Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 05:21:41 GMT

Thanks for understanding!

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 05:20:38 GMT

OK. I'm sorry for that.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 05:17:05 GMT

Hi Could you open another thread for new questions please. We are going against the community guidelines here and it would be useful for other users as well.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 05:14:15 GMT

Is there a way to access the GenericOnOffStatus using MeshManagerApi of the MeshService? If not, which route should I go? Meaning, how should I get access to GenericOnOffStatus which uses the same context as the running MeshService from my Activity? What is the handle I should use in my activity to access this?

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 05:16:43 GMT

Ah yes I was referring to the bluetooth mesh specification v1.0 which has everything related provisioning and comfogconfig of nodes. In addition you might want to read up the mesh model specofication spec as well. This contains all the SIG defined models and their messages.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 04:56:56 GMT

Also, you said 'read the spec'. Which spec are you talking about?

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 12:04:53 GMT

Correct. It's

mViewModel.bindAppKey(appKeyIndex);

and not

sendBindAppKey(appKeyIndex);

like you said in the prev. comment.

I'll have a look at Get and See. Where is this GenericOnOffStatus? In which structure? In the example, you have used mViewModel and not MeshManagerApi.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 11:44:36 GMT

That's great, its impossible that the line is not there, if that's the case the app won't be able to bind a key at all. I have refactored some of the api calls locally probably this is why. I suppose you are not using 1.0 version of the app because you can find it here. When you send a GenericOnOffGet message you will get a GenericOnOffStatus. You should read up the spec and follow the example app.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 11:32:44 GMT

It worked. I can send a generic on-off set to the node. Didn't require sendBindAppKey(Index);

On a side note, there is no such function sendBindAppKey(Index); exists in that Activity.

Also, regarding Generic on-off Get, where do I get the value (true/false) of server model in the element?

Bcoz,

public void getGenericOnOff(final ProvisionedMeshNode node, final MeshModel model, final byte[] dstAddress, final int appKeyIndex)

Doesn't return any Boolean value.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 10:40:42 GMT

You can find it on line 261 in ModelConfigurationActivity.java

sendBindAppKey(appKeyIndex)

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 10:31:13 GMT

I was seeing that activity itself. I could see:

final MeshModel model = mViewModel.getMeshModel().getValue();
        if(model != null){
            if(model instanceof GenericOnOffServerModel) {

On line 326. But it uses ConfigurationModel

But there is no sendBindAppKey() over there.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 10:21:13 GMT

Sorry that was my bad, it should be mMeshManagerApi.getProvisionedNodes().get(5).getElements(elementaddress).getMeshModels.

This because models belong to a certain element in a node. Look at ModelConfigurationActivity and you should see sendBindAppKey()

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 10:16:48 GMT

I have already added an app key to the generic on off server model in the node's element. If I do a:

mMeshManagerApi.getProvisionedNodes().get(5).getAddedAppKeys();

I can get a Map of bound app keys. I've seen that the app key is correct. That means that the app key is bound to the node.

I could not find a getMeshModels() like you mentioned above.

mMeshManagerApi.getProvisionedNodes().get(5).getMeshModels();

So how can I use getMeshModels()

Can you tell me In your code, in which file are you binding app keys to models?

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 07:53:42 GMT

Not sure entirely what you're trying to do by declaring a model. When you provision a node, the library will create all the models that are available in the node. So all you have to do is just list all the models you need by just calling node.getMeshModels(). From what I see you're creating a model in the app and turn on the same model in the app, so it does not look right to me.

Also binding app keys works fine on our end so you must be doing something wrong in your implementation.

Before binding an app key an app key should be added to that particular node. Hope that is done and if that's the case that app key should be bound to a specific model you want to talk to.

So as you have done bindAppKey index should work as it is. Also When you send a bindAppKey message you should get a Model App Status and that will contain if its successful or not and is handled in the library. You can find the status codes in the specification as well.

When it comes to app key index, you can get it from the node.getAddedAppKeys() list for that specific node. When you try to bind an appKey you need to specify the index of that particular appkeyindex. If you follow our example you should see this.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 07:27:14 GMT

I was trying to send data to the mesh using the method of:

mMeshManagerApi.setGenericOnOffUnacknowledged(mMeshManagerApi.getProvisionedNodes().get(5),
                genericOnOffServerModel,
                new byte[]{0x00, 0x05},
                0,
                null,
                null,
                null,
                isLightOn);

I've declared the model as:

GenericOnOffServerModel genericOnOffServerModel = new GenericOnOffServerModel(0x1000);

However, I get the error of model not having a binding with an app key like below:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Please bind an app key to this model to control this model!
        at no.nordicsemi.android.meshprovisioner.MeshManagerApi.setGenericOnOffUnacknowledged(MeshManagerApi.java:881)
        at no.nordicsemi.android.nrfmeshprovisioner.MainFragment.send(MainFragment.java:72)
        at no.nordicsemi.android.nrfmeshprovisioner.MainFragment_ViewBinding$1.doClick(MainFragment_ViewBinding.java:30)

I then used the method mentioned in MeshManagerApi as:

mMeshManagerApi.bindAppKey(mMeshManagerApi.getProvisionedNodes().get(5),
        new byte[]{0x00, 0x05},
        genericOnOffServerModel,
        0);

It doesn't work. Am I doing something wrong?
Also what should I enter in AppKeyIndex? Where is this array and how do I get it?

