Bluez: Implementing custom profiles - A2DP, HFP, PBAP - bluetooth

I am quite new to bluetooth development, but having fun learning it!
So far I have worked on making a RPi4 into a central device, and have managed to implement discovery, connecting, monitoring, etc.
In the coming days I want to start working on a separate device for peripheral-central testing. Building up to this I am attempting to implement a few custom Bluez profiles. The ones I am trying to implement are: A2DP, HFP, and PBAP.
So far, I am able to register the profiles on the Pi and can see them using bluetoothctl show and dbus-monitor --system.
The one I am having trouble with is A2DP. For HFP I have been using test-hfp as inspiration and for PBA I have been using pbaclient.py along with an override of the Bluez Profile methods. For A2DP it seems very difficult to find any documentation of how to write a custom profile. As of now, I've left it as a method override of the Bluez profile methods. With HFP, it was necessary to work with socket connection and client, I assume it is quite similar for A2DP, but where/how do I start? I assume I will also need to disable the inbuilt Pi profile Audio sink before registering my own A2DP, and remember I have read how to do this somewhere, but if anyone knows from the top of their head how to do this, feel free to help me out :)
On another note, I am placing the relevant .h and .c files in the same folder as where I am implementing the profile.py files, using the given .h and .c files found in bluez.5.58, but for HFP, I can only find a .c file in my bluez library. Can I use the .h file found in AlsaBluez or am I just missing the placement of the correct file?
Any tips and pointers on how to approach these issues and my method/efforts overall moving forward is greatly appreciated! :)

Related

BLE device with Apple's HAP

I have a Raspberry Pi that acts as a BLE peripheral. I want to add Apple's HomeKit Accessory Protocol (HAP) to the Raspberry Pi's BLE code, to control the BLE device using Homekit. I would like to avoid implementing HAP over the internet.
The closest resource I found is https://gist.github.com/KhaosT/6ff09ba71d306d4c1079. However, this gist makes it seem like there are many unknowns with that process.
Does anyone know if this is possible? If so, any info or resources would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
As mentioned at https://developer.apple.com/homekit/ under Accessory Developers, you need to first sign up for MFi and then you will get access to all the resources you need in order to implement homekit. All source code you can find publicly online is against Apple's license since they prohibit public redistribution of documentation and source code of implementations.

Stream audio from place 1 to place 2 over the internet

So I'm kinda stuck here.
I have a radio station, but we are mobile. So I have a studio on wheels. The problem is, we have an antenna, but we always have to place that really close to our studio. Now I want to make an device that can stream the audio from the audio mixer to the internet and can be received by another device in another network and send that signal to the antenna (audio output).
to make this clear, I made a schema with raspberry pi's;
I want this to be plug and play So I only have to plug in the device in the modem (or network we have) on both sides and the devices should find each other.
I don't know HOW I can do this, so I need to know a couple of things:
What hardware should I use?
What software should I use?
What is the best configuration to accomplish this?
Can I use 2 raspberry pi's?
How can I let the devices find each other over the internet?
There need to be some features;
The system needs to be able to buffer the audio for 5-10 seconds
It needs to be direct, so it's live and not a file that needs to be played
The system must be failless (beside the fact the internet can die).
Plug and play is a must, I don't want to have a really messy configuration to do. (if possible, without any kind of portforwarding).
I would really appreciate help and a decent explaination.
regards,
Robin
Well, it depends on your capabilities as a programmer.
If you're really fixated on the RPi for it's convenient form factor, there's a ton of community support, so I'd start with something like this project to kick start you in the right direction. If you already know python pretty well, modify away and have fun.
If you have no programming experience, you'll probably want to put a desktop in place of the RPi and launch some instances of VLC. It's not necessarily plug n play, but you can get close enough by getting a command line VLC to launch at startup.
Either way, the more difficult problem here is the "over the internet" part. This would really need to be a server-client model, but who is your server depends on who is more stationary (I'm guessing Location 2?) because the client will need to know the IP address of the server somehow. There are dozens of ways to make this happen, but at the end of the day, you'll want to use sockets accomplish the
It needs to be direct, so it's live and not a file
... which unfortunately gets complicated. See this answer for confirmation. Would love to help with some tips on implementation, but we need more information about your willingness to "dig into the code", the necessity of the RPi, and whether the stationary location has a static web address.

Record audio from various internal devices in Android (via undocumented API)

I was wondering whether it is possible to capture audio data from other sources like the system out, FM radio, bluetooth headset, etc. I'm particularly interested in capturing audio from the FM radio and already investigated all possibilities including trying to sniff the raw bluetooth communication between the phone and the radio device with no luck. It's too bad Android only allows recording audio from the MIC.
I've looked at the Android source code and couldn't find a backdoor to allow me to do that without rooting the device. Do you, at least, have any idea how to use other devices (maybe access somehow /dev/audio) say via NDK or even better - Java (maybe Reflection?) to trick the system to capture the audio stream from say, the FM radio. (in my case I'm trying to develop the app for the HTC Desire)
PS. And for those of you who are against using undocumented APIs, please don't post here - I'm writing an app that will be for my personal use or even if I ever publish it I will warn the user of possible incompatibilities.
I've spent quite some time deciphering the audio stack, and I think you may try to hijack libaudio. You'll have trouble speaking directly to the hardware (/dev/*) because many devices use proprietary audio drivers. There's no rule in this regard.
However, the audio hardware abstraction layer (HAL) provided by /system/lib/libaudio.so should expose the API described at http://source.android.com/porting/audio.html
The Android system, and especially audioflinger, uses this libaudio HAL to find available devices, deal with routing, and of course to read/write PCM data.
So, you could hijack the interaction between audioflinger and libaudio, by renaming the later, and providing your own libaudio which decorates the real one. Doing so, you should be able to log what happens and very possibly intercept FM radio output, provided that this is not directly handled by the hardware.
Of course, all this requires rooting. Please comment if you manage to do this, that interests me.

