Computers & Electronics

How to control beagle bone black via android phone?

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  • Oct 25th, 2013 12:39 am
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Deal Fanatic
Aug 9, 2009
6245 posts
1779 upvotes

How to control beagle bone black via android phone?

basically were hooking up an IR transmitter to the beagle bone black and having an android phone app wirelessly control the BBB to tell it what signals to send.

I've got the wireless up and running on the BBB and my partner has the GUI design done for the android app.

Question is... how do we get them to communicate?

P.S. we don't have much programming background.
4 replies
Deal Fanatic
Nov 17, 2004
7311 posts
1672 upvotes
Toronto
The first step is to establish communication between the phone and BBB, realistically there are 2 options; Bluetooth and TCP/IP. I do not know if the BBB includes BT or is able to accept BT modules or if there are even drivers for BT, so TCP/IP is probably the only solution. There are many options over TCP/IP, I would put up a webserver over port 80 and have android connect to the webserver via a browser, it is exactly the same as web interfaces you find on routers. Alternatively you can write an APP for android and use TCP/IP like a serial connection to send commands to BBB.
I workout to get big so I can pickup bricks and ****.
Sr. Member
Aug 19, 2004
728 posts
19 upvotes
Toronto
I don't have any experience with the BBB specifically, but it's by far the easiest to talk to Android over bluetooth. A cheap HC-05 bluetooth module using Serial Bluetooth protocol is pretty easy. It only requires a UART on the Beaglebone. Search serial bluetooth Android and it's easy to find programming examples on how to interface with these in Android.
Mark.
Deal Fanatic
Aug 9, 2009
6245 posts
1779 upvotes
I understand it would've been easier to do BT, and that was our initial intent. However, our task was modified to using WiFi.

As of now, we have an android app (mostly just GUI setup). and WiFi is working but not 100% stable on the BBB via USB dongle.

for the TCP/IP communication, would I have to setup a headless server on the BBB?

What would be the easiest way to set it up? Programming is not my specialty.
Deal Expert
User avatar
Dec 26, 2005
17068 posts
1830 upvotes
Thornhill
I'd figure it's easiest over TCP/IP - just open a socket and read/write it. I haven't done bluetooth stuff before. I'm sure there are tons of libraries to do this type of stuff.

Since you guys aren't programmers, hmmm...

bjl
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