I was reading this
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/wireless/bluetooth.html#QueryingPairedDevices
which is allot of help on how to pair,connect to a bluetooth device.
I have a situation where I have several BT devices that are in Non-Discover mode always. I know the MAC and the PIN of these devices. IS there a way in Android Dev to manually add devices to the PAIRED list so i can just use the connect as a client.
I understand this maual is written allot for V3. i think i will need to do this on 2.0 ; 2.1- has anybody done this before?
Basically these devices I want to connect to are power saving modules I used pre built BT modules to monitor daylight, another one humidity, etc.. every 3hrs or when interrupted and runs of a single battery for months. So turning off divcory on server saves immense power and prevents other people trying to connect and waste battery.
Not sure what you mean by "manually": Do you mean "manually" as in GUI/user interaction, or "manually" as "I do it in my own application code"?
Some suggestions though:
If you can make your BT devices discoverable at all, you could do it this way:
Make your BT device discoverable
Let Android search for and find the device and then initiate a connection
Android will ask for the PIN for pairing with the device; enter the PIN.
Once pairing was successful, Android stores the pairing information for future use, so that you can
Make your BT device invisible again.
From then on your app should be able to connect to the BT device at any time without further pairing operations.
If the said is not an option for you, maybe you want to go another way:
In current Android versions there are different API routines implemented which are neither documented nor exposed in the normal SDK. A hack kind of solution may be to use some of these "hidden" ("#hide"...) APIs, either via reflection or via modification of your SDK installation.
But be aware that this is always a hack and it may work on a specific device with a specific version of Android and is likely to break your app on another device and/or any other Android version.
Having said that, here comes some reference:
Example of how to access "hidden" bluetooth API.
Then, have a look at the source code for android.bluetooth.BluetoothDevice, e.g. here.
In there, public boolean createBond(){...} may do what you want.
Related
I would like to be able to pre-pair bluetooth devices, to save the step of user confusion when using the app. I have discovered that there is a patent for
System, method and apparatus for pre-pairing bluetooth enabled devices.
I am looking at pairing an array of android devices with an array of embedded devices, so when the android device is set up, I can pre-pair it with the devices it needs to communicate with. I have considered maintaining a list of MAC-addresses that can be downloaded and updated by the app.
Is there a way to pair two devices without having to bring them into contact?
My memory is not exact, it's a while ago I poked around in the Bluetooth stack, however, I don't think this is possible.
Basically there is a white list (text file pretty much) which is kept by the system with devices that may connect to your phone, in order to access that white list outside of the Bluetooth api you need to be platform manufacturer. The Bluetooth Api is strongly guarded (by the specification), if you don't fulfill it you can't say your device supports Bluetooth. Pairing is an important part of the Bluetooth security model, I doubt even an oem would be allowed to do this.
One thing you could look into are Bluetooth low energy devices, those don't require pairing prior to connection (you should be able to connect if you have the MAC address), only Bluetooth classic requires pairing.
More info:
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/bluetooth-le.html
No its not possible unless you make changes to the ROM.
If the use-case supports,you can have ble devices advertising data in a pre-defined format so that the app detect your devices.Once you have recognized your devices,you can internally send a pairing request.
i am trying to connect two android devices using WIFI direct and i was successful. But the problem is the second device has to accept the a connection prompt after the other device initiates the connection. It is undesirable for what i am trying to achieve. I saw a few post here in stack overflow itself saying that currently its not possible. But came across an app called SUPERBEAM which user WIFI direct but without the prompt. A search in google gave me the following link from xda forum which says
SuperBeam creates an access point using Android's WiFi direct API's.
This essentially works like hotspot mode in old devices, but it is
guaranteed to work on newer devices like Nexus 7. Moreover, this mode
allows older devices to connect and receive files without having to
support WiFi direct's peer-to-peer connections and, more importantly, it
gets rid of the annoying "accept connection" prompt.
But no where i found information on how to implement this. Can anybody help me. Here is the link
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2177133
You could indeed simply use the createGroup function from the API to create a group, which also makes the access point. The first problem here is that the access point name & password are set automatically, and you can not change them.
So, you do need to pass the info to the connecting party, and for this, I would suggest using the local service advertising, and using the instance name there.
Did make simple test app for this and you can find it from Github under DrJukka/MyWifiMesh, also some discussions on the topic can be found from my blog
This can be achieve using Xposed framework. You need add the code and install the App. The phone needs to be rooted in order for it to work. I have tested it on multiple Samsung phones and it works.
Check this answer for details: How to auto-accept Wi-Fi Direct connection requests in Android
I have made an app on iOS and Android that can connect to a BLE device. I connect to the "device by service" and things work well.
