I have published a Bluetooth developerment article on Java Developer Journal (Feb 2004, Volume 9 Issue 2). The article titled Go Wild Wirelessly with Bluetooth. In this article, I developed an example chatting application, BlueChat, that allow user chats over Bluetooth connection. You can download complete source codes of this example application and obtain additional information.

The BlueChat source code as discussed in the article works on Rococosoft Impronto Bluetooth simulator. However it doesn't work on a real phone because it was developred before any JABWT phone released. I have updated the source code since the release of Nokia 6600. The source code provided here is fully tested with Nokia 6600 phone and it works.

• Download example BlueChat soure code and binary (jar) in ZIP file

If you wanted to compile the BlueChat example using SUN J2ME WTK 2.1, please read this tutorial.

Change history:

March 8, 2004

• Repackage it to work with SUN J2ME WTK 2.1.

March 7 2004

• Remove reference to non-javax.bluetooth classes. It should now compiled with standard API.
• Verify to run on Nokia Series60 J2ME SDK 2.0 emulator
• Verify to run on Sony Ericsson P900 (Firmward R3C)

Additional notes:

In this example application, you will learn the following bluetooth development skills

• Dervice and service discovery
• Writing a Bluetooth server using Serial Port Profile
• Writing a Bluetooth client using Serial Port Profile
• Exchanging data continously between client and server
• Working around real phone limitation and bugs

You must have two JABWT phones (Nokia 6600 or SE P900) to see chatting in action. Following these steps if you run BlueChat in Nokia 6600:

1. Start one BlueChat, enter a name, select Chat from menu.
2. **Wait**until the it finishs all the Bluetooth work and say "You are ready to start chatting" on the screen.
3. Then start BlueChat on another Nokia 6600 phone, enter a different name, select Chat from menu.
4. **Wait** until it find the first Nokia 6600 and the first Nokia 6600 will prompt you for accepting the connection.
5. When you see "You are ready to start chatting" on the second phone, you can start writing something.
6. Select Write from menu, type something and select Send.
7. You can see the message appear on the other phone.

You can turn on logging if you select Chat (Debug) from menu when you logon to BlueChat. There will be a lot of logs on the screen and you can scroll through the logs by using the joystick on the phone.

I hope to provide an UML diagram that explains the interaction between objects and some screenshots of execution as well. Come back later. Email me here if you want me to notify you when that is available. And as always, any feedback are welcome.

If you are using P900, you are welcome to try this sofware and see if it works the same way. Please inform me the result of your experience!

Known Issues:

I found that exiting BlueChat is not very stable. Sometimes I got IOException with Symbian error (-32). I am not sure what that means. Relogin seem to have some problems, too. If I exit and enter again, it will get connected, but cannot exchange message. If you found bugs in my code, You are welcome to send the patch back to me and I will update it online.

Some interesting foundings:

Bugs, limitation, more bugs, more limitation. The road of developing robust Java Bluetooth application is still very very far away. Here are just some of the interesting bugs or limitation or my lack-of-knowledge that I found during the development of BlueChat application. Let's hope no body need to run into the same problems again.

Problem On Nokia Series60 SDK emulator, setDeviceServiceClass() doesn't seem do anything. Resolution Just don't use it in emulator. Bug factor

Problem On SonyEricsson P900, BlueChat just crash on firmware R3A024. It appears to have security exception just before it crashes. Resolution Upgrade to firmware R3C006. The phone will prompt you to allow the Bluetooth operation. (bluetooth.server). Some developers suggest to sign the MIDlet to avoid the crash as well. Bug factor

Problem Your application UUID cannot take the form of 0x????. I originally use UUID(0x6600) as my application service class ID, but i never able to discover my service (with searchServices()) using this UUID. At the end, I found that UUID.equals() always return false if I use 0x6600 as the ID. As a result, the system never able to match my service during service discovery. Resolution Use a 32-length string to represent your UUID and initialize it using new UUID( uuid_string, false ). In BlueChat, it is private final static UUID uuid = new UUID("102030405060708090A0B0C0D0E0F010", false); Bug factor

Problem Nokia 6600 phone says bluetooth.connected.devices.max is 7, but it is actually 2. If you try to make more than 2 connections, you will get IOException with the message "Is Busy". That means the Bluetooth system is busy and unable to take any more connetion request. Oh.. did I mention that device discovery already take up one connection? Resolution Don't try to develop a 4-players games :) May be you can get around by closing existing connection before making a new one. Or wrap around the bluetooth connection with you own connection pool, so you can emulate multiple connections. If you have better resolution, email me here. Bug factor

Problem Package javax.obex and any OBEX protocol is not supported. It is a well documented limitation. Resolution Write your own OBEX layer on top of SerialPort Profile. See if this article helps you. Bug factor

Problem You can only perform one service discovery at a time. This is not a bug because bluetooth.sd.trans.max does return '1' correctly. However, it does cause a lot of trouble in the programming side. If you attemp to perform multiple searchServices() concurrently, you will get IOException with the message "Is Busy". Resolution You will need to wait until one discovery is completely finished, before searching on the next device. See BlueChat source code for example of doing this. And remember not to block the callback method in DiscoveryListner, otherwise the entire Bluetooth layer will hang. See how I schedule a timer to avoid blocking in the code (NetLayer.java, Listener.inquiryCompleted() ) Bug factor

Problem You need to make a new instance of DiscoveryListener for every device or service search. This is a limitation of Rococosoft Bluetooth simulator. I am not sure if the phone has the same limitation as well. If you use the same instance repeatedly, you will not get any callback after the first one. Resolution Just create a new instance of DiscoveryListener for each invoke of startInquiry() and searchServices(). I create a inner class Listener (NetLayer.java) for this purpose. Bug factor

Problem If there are multiple matches fo ryour service discovery, your listener servicesDiscovered() is invoked multiple times with one search recrod each, instead of invoked once, with multiple service records. Resolution Prepare your servicesDiscovered() to be invoked multiple times. In the other words, this method need to return quickly and cannot make another additional connection because there isn't enough connection available when service discovery is not finished. In BlueChat example, my code remembers the service recrod in a Hashtable. Then in serviceSearchCompleted(), I process the discovery service recrod and start making connection to remote service. Bug factor

Problem RemoteDevice.getFriendName(true) will give you IOException. This because the 'true' tell the Bluetooth layer to query the friend name from the remote device. It does it by making a NEW connection to the remote device. Remember we don't have enough connection? If you are still have a active device searchs going on, you will not have the extra connection to query the friend name. Resolution Use RemoteDevice.getFriendName(false). This will give you the name from the last query. Bug factor

BlueChat Service Record:

Wonder how does the BlueChat service record really looks like? The following service registration code will produce the following service record. This information is recorded using our JABWT Browser.

// Create a server connection object, using a

// Serial Port Profile URL syntax and our specific UUID

// and set the service name to BlueChatApp

server = (StreamConnectionNotifier)Connector.open(

"btspp://localhost:" + uuid.toString() +";name=BlueChatApp");

// Retrieve the service record template

ServiceRecord rec = localDevice.getRecord( server );

// set ServiceRecrod ServiceAvailability (0x0008) attribute to indicate our service is available

// 0xFF indicate fully available status

// This operation is optional

rec.setAttributeValue( 0x0008, new DataElement( DataElement.U_INT_1, 0xFF ) );

// Print the service record, which already contains

// some default values

Util.printServiceRecord( rec );

// Set the Major Service Classes flag in Bluetooth stack.

// We choose Object Transfer Service

rec.setDeviceServiceClasses(

BluetoothConstants.SERVICE_OBJECT_TRANSFER );