[Development] Bluetooth and NFC vs Reference Platforms

[Blasche Alexander]

Hi Kate,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kate Alhola [mailto:kate.alhola at gmail.com]


> > While you can get the pairing status for an arbitrary address you cannot get a list
> of a connected device. This requires additional API elements but certainly does
> not invalidate any API for 5.2 - it is a feature request.
> >
> > If you have a patch adding this please submit (to dev branch) . Otherwise
> please file a Jira item for it.
> 
> I have a code for Bluez and Android that could be integrated as a
> patch but currently it is separate just because i wanted my
> application to be compatible with standard library, least in Linux.
> I Android Bluetooth needed so many bugfixes that I needed to have own
> copy patched of library.I found that there is Linux/Bluez code in
> https://qt.gitorious.org/qt/qtconnectivity but no Android ?

Right now there is not Android support. However it is one of the things I wanted to tackle next. I was however considering to use the Android Java interfaces for the port (similar to QtSensors). The reason is the fact that Android does not always run Bluez. The Java API would provide the relevant layer without having to worry about Broadcom vs Bluez or whatever else. This work is tracked by QTBUG-33792.

Could you possibly elaborate how you integrated it? Did you "just" deploy the Bluez backend to Android (plus some patches) and it worked? How do you cope with native Broadcom specific Bluetooth APIs?

> > LBNL I have a question. While it is technically possible to do this I am somewhat
> at a loss for what use case I might need this. That's why it didn't even occur to me
> to expose those API elements until about 1-2 weeks ago (when somebody else
> asked for it). At that point it was too late for 5.2.  Any help on my use case
> question?
> 
> Very common use case, your application wants to use device X ( or
> device some compatible device ). If device is already paired,it could
> just ask list of known devices and use it. There is no sense that
> every time some application would like to sue some device, the device
> should put in discoverable mode application find it.  I use it just so
> that I look is device X paired and if is, I use it. If not, then I ask
> user to put device discoverable pairing mode and pair it. Next time
> application find it automatically.

Thank you for the explanation. I added it to the backlog as QTBUG-33791.

--
Alex