A customer is asking me why the device is not showing in the list of bonded bluetooth devices. I didn't need pairing to connect because I found code that didn't require it, but now that I think, I wonder :
What would be the benefits to have a paired device ?
Would it connect faster ? Hold connection better ? ...
Security, mainly.
Sending data to a non-paired device requires that the device be discoverable and open to receiving data from random devices. This isn't always the case for reasons of security, and so many devices ship with both disabled.
The attack vector is something like this: you'll always have to pick a device in the list of discovered devices. It's not too difficult to create a device with "<CEO>'s iPhone" as the name and wait until he tries to send the secret memorandum to his iPhone, then intercept it.
Additionally, bluetooth stacks have been known to have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by sending data to the device, which was made more problematic by devices auto-accepting data without confirmation.
Paired devices create a pre-existing relationship between the two, allowing your user to be notified when something out of the ordinary happens. This is always a good thing.
It is indeed also true that not having to go through device discovery (which may take up to a few seconds) improves performance when doing the initial connection setup, but I wouldn't see that as the major reason.
I'd like to use android's bluetooth for some kind of sensing devices. But I don't want to connect to these devices. As far as I know Devices won't react to scanning when their own bluetooth is disabled. But is there any way to get my app noticed when such a scan has been performed by a remote device, even when my app is running with bluetooth turned off?
I don't want to force toggling bluetooth on, but I need to get some kind of Action started in other devices running the same app. So I'm wondering if some there is any description/data field that can be sent with a bluetooth scan, so if scan is rejected the app has the opportunity to read that data just to know there was this specific call?
I need to leverage context-awareness within my system as to users, not knowing each other, still can interchange content (if they agree). But I need to find some ways of sensing while I also don't want to have all sensors activated all the time.
Hope you can give me a hint, or tell me that this is simply not possible, which would also help me not spending any more time on that.
Thanks.
I try to create an ad-hoc network between many Android devices, but I can't find documentation to do that.
I thought Wifi direct could work for what I want, but is it possible to have multiple connection on one device ? I saw that we could do a device acting like an access point and communicate with many devices, but can we communicate from one client device to two access point devices ?
I have for example 3 devices: A -> B -> C
The "A" device need to communicate with "C" device but he's too far away, so I want to have ad-hoc wifi direct connection between A&B and ad-hoc wifi direct connection between B&C, so A can communicate with C. It should also work with more than 3 devices.
Thanks !
Here is the link to the Wifi Direct Demo http://developer.android.com/resources/samples/WiFiDirectDemo/index.html
I have been working on establishing ad hoc communication over Android phones for a month. I am trying to create an app that could work without having 3G or access point. Main idea is to let the clients to be able transfer voice or data in a close range.
There are some guys implemented a basic system regarding almost the same topic. It basically works with Wi-Fi access point. So you need an access point in order to establish the connection. Although this is not what I am looking for, it might be helpful for others. You might need to contact them for more details.
https://sites.google.com/site/androidwalkietalkie/home
Android does not have support for ad-hoc WiFi at this time -- sorry!
Update (2019): Android has supported WiFi Direct for a while, and this answer has not been updated.
Your scenario would work. A would be able to connect with C as long as B (the group owner) is within range of both A and C.
See Android's developer documentation for more info:
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifip2p
At this time only Galaxy S 2 support Wi-Fi Direct
The wifi direct supports concurrent hosting and client capabilities on single interface. Which means, the device will act as an AP, allowing other devices to connect to it as clients, And also connect to another AP as a client. And can share internet connection by driving the internet traffic between the interfaces.
However, current implementations of wifi direct on android are specific to the phone and not part of andorid sdk. So there is not much clarity if they support concurrency. This capability is not limited by hardware.
Ad hoc wifi is disabled in Android. You need to ask Google why they have chosen to do so. If you have access to a device that allow you to install custom Android images, you will be able to patch Android to support it. Or you can root your device and reenable ad hoc Wifi, there are plenty of solutions on the web on how to enable ad hoc on rooted Android devices. This is a software issue, the hardware on every Android device that I know of has support for ad hoc Wifi.
The Serval Project, based in part on WiFi Tether, is the only place I've found this functionality. It's still alpha phase, but seems to be the forerunner in the field. The wiki is much more useful than the main project page linked above, with installation instructions and a bit of documentation.
Serval may or may not be right for your needs, but I felt it should be pointed out that ad-hoc networking is not impossible on Android. It might be better to wait until Google gets around to implementing it as standard API, though (if you believe they ever will :) ).
Well You might be interested in looking at AllJoyn. It is qualcoms SDK for android OS which includes wi-fi peer-to-peer implementations by creating adhoc connections. This is same as Wi-Fi Direct.