Android: wireless status

WirelessCameraMonitor listens to the Bluetooth LE status broadcasts of cameras recording to their own memory cards. The phone only listens — it never connects — so any number of phones can follow any number of cameras. This is what powers the app's Wireless status.

Requirements: camera firmware 0.5.9+, SDK 0.5.3+, a phone with Bluetooth LE. The broadcast is on by default; switch it with device.setWirelessBroadcast(enabled) (applies from the camera's next start).

Permissions

The SDK declares no Bluetooth permissions itself. Add:

<uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.bluetooth_le" android:required="false" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH_SCAN"
    android:usesPermissionFlags="neverForLocation" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH" android:maxSdkVersion="30" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH_ADMIN" android:maxSdkVersion="30" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION" android:maxSdkVersion="30" />

and request WirelessCameraMonitor.requiredPermissions() at runtime.

Follow cameras

val monitor = WirelessCameraMonitor(context)
monitor.start()

scope.launch {
    monitor.cameras.collect { cameras ->
        for (cam in cameras) {
            val status = when {
                cam.recording  -> "recording take ${cam.takeNumber}"
                cam.finalizing -> "finalizing"
                else           -> "idle"
            }
            show(cam.unitId, status, if (cam.sdOk) "card OK" else "no card", cam.rssiAvg)
        }
    }
}

scope.launch {
    monitor.events.collect { e ->
        when (e) {
            is WirelessEvent.Started      -> log("${e.unitId} started take ${e.takeNumber} at ${e.utcMillis}")
            is WirelessEvent.Stopped      -> log("${e.unitId} stopped at ${e.utcMillis}")
            is WirelessEvent.AbnormalStop -> alert("${e.unitId} stopped unexpectedly")
        }
    }
}
// monitor.stop() when done

Each camera reports its unit ID, recording / finalizing / card state, take number, number of recordings on the card, kit ID and role, signal strength, and its model and firmware.

History and export

The monitor keeps a history on the phone (WirelessHistory) and can export it; the toolkit's wireless UTC tool uses the export to put card recordings on UTC.

Full reference, including scan modes and background logging: wireless-status guide on GitHub.