I know the title sounds really intriguing. Truth to be told it is indeed intriguing. And as it goes the outcome is pretty intriguing too.
The whole tutorial would take a bit time to get inside your head, so Im going to take it step by step.
Step 1: The Bluetooth Server
To have this whole thing going we will need a bluetooth server going. To facilitate a very very simple bluetooth server we are going to use a Windows Store app. So I jotted down a very very simple GUi for the server first.
<Page
x:Class="BluetoothServer.MainPage"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:local="using:BluetoothServer"
xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
mc:Ignorable="d">
<Grid Background="{ThemeResource ApplicationPageBackgroundThemeBrush}">
<StackPanel VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Margin="0,0,0,150" >
<TextBlock Name="StatusText" FontSize="25" Margin="35,0,35,57" TextAlignment="Center"></TextBlock>
<Button Content="Initiate Server" Name="ServerToggleButton" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Click="Button_Click" />
</StackPanel>
</Grid>
</Page>
The only input mechanism I have in here is a textbox and a button. You pick the button to initiate a server and that’s it. All the code that has been used here are actually very very raw and coded in a hurry. So try to get the gist of the idea first so you can get yourself started.
The first method we are going to put in the back is an Initialization method for the server. This would actually Initialize the Bluetooth server we are going to use.
private StreamSocket socket;
private DataWriter writer;
private RfcommServiceProvider rfcommProvider;
private StreamSocketListener socketListener;
public async void InitializeRfCommServer()
{
try
{
rfcommProvider = await RfcommServiceProvider.CreateAsync(RfcommServiceId.FromUuid(RfcommServiceUuid));
// Create a listener for this service and start listening
socketListener = new StreamSocketListener();
socketListener.ConnectionReceived += OnConnectionReceived;
await socketListener.BindServiceNameAsync(rfcommProvider.ServiceId.AsString(),
SocketProtectionLevel.BluetoothEncryptionAllowNullAuthentication);
// Set the SDP attributes and start Bluetooth advertising
InitializeServiceSdpAttributes(rfcommProvider);
rfcommProvider.StartAdvertising(socketListener);
StatusText.Text="Listening for incoming connections";
ServerInitiated = true;
}
catch(Exception e)
{
StatusText.Text = e.Message;
ServerInitiated = false;
}
}
Here, Windows.Devices.Bluetooth.Rfcomm comes in extremely handy as RfcommServiceProvider is the prefect class to start a RFComm session. But before all that you are going to need some basic stuff. First you will need a service GUID. You can make a GUID from any place but I suggest to try make an unique one. Here I used something I generated from a site online but you can definitely try your way. Then you are going to need a SdpServiceNameAttributeId and SdpServiceNameAttributeType. SdpServiceNameAttributeType is actually a 8 bit scenario where the least significant 3 bits contains attribute size and the most significant 5 bits contains the attribute type value. And last but not the least you will need a service name too.
private static readonly Guid RfcommServiceUuid = Guid.Parse("482af5ed-3faf-4a51-9dd0-718c85aa64d0");
private const UInt16 SdpServiceNameAttributeId = 0x100;
private const byte SdpServiceNameAttributeType = (4 << 3) | 5;
private const string SdpServiceName = "Bluetooth Rfcomm Listening Service for VJoy";
Please keep these in mind because we are going to need these in the client too. And you also have to define these in your Package.appxmanifest too to make the server authorized to use the bluetooth in your pc.
<m2:DeviceCapability Name="bluetooth.rfcomm"> <m2:Device Id="any"> <m2:Function Type="serviceId:34B1CF4D-1069-4AD6-89B6-E161D79BE4D8"/> </m2:Device> </m2:DeviceCapability>
After all these are done and dusted, let’s move on with initializing the bluetooth server. The next thing that comes is a StreamSocketListener. And it’s job is kind of explained in it’s name. It will serve as our stream listener that would be recieved from the clients. Thus it has a ConnectionReceived event that has to be populated too.
The next thing to do would be bind the service name. Our StreamSocketListener object has a BindServiceNameAsync method to do so with serviceID and an option to take as a parameter. I defined SocketProtectionLevel.BluetoothEncryptionAllowNullAuthentication because I didnt want much security over the communication. You can explore other options if you want to impose some security measures.
