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Using Android Studios to develop an app for NBIOT with the Thingy devices

witch_mountain

Hi all! 

I'm in the process of trying to put together an nb-iot app on Android studios that would communicate with data from the Thingy 91 board. I've been trying to go through the different libraries on Jetpack Compose for Android Studios and there is the LowPan Package.

developer.android.com/.../package-summary

However, I've been having some issues implementing the package and can't find any examples on the internet of projects that use this package as well. If anyone has any experience working with this I would love some advice on where to start/what good resources there are for this? 

Thanks!

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  • 0

    Hello,

    What do you mean by NB-IoT app on android? Are you trying to establish an ad-hoc connection with your phone via NB-Iot? That's not possible I'm afraid, phones don't support NB-IoT.

    You would either have to use a webserver, or some kind of BLE gateway.

    Is LowPan what Thread is based on? In that case, I don't think phones would support it (I've heard that some new phones do have HW support, but no SW support yet I think).

    Best regards,

    Michal

  • 0 in reply to Michal

    Hi Michal. 

    Michal said:
    What do you mean by NB-IoT app on android?

    I mean that I have an IoT SIM that covers NB-IOT coverage in my area and I want to be able to pair the thingy with my device to send gps and sensor data. 

    Michal said:
    Is LowPan what Thread is based on?

    I'm doing app dev on Android Studios and they previously had a low power WAN package that allowed you to search the network and connect with devices but I've recently found that this package might not be supported in favor of BLE packages. I was wondering if anyone has had experience working with this currently with Jetpack Compose for network capabilities. 

    Thanks!!

  • 0 in reply to witch_mountain
    witch_mountain said:
    I mean that I have an IoT SIM that covers NB-IOT coverage in my area and I want to be able to pair the thingy with my device to send gps and sensor data. 

    But how do you want to pair your device? You cannot use NB-IoT like you would use Bluetooth for example. It's a cellular protocol.

    You won't be able to "pair" two nRF9160 devices via NB-IoT either.

    If you want to pair the Thingy with your phone, then as I said before, use BLE via the nRF52 chip (or use a webserver like our nRF Cloud).

    Also, just because an NB-IoT SIM card may fit your phone it does not make your phone support NB-IoT.

    Best regards,

    Michal

  • 0 in reply to Michal

    Hi Michal! 

    Thanks so much for your answers, I realized I wasn't properly explaining myself in the previous posts and I've come back after some trial and error and with some of the same and some new questions. 

    Primarily I am a little confused as to why even though the Thingy 91 supports nb_iot and say your mobile device has an nb_iot sim card as well as coverage in your location the two devices won't be able to communicate when they are on the same network? Are mobile phones like an samsung unable to support nb_iot as a whole? 

    The better way to describe what I'm doing is trying to send commands to the Thingy via a phone application that would generate GPS data that is sent to nRF Cloud which is able to be displayed on this same application? 

    In order to send commands to the Thingy device from a mobile application would I then, based on your previous replies, need to establish a BLE connection with the Thingy and then send these commands to the nRF 91 SiP through UART bridge between the two chips on the board? Is this the only way?

    Thanks again!!

  • +1 in reply to witch_mountain
    witch_mountain said:
    the two devices won't be able to communicate when they are on the same network

    Well, they would be able to communicate in a similar way to how two mobile phones can communicate over the internet. You cannot really do a direct communication without some kind of web server (or MQTT or LwM2M) in between the two.

    Technically you could use raw sockets and have your device listen, but you would need to do all the things like finding out the IP address etc.

    witch_mountain said:
    Are mobile phones like an samsung unable to support nb_iot as a whole? 

    You cannot use an NB IoT SIM card on a phone, but you can communicate via the internet, as I have written above.

    witch_mountain said:
    The better way to describe what I'm doing is trying to send commands to the Thingy via a phone application that would generate GPS data that is sent to nRF Cloud which is able to be displayed on this same application? 

    You can either have your application send a command to nRF Cloud, which then sends a command to the Thingy, or connect to the Thingy locally via Bluetooth LE (with UART bridge as you said, yes) and then have Thingy send the data to nRF Cloud.

    Best regards,

    Michal

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  • +1 in reply to witch_mountain
    witch_mountain said:
    the two devices won't be able to communicate when they are on the same network

    Well, they would be able to communicate in a similar way to how two mobile phones can communicate over the internet. You cannot really do a direct communication without some kind of web server (or MQTT or LwM2M) in between the two.

    Technically you could use raw sockets and have your device listen, but you would need to do all the things like finding out the IP address etc.

    witch_mountain said:
    Are mobile phones like an samsung unable to support nb_iot as a whole? 

    You cannot use an NB IoT SIM card on a phone, but you can communicate via the internet, as I have written above.

    witch_mountain said:
    The better way to describe what I'm doing is trying to send commands to the Thingy via a phone application that would generate GPS data that is sent to nRF Cloud which is able to be displayed on this same application? 

    You can either have your application send a command to nRF Cloud, which then sends a command to the Thingy, or connect to the Thingy locally via Bluetooth LE (with UART bridge as you said, yes) and then have Thingy send the data to nRF Cloud.

    Best regards,

    Michal

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