janosgyerik/bluetoothviewer

A simple Android app to debug Bluetooth connections: 1. Connect to any Bluetooth device, 2. Display incoming raw data, 3. Send raw data to the Bluetooth device. You can confirm successful pairing, monitor incoming raw data and see exactly what is being transmitted from the Bluetooth device.

BluetoothViewer

This app is a simple Bluetooth connection debugging tool:

1. Connect to a Bluetooth device
2. Display incoming raw data
3. Send raw data to the Bluetooth device

You can confirm successful pairing, monitor incoming raw data and see exactly what is transmitted from the Bluetooth device.

• Android app on Google Play, with screenshots: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.bluetoothviewer

Limitations

The app works only with certain types of Bluetooth devices:

• Devices that work in server mode. That is, devices that listen to and accept incoming Bluetooth connections.

• Devices that accept connections on channel=1

• Devices that don't require a specific UUID during connection.

• Devices that can be paired.

All these conditions are required, at least for now. I plan to add in the next release the option to set the channel, and to set a specific UUID.

Another limitation is that the current version shows incoming data in ASCII format. If your device sends binary data, that won't be very readable. To help with that, I plan to add a hexadecimal view that can be easily switched on/off. Another option is to send the received data as an attachment.

Finally, keep in mind that some devices need some sort of "activation signal" first before they would start sending data. This depends on the device, and you would have to look at the technical documentation of your device to figure this out.

Feature ideas

I plan to add the following features in the future:

• Option to specify channel to use when connecting

• Option to specify UUID to use when connecting

• Option to add timestamp to incoming messages

• Option to add GPS info to incoming messages

• Design a plugin framework for customized views tailored to specific Bluetooth sensors

For more details, see the more detailed (but quite crude) todo.md file.

Contributing code

You can contribute improvements in whatever way is convenient for you, for example:

• Create a Pull Request on GitHub: https://github.com/janosgyerik/bluetoothviewer

• Email your patches to [email protected]

Sponsors

• Alan Haddy (www.ipegcorp.com): option to record incoming Bluetooth data and send as email attachment

Disclaimer

The source code is a modified version of the BluetoothChat sample that is included in the Android SDK.

bluetoothviewer's Issues

Improve support for Bluetooth devices that send data in binary format

The current app reads from the connected device line by line.
(See BluetoothDeviceConnector class.)
This is not well-suited for devices that send data in binary format.
If newline characters don't appear in the data,
the class might never send a message to the viewer.

Hint: start by implementing a mock device (similar to MockLineByLineConnector),
that reads binary data buffer by buffer, and ideally toggles-hexadecimal view automatically.
(Hexadecimal view is tracked by #5, unfortunately not implemented yet.)

Doesn't connect to my phone

Says it is trying to connect for a long time. Then stops and says it failed. Phone is Galaxy Nexus, running 4.3.

I'm pretty sure this is a bug with android.

Add a filter bar

This is a typical input data from one of my bluetooth sensors:

#210914:210452:668$GPRMC,194125.918,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,210914,,,N*74
#210914:210453:661$GPRMC,194126.918,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,210914,,,N*77
#210914:210453:763$PSEN,CO2,ppm, 0915
#210914:210454:661$GPRMC,194127.918,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,210914,,,N*76
#200914:160256:674$GPRMC,143935.410,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,200914,,,N*73
#200914:160257:651$PSEN,CO2,ppm, 1357
#200914:160257:674$GPRMC,143936.410,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,200914,,,N*70
#200914:160258:673$GPRMC,143937.410,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,200914,,,N*71
#200914:160259:604$PSEN,CO2,ppm, 1311
#200914:160259:676$GPRMC,143938.410,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,200914,,,N*7E

In this sample, the most interesting lines are the ones with $PSEN, the $GPRMC are garbage for my intents and purposes. It will be great to have some kind of filter bar:

• If I enter the text PSEN, dynamically as I type, it should apply to the view as a filter and hide all other lines
• It would be great to have the inverse option too: if I enter GPRMC, hide all GPRMC lines
• The view filtering should affect the data recording: all data should still be recorded
• To keep the user interface simple, it might be nice to hide the filter toolbar by default, and let users toggle it in settings (or some other way)

bridge to ssh

maybe in addition to capture to physical sdhc card the capture and probing could be remote [Lan wifi] playing nicely with ConnectBot

https://github.com/connectbot/connectbot

if that is already possible per se I would hope an SSH guru would point me in a useful-, specific direction [not merely to an interweb search provider]

Should handle connection errors more gracefully

When connecting to an invalid channel, the app crashes. This is because the connection fails in the constructor of ConnectThread, but the caller doesn't check that, and hits an NPE when trying to use the socket.