Next comes InitializeServiceSdpAttributes(rfcommProvider) and he looks like the following:
private void InitializeServiceSdpAttributes(RfcommServiceProvider rfcommProvider)
{
var sdpWriter = new DataWriter();
// Write the Service Name Attribute.
sdpWriter.WriteByte(SdpServiceNameAttributeType);
// The length of the UTF-8 encoded Service Name SDP Attribute.
sdpWriter.WriteByte((byte)SdpServiceName.Length);
// The UTF-8 encoded Service Name value.
sdpWriter.UnicodeEncoding = Windows.Storage.Streams.UnicodeEncoding.Utf8;
sdpWriter.WriteString(SdpServiceName);
// Set the SDP Attribute on the RFCOMM Service Provider.
rfcommProvider.SdpRawAttributes.Add(SdpServiceNameAttributeId, sdpWriter.DetachBuffer());
}
The purpose of this method is definitely putting the SdpRawAttributes in place by using a DataWriter. Here we put in possibly everything we defined before for our bluetooth device.
The only thing we need to do just before calling StartAdvertising, we need to define our ConnectionReceived event.
private async void OnConnectionReceived(StreamSocketListener sender, StreamSocketListenerConnectionReceivedEventArgs args)
{
try
{
socketListener.Dispose();
socketListener = null;
socket = args.Socket;
writer = new DataWriter(socket.OutputStream);
var reader = new DataReader(socket.InputStream);
bool remoteDisconnection = false;
bool res;
while (true)
{
uint readLength = await reader.LoadAsync(sizeof(uint));
if (readLength < sizeof(uint))
{
remoteDisconnection = true;
break;
}
uint currentLength = reader.ReadUInt32();
readLength = await reader.LoadAsync(currentLength);
if (readLength < currentLength)
{
remoteDisconnection = true;
break;
}
string message = reader.ReadString(currentLength);
}
reader.DetachStream();
if (remoteDisconnection)
{
await Dispatcher.RunAsync(Windows.UI.Core.CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, () =>
{
Disconnect();
});
}
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
Debug.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}
}
This is where the server keeps looping for message and Im not kidding. You will find a while(true) inside and what it does is it keeps reading data from the socket until someone pulls the trigger or somehow the connection gets jeopardized. You will see even a basic check on buffer length triggers the server to stop. And in any case of an exception an async Disconnect() is due.
And Disconect() is nothing but as simple as the following:
private void Disconnect()
{
if (rfcommProvider != null)
{
rfcommProvider.StopAdvertising();
rfcommProvider = null;
}
if (socketListener != null)
{
socketListener.Dispose();
socketListener = null;
}
if (writer != null)
{
writer.DetachStream();
writer = null;
}
if (socket != null)
{
socket.Dispose();
socket = null;
}
ServerInitiated = false;
}
Now , we can trigger this one from a toggle button like the following:
private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
if (ServerInitiated)
{
Disconnect();
ServerToggleButton.Content = "Initiate Server";
}
else
{
InitializeRfCommServer();
ServerToggleButton.Content = "Disconnect Server";
}
}
But the thing is that’s just a bluetooth server. To test it out you will need a bluetooth client too.
Step 2: The Bluetooth Client
The bluetooth client is essentially a Windows Phone app. I couldve showed the XAML here but that wouldn’t look that simple. In spite of doing that, let’s break down what do we have to do now. We have to:
1. Connect to a paired device. (Yes, you have to have your devices paired)
2. Search the bluetooth service we are looking for and if we find any, we’d give a list to pick
3. Use that selected device and send data to it .
Here, definitely the paired device is a device that has our server running.
Let’s assume we have a run button that starts the search for the paired devices with the desired service. Remember I said that we will need our service GUID and other identifications to make this work even from the client side because it has to know which service it is feeding itself to.
