Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is well-known for its ability to take up very little power and still offer the best connectivity to link with small devices. This feature is attracting more and more people who are looking to develop Android apps. Regrettably, the Android SDK’s BLE API has plenty of undocumented pitfalls. Nevertheless, the BLE platform commands over 76% of the market share globally.
In this post, we’ll cover the basics of BLE that is a must-know for Android developers, and take you through some of the common BLE operations on Android.
BLE’s “Low Energy” portion of the acronym is the key, while Bluetooth Classic is designed for communicating ongoing streams of data like music playback. BLE is enhanced for delivery power efficiency operations. Typically, a BLE device can operate on a small battery for weeks together, if not months or even years. Thus, it is very suitable for use cases based on sensors or the Internet of Things (IoT).
Another significant difference between BLE and Bluetooth Classic is that BLE is much more developer-friendly. BLE makes way for a world of limitless possibilities by letting the developers mention several custom profiles for various use cases. Bluetooth Classic principally supports the Serial Port Profile (SPP) for transmitting custom data. The Android Bluetooth API is also not very up-front to function with for Bluetooth Classic use cases owing to the below whys and wherefores:
Your Android device behaving as a central element can link with several external BLE peripheral devices concurrently. Nevertheless, each BLE device in the peripheral place can typically interact only with one central device at a given time. Whenever a BLE device establishes a connection to a central device, the most common behavior is that it’ll halt advertising as a peripheral as it is no longer able to connect with it.
It also helps to think of the central, peripheral relationship between a BLE central and BLE peripheral devices similar to a client-server relationship. The peripheral server hosts a GATT database that offers information that the client, the central device, can access the information through BLE. It’s vital to note that your Android device can also act like a peripheral; however, for this post, we’ll focus on the much more popular setting of it behaving like a BLE central.
The overview of the possibilities with BLE communication can be categorized into three basic BLE operations:
Here are some of the implementation examples to save time to portray the plain basics of functioning with Android BLE APIs.
The flow of a BLE is simple. Setting up BLE, Finding other BLE devices, establishing a connection to a GATT server, reading the BLE attributes, receiving notifications, and finally closing the client app. Always it is best not to perform BLE sequentially but to wait for a call back from the previous operation before commencing the next. As of Android 9, avoid using reflection to call private APIs. It is best to assume that any operation has a nonzero failure probability. You need to be aware of certain pitfalls while getting started with BLE development on Android. For more information on BLE android, get in touch with our experts.
Lisa Crisman is a Professional Digital Marketing Manager at BLE Mobile Apps. He would like to share content on different aspects of the IT industry like Beacon App, iBeacon App, Wearable Apps, BLE Android App, Eddystone Beacon App. He specializes in Web Development, Mobile App & Software related latest trending blogs.
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