How to receive serial data using android bluetooth

Question

I am new to android. I am designing an android application that receives serial data from a hardware device through bluetooth. I am working on Htc desire S. I used the sample Bluetooth chat code to receive data. But the data received is incorrect. It misses some values. Can anyone please provide me any other sample code to receive large amount of data through bluetooth and save it in a file.

Answer 1

try this code :

Activity:

package Android.Arduino.Bluetooth;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.bluetooth.BluetoothAdapter;
import android.bluetooth.BluetoothDevice;
import android.bluetooth.BluetoothSocket;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.os.Handler;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.TextView;
import android.widget.EditText;  
import android.widget.Button;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.UUID;

public class MainActivity extends Activity
{
TextView myLabel;
EditText myTextbox;
BluetoothAdapter mBluetoothAdapter;
BluetoothSocket mmSocket;
BluetoothDevice mmDevice;
OutputStream mmOutputStream;
InputStream mmInputStream;
Thread workerThread;
byte[] readBuffer;
int readBufferPosition;
int counter;
volatile boolean stopWorker;

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);

    Button openButton = (Button)findViewById(R.id.open);
    Button sendButton = (Button)findViewById(R.id.send);
    Button closeButton = (Button)findViewById(R.id.close);
    myLabel = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.label);
    myTextbox = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.entry);

    //Open Button
    openButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener()
    {
        public void onClick(View v)
        {
            try 
            {
                findBT();
                openBT();
            }
            catch (IOException ex) { }
        }
    });

    //Send Button
    sendButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener()
    {
        public void onClick(View v)
        {
            try 
            {
                sendData();
            }
            catch (IOException ex) { }
        }
    });

    //Close button
    closeButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener()
    {
        public void onClick(View v)
        {
            try 
            {
                closeBT();
            }
            catch (IOException ex) { }
        }
    });
}

void findBT()
{
    mBluetoothAdapter = BluetoothAdapter.getDefaultAdapter();
    if(mBluetoothAdapter == null)
    {
        myLabel.setText("No bluetooth adapter available");
    }

    if(!mBluetoothAdapter.isEnabled())
    {
        Intent enableBluetooth = new Intent(BluetoothAdapter.ACTION_REQUEST_ENABLE);
        startActivityForResult(enableBluetooth, 0);
    }

    Set<BluetoothDevice> pairedDevices = mBluetoothAdapter.getBondedDevices();
    if(pairedDevices.size() > 0)
    {
        for(BluetoothDevice device : pairedDevices)
        {
            if(device.getName().equals("MattsBlueTooth")) 
            {
                mmDevice = device;
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    myLabel.setText("Bluetooth Device Found");
}

void openBT() throws IOException
{
    UUID uuid = UUID.fromString("00001101-0000-1000-8000-00805F9B34FB"); //Standard SerialPortService ID
    mmSocket = mmDevice.createRfcommSocketToServiceRecord(uuid);        
    mmSocket.connect();
    mmOutputStream = mmSocket.getOutputStream();
    mmInputStream = mmSocket.getInputStream();

    beginListenForData();

    myLabel.setText("Bluetooth Opened");
}

void beginListenForData()
{
    final Handler handler = new Handler(); 
    final byte delimiter = 10; //This is the ASCII code for a newline character

    stopWorker = false;
    readBufferPosition = 0;
    readBuffer = new byte[1024];
    workerThread = new Thread(new Runnable()
    {
        public void run()
        {                
           while(!Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted() && !stopWorker)
           {
                try 
                {
                    int bytesAvailable = mmInputStream.available();                        
                    if(bytesAvailable > 0)
                    {
                        byte[] packetBytes = new byte[bytesAvailable];
                        mmInputStream.read(packetBytes);
                        for(int i=0;i<bytesAvailable;i++)
                        {
                            byte b = packetBytes[i];
                            if(b == delimiter)
                            {
     byte[] encodedBytes = new byte[readBufferPosition];
     System.arraycopy(readBuffer, 0, encodedBytes, 0, encodedBytes.length);
     final String data = new String(encodedBytes, "US-ASCII");
     readBufferPosition = 0;

