Is the source to the Android BLE app available?
Well, I haven’t found any existing Android source, but I did find some generic BLE on Android reference code, as well as the OpenBLE project which has iOS code. After a lot of hacking I’ve successfully sent and received data to the Xadow BLE module. I’ll post my Android source once it’s cleaned up.
I’ve learned that implementation of the BLE api on Android is still not very good. It is very slow, doesn’t always work, and is very confusing. I’m using the latest KitKat on a Nexus 5 and still getting these problems. Hopefully Google will fix them.
Tips:
- After you connect you must discover the services before reading from them, even if you already know the UUID of the service and characteristics you are looking for.
- You can only issue one BLE command at a time, even though Android uses an asynchronous API. You must wait for the reply to your command before issuing another one. I had to create a queue to manage this for me.
- The Xadow BLE module seems to be very slow. It takes 60 seconds after boot up for the module to be discovered over BLE, even on my iPhone.
- The BLE module does not appear to be configurable. I can’t figure out how to change the name or discovery UUID of the module. It always comes up as Xadow Module 3 (or similar).
I’m working on a full Xadow API for Arduino that combines all of the Seeed and 3rd party code I’ve found. Hopefully I can make Xadow a lot easier to work with. I love the form factor but the software leaves a lot to be desired.
Hi joshua, I saw ur post on Feb 27 regards “Is the source to the Android BLE app available?”. Do you manage to find it/code? B’cos i try to connect to my Note 2 using Xadow BLE but failed. Till now no open source available online.
Best regards,
Nick
Sadly no, I haven’t found any Android source.