1. It would be better to avoid work (= initialize socket) in the constructor of ConnectThread, which is a bad practice
2. The caller should handle problems like this gracefully

The README should explain how to build the project

unable to connected in paired device

I got following error while connect in the paired devices

02-28 17:32:16.628 21223-21620/net.bluetoothviewer E/BluetoothDeviceConnector: read failed, socket might closed or timeout, read ret: -1
java.io.IOException: read failed, socket might closed or timeout, read ret: -1
at android.bluetooth.BluetoothSocket.readAll(BluetoothSocket.java:567)
at android.bluetooth.BluetoothSocket.waitSocketSignal(BluetoothSocket.java:544)
at android.bluetooth.BluetoothSocket.connect(BluetoothSocket.java:319)
at net.bluetoothviewer.BluetoothDeviceConnector$ConnectThread.run(BluetoothDeviceConnector.java:258)

Ffft

Ttt

please add changelog to f-droid, thanks

No further text

The lint results should be addressed

./gradlew build produces an HTML lint report, with several issues. These should be addressed, or else when justified, documented in the README.

without pairing create connect

How can i send data without pairing

Create a dummy device to make development easier

At the moment, testing the app is not possible without connecting to a real bluetooth device that broadcasts ascii data when connected. Even when you have such a device at hand, testing is not very convenient: you have to switch on the bluetooth device, and you probably have to recharge its battery too from time to time.

It would be great to have a fake / dummy / virtual device for testing the app:

• it should show up in the device list like any regular bluetooth device
• it should emit some preset data and emits some preset data. See a sample at the bottom. After the end of the sample is reached, the dummy device should automatically restart from the beginning, repeat forever as long as "connected"
• probably a new level of abstraction will be needed in the implementation to represent the concept of a device, that may be a real bluetooth device, or it may be a dummy. In other words, the code that manages bluetooth connections specifically should not have knowledge of a dummy device, for good separation of responsibilities
• the dummy device should behave just like a regular bluetooth device: the code that connects to bluetooth devices and reads data from them should not have to be aware that it's not a real device
• the dummy device should not appear in the list by default. There should be an option in the settings screen to control whether the device is there or not. Developers can switch it on and keep it on for themselves
• include the possiblity of adding different types of dummy devices in the future. At the minimum, another dummy device sending binary data instead of ASCII will be extremely useful

Example data set to use by the dummy device:

#210914:210452:668$GPRMC,194125.918,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,210914,,,N*74
#210914:210453:661$GPRMC,194126.918,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,210914,,,N*77
#210914:210453:763$PSEN,CO2,ppm, 0915
#210914:210454:661$GPRMC,194127.918,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,210914,,,N*76
#200914:160256:674$GPRMC,143935.410,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,200914,,,N*73
#200914:160257:651$PSEN,CO2,ppm, 1357
#200914:160257:674$GPRMC,143936.410,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,200914,,,N*70
#200914:160258:673$GPRMC,143937.410,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,200914,,,N*71
#200914:160259:604$PSEN,CO2,ppm, 1311
#200914:160259:676$GPRMC,143938.410,V,4851.5581,N,00220.2004,E,0.00,0.00,200914,,,N*7E

Runtime Error when Debugging

When attempting to debug (both the Lite and Full configurations) the following error occurs:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{net.bluetoothviewer/net.bluetoothviewer.BluetoothViewer}: android.view.InflateException: Binary XML file line #78: Error inflating class android.widget.ImageButton

Make it possible to specify the RFCOMM channel in the UI

Replace the old-fashioned action bar and menu with modern interface

The current app was originally written for API version 7, and the user interface elements are obsolete.

• The action bar with the connect / disconnect buttons uses custom design, which looked good at the time, but now outdated. It would be good to replace that
• The menu is old. It should be replaced with the modern action bar
• The app should use fragments

Scan for devices infinite loop when Bluetooth is not enabled

When Bluetooth is not enabled on the device, and you click Scan for devices button, the scanning never ends. This can be confusing to users.