Thus, this definitions first come in place:
private static readonly Guid RfcommChatServiceUuid = Guid.Parse("482af5ed-3faf-4a51-9dd0-718c85aa64d0");
// The Id of the Service Name SDP attribute
private const UInt16 SdpServiceNameAttributeId = 0x100;
private const byte SdpServiceNameAttributeType = (4 << 3) | 5;
private StreamSocket chatSocket;
private DataWriter chatWriter;
private RfcommDeviceService chatService;
private DeviceInformationCollection chatServiceInfoCollection;
and the run method looks like the following:
private StreamSocket chatSocket;
private DataWriter chatWriter;
private RfcommDeviceService chatService;
private DeviceInformationCollection chatServiceInfoCollection;
private async void RunButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
// Find all paired instances of the Rfcomm chat service
chatServiceInfoCollection = await DeviceInformation.FindAllAsync(
RfcommDeviceService.GetDeviceSelector(RfcommServiceId.FromUuid(RfcommChatServiceUuid)));
if (chatServiceInfoCollection.Count > 0)
{
List<string> items = new List<string>();
foreach (var chatServiceInfo in chatServiceInfoCollection)
{
items.Add(chatServiceInfo.Name);
}
cvs.Source = items;
ServiceSelector.Visibility = Windows.UI.Xaml.Visibility.Visible;
}
else
{
Debug.WriteLine("No chat services were found. Please pair with a device that is advertising the chat service.");
}
}
You can definitely understand DeviceInformationCollection does all the hard work here finding the device and the next thing to do would be selecting one and using it. After selecting we will start our chat session and indulge ourselves on a loop so we can keep receiving messages sent from the server, actually in our case thats not necessary, but still it’s nicer to have it on the place.
private async void ServiceList_Tapped(object sender, TappedRoutedEventArgs e)
{
try
{
RunButton.IsEnabled = false;
ServiceSelector.Visibility = Windows.UI.Xaml.Visibility.Collapsed;
var chatServiceInfo = chatServiceInfoCollection[ServiceList.SelectedIndex];
chatService = await RfcommDeviceService.FromIdAsync(chatServiceInfo.Id);
if (chatService == null)
{
Debug.WriteLine(
"Access to the device is denied because the application was not granted access",
);
return;
}
var attributes = await chatService.GetSdpRawAttributesAsync();
if (!attributes.ContainsKey(SdpServiceNameAttributeId))
{
Debug.WriteLine(
"The Chat service is not advertising the Service Name attribute (attribute id=0x100). " +
"Please verify that you are running the BluetoothRfcommChat server.",
);
return;
}
var attributeReader = DataReader.FromBuffer(attributes[SdpServiceNameAttributeId]);
var attributeType = attributeReader.ReadByte();
if (attributeType != SdpServiceNameAttributeType)
{
Debug.WriteLine(
"The Chat service is using an unexpected format for the Service Name attribute. " +
"Please verify that you are running the BluetoothRfcommChat server.",);
return;
}
var serviceNameLength = attributeReader.ReadByte();
// The Service Name attribute requires UTF-8 encoding.
attributeReader.UnicodeEncoding = UnicodeEncoding.Utf8;
ServiceName.Text = "Service Name: \"" + attributeReader.ReadString(serviceNameLength) + "\"";
lock (this)
{
chatSocket = new StreamSocket();
}
await chatSocket.ConnectAsync(chatService.ConnectionHostName, chatService.ConnectionServiceName);
chatWriter = new DataWriter(chatSocket.OutputStream);
ControlBox.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
DataReader chatReader = new DataReader(chatSocket.InputStream);
ReceiveStringLoop(chatReader);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
RunButton.IsEnabled = true;
Debug.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.HResult.ToString() + " - " + ex.Message,);
}
}
The very basic thing it does it starts getting device info out and creates a String Loop that listens for a string. I wont go with that details rather I’d show how to send a bluetooth data through it.
private async void SendMessage(string message)
{
try
{
chatWriter.WriteUInt32((uint)message.Length);
chatWriter.WriteString(message);
await chatWriter.StoreAsync();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
//MainPage.Current.NotifyUser("Error: " + ex.HResult.ToString() + " - " + ex.Message,
// NotifyType.StatusMessage);
}
}
For the first part I’d stop here now, in the next two parts we are going to see how we are going to feed this data to vjoy and use our phone as a game controller. 🙂
I Love C# 