Bluetooth Low Energy on Android Emulator

Question

I studied about Bluetooth Low Energy.

But I don't have supported BLE device for testing.

Therefore, I want to ask :

Do the Android emulator supports BLE feature for testing?

I tried with the following code on Android Emulator 4.3 (x86) and Android Emulator 4.4 (ARM):

// Use this check to determine whether BLE is supported on the device. Then
// you can selectively disable BLE-related features.
if (!getPackageManager().hasSystemFeature(PackageManager.FEATURE_BLUETOOTH_LE)) {
   Toast.makeText(this, R.string.ble_not_supported, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
   finish();
}

And it always show "ble_not_supported".

Another question is

Which another emulator or tool supports BLE for Android?

I really want to test BLE feature on Emulator.

Answer 1

It seems you can, using Android inside a VirtualBox and using a PC dongle supporting Bluetooth LE (costs about 18$ on Amazon). Here's the tutorial by Chris Larson (copied here to keep it online):

Android emulators are great for developing BluetoothLE applications. The trick is getting the Android emulator to recognize the BluetoothLE adapter.

What you'll need:

• Androidx86 iso from android-x86.org I used the 4.4 release candidate
• Virtual Machine software: I used Oracle VirtualBox
• A BluetoothLE USB adapter: I used the Cirago Bluetooth 4.0 USB Mini Adapter (BTA8000)(affilate link) or Cirago Bluetooth 4.0 USB Mini Adapter (BTA8000) (non-affilate link)
• Install Android SDK for debugging
• Install VirtualBox
• Download Androidx86
• Open VirtualBox and create a new machine. Set type to linux/other(32bit)
• Set the virtual machine's memory and harddrive space to whatever you need (but at least the minimum specs for Android).
• When asked for the OS image, select the Androidx86 image you download from Androidx86.org
• When the virtual machine boots, choose to install Android.
• When the installation completes, shutdown the Android virtual machine and unmount the iso image
• Plug in the Bluetooth USB adapter and add it to the Android Virtual Machine's settings
• Start the Android Virtual Machine and go through the start-up screens to configure Android for use
• In the Android VM go to the settings and enable BluetoothLE (if this fails reboot the VM and try to enable again)

Here are a few other links describing more or less the same method, and a few other tools that can be of interest to you:

• http://technoga.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/debug-a-bluetooth-app-with-android-emulator-on-pc/
• http://niro-offonatangent.blogspot.fr/2011/06/bluetooth-support-on-android-emulator.html
• http://referenceforu.blogspot.fr/2013/08/testing-bluetooth-in-android-emulator.html
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/2614840/1121352
• https://github.com/cheng81/Android-Bluetooth-Simulator
• https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.magicandroidapps.bluetoothterm&hl=fr
• a set of opensource tools to develop Bluetooth LE apps on Android: https://github.com/grundid/bletools and http://blog.opendatalab.de/hack/2013/11/15/bluetooth-low-energy-tools-library-for-android/

And if you want this issue to be solved by Google, you can star this thread to make it more visible (with enough votes, Google will tackle it in a few years, as they did with audio issues...):

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=56608

Answer 2

Using the Emulator said that

Emulator Limitations

The functional limitations of the emulator include:

No support for placing or receiving actual phone calls. You can simulate phone calls (placed and received) through the emulator console, however.

No support for USB connections

No support for device-attached headphones

No support for determining network connected state

No support for determining battery charge level and AC charging state

No support for determining SD card insert/eject

No support for Bluetooth

Thanks,