Connect automatically to device

Hi!
I saw in your code you can detect when lost connection do device.
But what if I want to connect automatically to one of my paired devices when its bluetooth turned on again for example?
I mean is there any way to monitor reachability of one of my paired devices?
Any help will be appreciated!
Regards

UUID problem

Hi! i was trying to make a BT connection with an specific device (it's some kind of a pressure checker or something like that, just a black box that sends a stream of bytes by bluetooth) and it wasn't connecting to the app. The error was that InputStream.read() was returning -1.
The cause of this is the UUID: I got the UUID of the device ( device.getUuids()[0].getUuid() ) and changed the creation of the socket on the method "connect()" and passed that UUID as a parameter. After that, it works.
Thanks fot the app!

Make it possible to specify the UUID in the UI

enable bluetooth dialog and screen rotation

If I start application with disabled bluetooth, it shows dialog to enable one. Next, if I rotate device, new dialog instance will be created, and shows above last one

Add a button to toggle between plain output and hexadecimal view

At the moment the app display the raw data as it comes from the device. This is fine for devices that emit ASCII data line by line, but won't be very useful with devices that emit in a binary format.

It will be nice to have a button to toggle between plain output and hexadecimal format, something like the hexdump command does in Linux. Here's an example of the output of ls / | hexdump -C on my PC:

00000000  62 69 6e 0a 62 6f 6f 74  0a 64 61 74 61 0a 64 65  |bin.boot.data.de|
00000010  76 0a 65 74 63 0a 68 6f  6d 65 0a 6c 69 62 0a 6c  |v.etc.home.lib.l|
00000020  69 62 36 34 0a 6d 65 64  69 61 0a 6d 6e 74 0a 6f  |ib64.media.mnt.o|
00000030  70 74 0a 70 72 6f 63 0a  72 6f 6f 74 0a 73 62 69  |pt.proc.root.sbi|
00000040  6e 0a 73 65 6c 69 6e 75  78 0a 73 72 76 0a 73 79  |n.selinux.srv.sy|
00000050  73 0a 74 6d 70 0a 75 73  72 0a 76 61 72 0a        |s.tmp.usr.var.|
0000005e

Here's another variation, without the -C flag:

0000000 6962 0a6e 6f62 746f 640a 7461 0a61 6564
0000010 0a76 7465 0a63 6f68 656d 6c0a 6269 6c0a
0000020 6269 3436 6d0a 6465 6169 6d0a 746e 6f0a
0000030 7470 700a 6f72 0a63 6f72 746f 730a 6962
0000040 0a6e 6573 696c 756e 0a78 7273 0a76 7973
0000050 0a73 6d74 0a70 7375 0a72 6176 0a72
000005e

• The first column indicating the position from the start can be omitted. It would be great to make it an option
• The last column with plain text-ish version can be omitted. It would be great to make it an option
• The format should be adjusted to the width and orientation of the device: it should have 8 columns on tablets when horizontal, and perhaps only 4 columns on phones when vertical. Something like that.
• Should the toggle rewrite the lines that were already displayed, or should it apply to new lines only?
  • It would be great to rewrite lines already displayed too
  • It's ok if it doesn't rewrite and just apply to new input

Add some sort of file manager for recorded files

At the moment you can switch recording on and off, and it all goes into the same file.
If you connect to another device, it begins a new recording, and it discards any previous recording.

It would be great if you could keep multiple recordings and choose which one(s) to send by email.
Desirable features:

• A screen to see all recorded files
• Option to view a file
• Option to email a file
• Option to delete a file
• Option to view / email / delete many / all
• Option to delete older files than the one selected
• Option to keep N most recent files
• Unit tested

No need to do all, I'm just brainstorming. Feel free to suggest ideas.

Rework the way the MAC address is derived from the selected device

In DeviceListActivity, we get the MAC address of the selected device like this:

        // Get the device MAC address, which is the last 17 chars in the View
        CharSequence info = ((TextView) v).getText();
        if (info != null) {
            // TODO this is not so cool...
            CharSequence address = info.toString().substring(info.length() - 17);

This is a very poor solution. Refactor it somehow without magic number 17, and without a .substring call.

Sending data as attachment doesn't work with Gmail

The problem and a possible solution is well-explained in this Stack Overflow post:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26883259/gmail-5-0-app-fails-with-permission-denied-for-the-attachment-when-it-receives

Add save to SD/Internal Storage functionality

Some Java source files say GPL license, some say Apache 2.0 license - can we make it all Apache 2.0?

Apache 2.0 is what is most compatible with AOSP... Thank you.