Is it possible to make a computer behave as a bluetooth HID device?

Is it possible to make a computer behave as a bluetooth HID device? That is, given a local machine with a standard USB keyboard plugged into it, other devices could discover this machine and use it as a bluetooth keyboard.
I'd like to create a linux or OS X application (or use an existing one, though I've found none) which can behave as described above, but I'm not sure where to start, or if it's even possible.
So:
Is what I'm describing possible?
Are there any existing applications that do what I describe?
If no application already exists (I'm assuming not), are there bluetooth libraries or bindings that will help? (I'm pretty comfortable using most of today's popular languages, so I'd prefer a library most directly suited to the task, so long as it's available in linux or OS X.)
Failing any of the above, the bluetooth spec looks pretty dense. Are there specific guides or other starting points applicable to the problem at hand that I can read?
I realize that such an application would most likely need to steal the normal keyboard input, possibly providing some KVM-like hotkey for switching between providing input to the host operating system and sending the input over bluetooth to the connected device, but I'm considering that problem to be outside the scope of this question.
It is definitely possible on Linux. Some time ago I found this project:
http://nohands.sourceforge.net/index.html
They emulate a full-blown headset with audio and keyboard controls on the Linux bluetooth stack. If they can emulate something like that, you would probably be able to emulate something simpler like a keyboard.
It is possible, however I don't think I'll be able explain it very well and I don't know the entire answer. A BT HID device works as a server and waits for connections to come to it. In linux, using the bluez stack, first you would have to advertise the HID service for other devices to see. I think you do that using the sdp.h and sdp-lib.h header files(the second header maybe called something else, I'm on a windows computer and can't check). So you would have to add the HID service record to you computer for other devices to see it. You would have to create a program that first adds this service to the record, then waits for other devices to connect, then handle the pairing process, Bluez might handle this for you, or you might have to do some things to it, I'm not quite sure. You should also read the Bluetooth HID Spec found at the http://www.bluetooth.com/English/Technology/Building/Pages/Specification.aspx site. This document contains the details of the SDP record relevant to HID. Also the book Bluetooth essentials for programmers is pretty good to introduce you into bluetooth programming
I would like to have given a more concise answer, with more detail, but that's all I know ATM. I am also trying do something similar, but spare time is so hard to find ;) I'm also not on my Linux box and can't check all the details. If your are still interested, let me know and i'll try to expand my answer.
I don't know if this is helpful, nor if it is still alive and working, but perhaps you could try this link.
Another one that might or might not be helpful in some way is remuco, but I don't know if they are using a Bluetooth HID profile.
It is indeed entirely possible with Linux and Bluez. See: https://github.com/lkundrak/virtkbd/blob/master/btkbdd.pod
Try Across, unfortuantly for me my phone was lacking support.

Is there a way to enumerate the video devices on a Java ME phone?

I recently downloaded a barcode reading application for my phone, an LG KU990i (AKA the Viewty) However, there's a problem that renders the application nearly useless: the Viewty has 2 cameras -- the main one, and a secondary camera located on the face of the unit -- and it is the secondary camera that is unfortunately set as the phone's default video capture device. As you can't point the secondary at anything and see what it's pointing at at the same time, it makes it a bit difficult to snap a barcode!
According to the JSR-135 spec, it is possible to specify a video capture device other than the default... if you know the device name. This does not appear to be documented anywhere on LG's Web site, nor does the JSR-135 spec describe any way of enumerating the devices on a phone... or is there? Failing that, are there any naming conventions for video devices commonly in use that LG might be using?
I've logged a ticket with LG, but as it's an old device, I don't imagine them breaking their backs in getting back to me... I should also point out that this is purely for my own curiosity so no-one here should feel obliged to break their backs either!
As far as I know there is no way to get list of all available catpure:// urls.
All urls I know:
capture://image,
capture://video
capture://devcam0
capture://devcam1
Source:
http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/bc00e4ce-7df3-4527-962c-d39843a808d0/MIDP_Mobile_Media_API_Support_In_Nokia_Devices_v1_0_en.pdf.html
LG responded to my support ticket. Apparently, it's not possible to access the primary camera on the Viewty from Java, making it pretty much useless for barcode scanning. Answer reproduced here for search engines.
You support ticket has been answered. Please visit the LG Mobile Developer Network and login to check the answer at [My Page > My Tickets].
KU990i default video capture device is the secondary camera
Answer :
Hi,
KU990i have to Two camera module
differently.
Main camera using Joran chipset and
sub(front camera) using Qualcomm
chipset.
Joran chip doesn’t supported JSR135.
Therefore, we couldn’t supported to
the JSR135 using for main camera.
(it is H/W limitation)
It was inform to operator already and
we remember operator was confirm it.
So that, we only supported sub camera
for JSR135.
BR,

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