Simulate a BLE device using this Android app
SimDeviceBLE allows developers to simulate Bluetooth devices with multiple GATT Services.
This app allows full configuration of the BLE advertisement data and shows the amount of connected devices.
The simulated device and the advertised data can be manipulated using the app UI or the gRPC interface.
Feel free to import the app module into your Android Studio project to simulate your own BLE peripherals.
Contributing the proprietary devices, services and characteristics is appreciated but not required.
Checkout the project and open it with Android Studio.
Run the app on your Android phone.
Make sure Bluetooth is enabled on your phone (use Enable Bluetooth button) and advertise a selected device.
The selected device will advertise the services associated to it.
All options available in the Advertise section will be used in the Advertisement data.
Characteristic values can be updated using the Service Data screen.
All characteristics will be mapped to a View on the screen to show their current data value.
Some characteristics will allow to update their value and notify all connected Central devices.
Developers do not need to write their own View classes.
Services and characteristics are introspected and Views are created dynamically.
The Gradle configuration uses the protoc-gen-grpc-java plugin for protoc to generate classes.
Download the compiler from here for your situation.
SimDeviceBLE defines a gRPC interface to take control of the BLE device.
Generate a client in your preferred language to interact with the gRPC server in the app.
All devices supported in the app can be advertised with a simple command.
Update the advertised characteristic data to match your use case or test scenario.
To notify all connected devices of an updated characteristic in SimDeviceBLE, call the associated rpc.
SimDeviceBLE has a GrpcServerActivity that can be used in an easy way.
It is available via the options menu in the app.
For usage in automation, please follow these steps:
- Install the SimDeviceBLE app on an Android phone and connect to a PC using USB.
- Run command
adb forward tcp:8910 tcp:8910 - Run command
adb shell am start -n nl.rwslinkman.simdeviceble/.grpc.GrpcServerActivity
service SimDeviceBLE {
rpc listAvailableSimDevices(google.protobuf.Empty) returns (ListAvailableSimDevicesResponse) {}
rpc startAdvertisement(StartAdvertisementRequest) returns (StartAdvertisementResponse) {}
rpc stopAdvertisement(google.protobuf.Empty) returns (google.protobuf.Empty) {}
rpc listAdvertisedCharacteristics(google.protobuf.Empty) returns (ListAdvertisedCharacteristicsResponse) {}
rpc updateCharacteristicValue(UpdateCharacteristicValueRequest) returns (google.protobuf.Empty) {}
rpc notifyCharacteristic(NotifyCharacteristicRequest) returns (google.protobuf.Empty) {}
}Please refer to the grpc/SimDeviceBLE.proto file for the full specification of the gRPC interface.
The module cucumbertest contains a basic app that is used as a testing vehicle to verify SimDeviceBLE.
Tests written using the Cucumber framework are executed via this app.
Execute the androidTest tests in the cucumberTest module to test the gRPC server.
It requires a separate device running SimDeviceBLE in gRPC Mode.
This mode can be found in the context menu of the SimDeviceBLE app.
The Cucumber tests demonstrate a way SimDeviceBLE can contribute to your automated testing.
Your project could create a similar configuration using the gRPC client.
Please feel free to add any devices in the nl.rwslinkman.simdeviceble.device package.
All devices must implement the Device interface.
The list of services can contain any
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of the classes implementing Service.
They are defined in the nl.rwslinkman.simdeviceble.service package.
Don't forget to add the new device in the AppModel.supportedDevices list.
When adding a new Service, please implement according to the Bluetooth SIG specification as much as possible.
Please keep in mind that the services might be used by multiple Device implementations.
BLE peripheral mode was introduced in Android 5.0 Lollipop.
Due to hardware chipset dependency, some Android phones don't have access to this feature.
This will be visible in the Bluetooth section on the Home screen.