                                handler.post(new Runnable()
                                {
                                    public void run()
                                    {
                                        myLabel.setText(data);
                                    }
                                });
                            }
                            else
                            {
                                readBuffer[readBufferPosition++] = b;
                            }
                        }
                    }
                } 
                catch (IOException ex) 
                {
                    stopWorker = true;
                }
           }
        }
    });

    workerThread.start();
}

void sendData() throws IOException
{
    String msg = myTextbox.getText().toString();
    msg += "\n";
    mmOutputStream.write(msg.getBytes());
    myLabel.setText("Data Sent");
}

void closeBT() throws IOException
{
    stopWorker = true;
    mmOutputStream.close();
    mmInputStream.close();
    mmSocket.close();
    myLabel.setText("Bluetooth Closed");
}
}

AND Here the layout:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
tools:ignore="TextFields,HardcodedText" >

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/label"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="Type here:" />

<EditText
    android:id="@+id/entry"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_below="@id/label"
    android:background="@android:drawable/editbox_background" />

<Button
    android:id="@+id/open"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
    android:layout_below="@id/entry"
    android:layout_marginLeft="10dip"
    android:text="Open" />

<Button
    android:id="@+id/send"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_alignTop="@id/open"
    android:layout_toLeftOf="@id/open"
    android:text="Send" />

<Button
    android:id="@+id/close"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_alignTop="@id/send"
    android:layout_toLeftOf="@id/send"
    android:text="Close" />

</RelativeLayout>

Here for Manifest: add to Application

// permission must be enabled complete
<manifest ....>

    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH_ADMIN" />
    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH" />
    <application>


    </application>
</manifest>

Answer 2

I tried this out for transmitting continuous data (float values converted to string) from my PC (MATLAB) to my phone. But, still my App misreads the delimiter '\n' and still data gets garbled. So, I took the character 'N' as the delimiter rather than '\n' (it could be any character that doesn't occur as part of your data) and I've achieved better transmission speed - I gave just 0.1 seconds delay between transmitting successive samples - with more than 99% data integrity at the receiver i.e. out of 2000 samples (float values) that I transmitted, only 10 were not decoded properly in my application.

My answer in short is: Choose a delimiter other than '\r' or '\n' as these create more problems for real-time data transmission when compared to other characters like the one I've used. If we work more, may be we can increase the transmission rate even more. I hope my answer helps someone!

Answer 3

The issue with the null connection is related to the findBT() function. you must change the device name from "MattsBlueTooth" to your device name as well as confirm the UUID for your service/device. Use something like BLEScanner app to confrim both on Android.

Answer 4

Take a look at incredible Bluetooth Serial class that has onResume() ability that helped me so much. I hope this helps ;)

Answer 5

You can use android-bluetooth-serial library to send/receive messages.

Add this package as dependency in app build.gradle.

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.github.harry1453:android-bluetooth-serial:v1.1'

    // RxJava is also required.
    implementation 'io.reactivex.rxjava2:rxjava:2.1.12'
    implementation 'io.reactivex.rxjava2:rxandroid:2.0.2'
}

In your app, add a class to interact with device.

private void connectDevice(String mac) {
    bluetoothManager.openSerialDevice(mac)
            .subscribeOn(Schedulers.io())
            .observeOn(AndroidSchedulers.mainThread())
            .subscribe(this::onConnected, this::onError);
}

private void onConnected(BluetoothSerialDevice connectedDevice) {
    // You are now connected to this device!
    // Here you may want to retain an instance to your device:
    deviceInterface = connectedDevice.toSimpleDeviceInterface();
    
    // Listen to bluetooth events
    deviceInterface.setListeners(this::onMessageReceived, this::onMessageSent, this::onError);
    
    // Let's send a message:
    deviceInterface.sendMessage("Hello world!");
}

private void onMessageSent(String message) {
    // We sent a message! Handle it here.
    Toast.makeText(context, "Sent a message! Message was: " + message, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); // Replace context with your context instance.
}

private void onMessageReceived(String message) {
    // We received a message! Handle it here.
    Toast.makeText(context, "Received a message! Message was: " + message, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); // Replace context with your context instance.
}

You can see the readme page for more details on using this package.