closely, however broadcasting characteristics or services over Bluetooth Low Energy just doesn't seem to work. Has anyone else had any luck with getting this to work yet? If so, any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks a lot.
Because Samsung BLE SDK only supports the central role, “advertising” a service as a central server means sitting their quietly, only revealing (or “advertising”) its service characteristics to another device in peripheral mode after a connection is already established. This connection establishment requires another device to do the actual radio advertising first. Samsung’s SDK isn’t going to do it.
What we need is an Android BLE API that allows creation of a peripheral server. Lots of folks were hoping that peripheral role support would be added in 4.4, but it wasn’t. Maybe we can hope for its addition in Android 4.5 or 5.0. There is a feature request asking for this. Add your name to the list!
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I am having the exact same issue. I can discover BLE devices and get their rssi values, but when I try to discover services or connect, I never receive a callback. I am using a Verizon Galaxy S4 running 4.2.2. I am using the Samsung BLE SDK 2.0. Apparently some heart rate monitors are working, but I get nothing using my ez430-rf256x TI development kit. I've tried the Keyfob demo and Heart Rate Profile demo in the Bluetopia v1.3 sdk.
Phones/tablets/pc's support(usually) Bluetooth dual mode chip. According to Bluetooth specification dual mode devices can't be a peripheral, but single mode devices do.
Bluetooth 4.0 is same as Bluetooth 4.0 LE? , i.e. iPhone4s supports bluetooth 4.0,
does that mean iPhone4s supports bluetooth 4.0 LE ?
I know that bluetooth 3.0 != bluetooth 3.0 HS
My android phone project, msm7225A platform, bluetooth chip is WCN2243.
which version can be defined?
In short, from hardware and software aspects, how to confirm Bluetooth version
(when using bluez stack, and take android phone for an example)
it is really a problem that confusing me for a long time.
appreciate anyone give some help.
Not sure if I got your questions correctly, but maybe this helps:
Bluetooth 4.0 specifies two modes of operation: "classic" Bluetooth and "Bluetooth Low Energy (LE)". iPhone 4S's Bluetooth is dual mode, i.e. it supports both classic & LE. IOS, though, only supports programming the latter (LE) directly via the public CentralManager API. There is no way to directly access the "classic" Bluetooth stack in IOS.
The standard Android SDKs only support classic Bluetooth. If you want to use LE, this answer suggests to use a manufacturer API.
BlueZ supports LE's GATT server at least. I haven't worked with that though, so I can't tell how complete LE support is. If you're about to use BlueZ directly on Android phones, mind that this will only work if the user has root access.
To answer more generally, LE could/should also have been published without calling it "Bluetooth" at all. So to determine if the hardware/software supports classic and/or LE, you'll have to look at the specs for each platform you're targeting.
I need to develop an Android application handling the data from a custom built Bluetooth Low Energy client device.
After researching it seems that the best option is to use the API's developed by Motorola for their Android smartphones, but it looks like the Motorola Bluetooth Low Energy API is made to connect only with Motorola bluetooth devices, from the link:
applications can use [the Motorola Bluetooth Low Energy API] to interface with Bluetooth LE (Low
Energy) profiles implemented by certain Motorola Mobility devices
Besides the above mentioned API, there is the Motorola Bluetooth Low Energy GATT Framework API, but it is unclear to me whether it is applicable for my needs.
Can anyone here tell me how these API's can be used to achieve my goal or whether there are other options that I haven't realized yet?
Android options for BLE are limited, and this answer may be different at any given point in the future.
Motorola API will only work for Motorola phones. The GATT API will allow you to push data to the GATT and transmit it via ble. HOWEVER Motorola has ONLY extended the HRM profile. Additionally the API stopped working on devices that were updated to ICS (as of 10 days ago this is still the case). They are working to update the API as well as possibly extend the profiles beyond HRM. There have been people that have simply leveraged the HRM profile to shuttle data, but there is currently a 2 octet limit.
There are additional bugs that have been reported as well, that are also supposed to be fixed in the post ICS updates. However since it took them a year to get ICS out to their headsets and all of the Motorola apps are still working, who knows when they'll update the API's.