Bluetooth Remote on Android to Control Presentations on PC

Being in the networking field for a while i had an interest to develop something on Bluetooth or wi-fi also I have always thought of controlling my laptop from my Android phone, so i targeted Bluetooth.

So here it is "an idea to make my Android phone become a simple remote control for my laptop, just for controlling the Power Point slides for presentation". 


To make it possible i have to go through following challenges:

1. Remote server on PC 
2. A way to generate events on remote PC
3. Remote Controller on Android

For generating events(2) on  PC  u need " java.awt.Robot & java.awt.event.InputEvent  " classes .

(Google it for more info)

REMOTE CONTROL SERVER (Java):
     Firstly, we need to write the remote control server to receive the signal from Android phone. I used a Java library for Bluetooth called Bluecove to implement the server. You can download the  bluecove-2.1.0.jar  file and add it to your external library. Note that for Linux, you need to install the bluez-libs to your system and add bluecove-gpl-2.1.0.jar to external library of the project as well (more information  here).
Here is my RemoteBluetoothServer class(read bluetooth-API here):

The main method creates a thread to wait for connection from client and handle the signal.

In waitForConnection() function, firstly it sets up the server by setting the device discoverable, creating the UUID for this application (the client needs this to communicate with server). Then it waits for a connection from a client. When it receives initial connection, it creates ProcessConnectionThread to handle the client’s command. Here is the code for ProcessConnectionThread:

The ProcessConnectionThread mainly waiting for the client’s inputs and process them. This is simple remote control only for going next/previous of Power Point slide so it only process KEY_RIGHT and KEY_LEFT input. I use Robot class from java.awt to generate the key events.
That’s all we need for the Remote Control Server. When you run the server on a computer, make sure that the Bluetooth is ON.


REMOTE CONTROL CLIENT (Android)

    For the client i have followed the guide from Android Dev Guide ....... and yeah u don't need to search anywhere else,tutorial is sufficient.                                                                        

The Screenshot u can see here has  controls :
1. Paired : press it and it will help device retrieve paired devices.
2. Discover : press it and it will discover other bluetooth devices.
3. stop discover: button to stop discovery
4.Arrow button: to control slides movement
5. Start/Stop button: to start/stop sending arrow press signals to sever selected from discovered list.


Well i couldn't find a way to take screenshots off my Android device so i'm showing my Android layout xml.

here are the steps:
Step 1: Enable these permissions 
             <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH"/>
            <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.BLUETOOTH_ADMIN"/>
             2nd one needed for discovering devices.

step 2:  We create BluetoothAdapter object and use it enable bluetooth device if it's not enabled.
step 3:  get paired devices  => mbluetoothAdapter.getBondedDevices()
step 4: for discovering new devices we need to register BroadcastReciver object . 
               Every other bluetooth device when activated will generate an intent which can be captured. 
IntentFilter filter = new IntentFilter(BluetoothDevice.ACTION_FOUND);
registerReceiver(mReceiver, filter);
and do mbluetoothAdapter.startDiscovery(); to discover devices.


step 5: use "ItemClickListener" for the Discovered device's list to make the client to connect to that device/server.Before connecting to server stop discovery as it's done  in the code.

step 6: wait for a while for devices to connect and now press the "start" button to start sending signals down to server.

I'm attaching the main_class_file + layout_xml_file.

So here it is a small but effective way to control ur PC over bluetooth..........
This update was a part of developing a "Remote Mouse Control"...looking forward to get it done asap.

Hope this tutorial is fine enough to clear ur doubts and informative too.... :)

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