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 08:30:55 GMT

1) No, that's the mesh node that is passed in to that activity from the previous activity. This will point to only the node you want to talk to. Since its a mesh network you can connect to a random one and the configure the one you click and select from the main network menu. You might want to read up on Android services. A binder is used to connect to a service from an activity.

2) You may do that and will make it very simple to you since you are new to dagger2, viewmodels and repositories. This way you can write your own app without having to dig deep in to our source.

3) Like I said you might want to read up on Android services.

4) If you have gone through the code you might see in the ViewModel attached to the main activity has onCleared(), disconnects and unbinds from the service and stops it.

5) to get the context you will have to call getApplicationContext in the service

If you're very new to Android I would suggest you go down the acitvity and service approach (you can find lot of documentation related to services) removing all the viewmodels and repositories. The reason for using viewmodels is to use the new Architecture Components in Android which makes it very easy to handle configuration changes and lifecycle changes in Android.

Going down the service approach is only a change in the design and you can have all the api calls related to meshmanager api within the binder in the meshservice. This way you call the meshMaangerApi methods via the binder.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 08:02:36 GMT

I can see in ModelConfigurationActivity.java where you have implemented

mViewModel.getExtendedMeshNode().getMeshNode();

and

mViewModel.sendGenericOnOff(node, .... );

at lines 347 and 352 respectively. This gets me to the first question:

1) Does that mean that I can get the mesh node reference I'm connected to using this piece of code from any of my Activities?

Now, mViewModel is of type ModelConfigurationViewModel which in turn relates to ModelConfigurationRepository. This ModelConfigurationRepository, in turn, sends control messages to a mBinder which is declared in the extended class of BaseMeshRepository. Over here, mBinder is declared as MeshService.MeshServiceBinder. In the service, it looks like the Binder connects to a device and uses BleMeshManagerApi.

2) So basically, my idea was that you can directly cut through all of the other structures and just use the mBleMeshManagerApi or MeshServiceBinder from the service to connect and send messages. Is this possible and is it the right way of doing it?

3) Also, regarding the MeshService. I want to have control over the when the service starts and stops. How do I do that?

4) I have an activity which connects to your MainActivity which does scanning and connection to the network in the respective fragments. Also, somewhere, (I don't know where) your MainActivity starts the MeshService. But after connecting to a Proxy node, if I press Back on MainActivity which goes to my activity, the service stops and disconnects from the proxy. I don't want it to stop and disconnect from the proxy. How do I achieve this?

5) Now if that is solved, I want to use the mBleMeshManagerApi that the service is using. I will have to use either Binder or something of the service from my activity to send data to the mesh. How do I get the MeshService Context such that I can get the context of:

mMeshManagerApi = new MeshManagerApi(this);

at line 221 in the service. I guess that is only how I can use the service BleMeshManagerApi. How do I do it?

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 05:56:44 GMT

Hey, If you look at each and every message that is implemented, there is a class for every message. In MeshConfigurationhandler.java there is bindAppKey method. youll see that there is a class with ConfigModelAppBind. In this class there is createAccessMessage() method whcih creates a message and executeSend() that sends a message. Once you send a message, a received corresponding notification is handled in the MeshConfigurationHandler in the parseConfigurationNotifications method. This is as simple as it can be and can't that difficult to follow the same principle. This will be common for all messages that you will implement. If you just follow the same principle you can implement any message you want.

Please note that this is not a production ready library yet and we have not implemented the whole mesh specification.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 05:24:31 GMT

There is one more thing which many other developers might need. The pain point of this library is the documentation. My firmware counterpart gets a lot of documentation from the Nordic website. He gets explanations of each and every statement of the firmware SDK up to the point where the input and output parameters of each function, structure, object, etc. He even easily gets any getting started examples, intermediate examples .etc. The Android library, however, doesn't explain anything. Absolutely nothing. We desperately need documentation for the Android nRF Mesh library. Along with documentation of using examples and getting started guides .etc. I'm understanding your code in bits and pieces but I need concrete documentation on how to use it and what can be achieved with which statements to go ahead and start changing it for my use.

Like if I want to send a certain msg byte array to a certain 2-byte element address then how do I send it? Where to get started? Which structures to use? I need to be sure what the answers are and not spend many hours implementing something that may be wrong.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 07:12:48 GMT

You'll have to clone the latest version from github and use that, there is an example in it where you can call resetNode. If you follow the latest implementation on github you could see what's available.

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

xavierg — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 06:50:01 GMT

I have the source code for the most initial version of Android where Generic on off was not implemented. Does this version allow un-provisioning? If so which Java file does it and how to call these structure in my Activity? Or can I just click on a mesh node and there is a un-provision button?

RE: Questions regarding Mesh Android app:

Roshan Rajaratnam — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 12:38:24 GMT

Hi,

1. The app supports mulitple subscriptions and is not disabled.

2. Adding clients is not supported yet in the app. That's something that will be implemented in the near future. This is a more complex functionality that will need some time to build. Unfortunately its not something I can explain here. You will have to do it manually in your UI by creating the Models you need for this.