Is it possible to use an Android mobile device as a GSM modem?
I have been working with GSM modems for several years. I am developing apps under .net to make data calls, send/reieve SMSs and so on, i used normal GSM modems so far, not mobiles.
Now I'd like to connect some android devices via USB to my PC and use it as a GSM modem, communicate with it via standard AT commands.
Is there any kind of driver/app/etc to handle it? It would be nice to communicate with it via RS232.
Thanks!
Environment: Windows XP/Windows 7
Mobile to test: Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini
I honestly don't know a straight answer to your question, but I would recommend perusing the docs on USB to see what data/info you can transfer.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/usb/package-summary.html
With what you're wanting, though, you'd also need to develop your own desktop app. You may be able to use ADB/shell to communicate. Phones may also need to be rooted for it, depending on how much control you want.
Drivers required would be the device manufacturer's USB drivers, if any were needed (which they are for ADB/Shell).
I have found very helpful what I want in my application. Following android application today I have found and worked for me.
It gives the two APIs through JSON. First for sending SMS and second for receiving SMS in my Server side programming language.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gsmmodem
Related
I am pretty new to Android, so bear with me. I've done a good deal of C#/C++ coding for Windows and some for iOS. But I've never done Android.
So I was wondering what do I need to connect an Android phone (we have Google Nexus 5X) directly to a Windows desktop via a cable and then send/receive text messages through it?
I'm assuming that I will need to code an interface app on the phone and then write a .NET module for Windows integration, for as long as the "connection" part is not proprietary.
PS. I know that there are online services that allow to send text messages for a small fee, but that's not what I'm interested in here. In my case I'm planning to integrate this capability with some additional software that we use here in the office.
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.
I am currently trying to write an android App that is connected to a application running on a pc (even though windows is preferred linux would be ok, too) via either USB or Bluetooth. Right now I'm not really sure how far this is possible. As far as I understand the USB Android API, I can not really use USB to talk to another application. Only raw file exchange seems to be possible. The Bluetooth idea seems a lot more feasible as I see it. I'd write a bluetooth server for the PC and connect to it via a Bluetooth client written via Android API. Point is, is that possible with windows? Has anyone seen any examples for what I am looking for? All I can find for USB is teethering which is not what I want.
There are android applications which allow you to use your mobile's touchscreen act like a touch pad which can be used to control your pc or laptop via bluetooth or wifi connection just like you are using your laptop's touch pad. PremoteDroid, RemoteDroid, Gmote etc.. to name a few (or only these are available i guess!).
But to do so you also need to develop a server application which will run on the device you wish to control and help u make connection between your mobile and the device. I have used PremoteDroid and RemoteDroid and they both work well on my laptop which runs windows 7. You can even add keyboard functionality.
PremoteDroid is openly available here: http://code.google.com/p/premotedroid/
I have a Bluetooth server application on my Mac that I use to test an Android app I'm writing. The app will eventually be used to communicate with a device with a microcontroller and bluetooth modem, but I needed a way to test the app in the absence of that device. The server app is written in Java, so I think it should work on a PC (and almost certainly in Linux).
I'm happy to share the code with you--I found it somewhere on the Internet (though I can't seem to figure out where now) and modified it as I needed to. It uses the BlueCove library, and is only about 60 lines, including several imports (and the code I commented out but didn't bother deleting :). I also have a Bluetooth client program on my Mac, since my app also has server functionality.
I have never tried to do anything like this using USB.
I'll explain the problem I'm trying to solve first. I have two Adobe AIR applications that can be deployed to Android (Receiver App and Broadcaster App). The Receiver App sits on one Android device and waits for any Android devices running the Broadcaster App (on the local network). This is all currently working and I can have the devices talking over a local WiFi connection with no problem.
The issue is I need to be able to do this without an external router/AP. I was able to setup a third Android device as a Wireless AP and have two other Android devices communicate over the WiFi connection just fine. However, the device setting up the Wireless AP connection is not able to join the network.
After searching google and stackoverflow I came up with a few solutions.
(1) Set up an Ad-Hoc network using a rooted Android device and running Barnacle. I was able to try this and set up an Ad-Hoc network successfully between two devices but they were not able to establish a connection in the Adobe AIR apps (using Adobe P2P support).
(2) If I can get my hands on the new Android 4.0 Galaxy Nexus I understand I'll have access to WiFi-Direct. I'm curious if this will solve my problem. Can I set up AND join a Wireless AP using the Galaxy Nexus, and connect to the Wireless AP from my older 2.X devices? Reading this makes me believe I can, but I wanted to know if anyone can confirm.
P.S. I am using NetConnection/NetGroup/NetStreams on the Adobe AIR side over a serverless rtmfp connection.
Thanks.
Sean, this may not answer your question, but I've used rtmfp for serverless p2p also (of the kind described in this blogpost by Tom Krcha) and have a couple data points for you:
Many HTC devices and other smartphones have a multicast issue that prevents them from communicating in this way. Google 'htc multicast' and read about it on this blog. Interestingly, these devices can work in such a group as long as there are non-impaired devices also, because they can transmit multicast, just not receive it. So the other devices initiate the group and all can participate. But the impaired devices can't initiate the group by themselves.
I had no trouble communicating between a range of devices, from Android to iOS to desktop, so I assume you should be fine across versions of Android.
I have a rooted phone that I run an app called 'wireless tether' to create a hotspot / wifi access point, and when two other devices connect to that hotspot, they can communicate with each other using this method, but they cannot communicate with the phone that is creating the hotspot network.
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.