Support for Companion device pairing?

[fabiendem]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Google is actively discouraging the use of location access, in the case of BLE, ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION.

This is detailed over there: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9799150

And as well here: https://developer.android.com/privacy/best-practices#location

If your app needs to pair the user's device with a nearby device over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, use the companion device manager, which doesn't require location permissions.

They now provide an alternative to the classic scan which requires ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION in the form of a "Companion device pairing" feature. See https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/companion-device-pairing

Describe the solution you'd like

I wonder if you plan to integrate this in RxAndroidBle for the connection flow, and also in the react-native library.

Describe alternatives you've considered If not, we will have to add a custom bridge and our own implementation.

Additional context N/A

Cheers!

[fabiendem]

Sorry to bump this, but has anyone any insights on Google's plans wrt the BLE connection procedure. Reading https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/bluetooth#FindDevices They really seem to push for the use of this "Companion device pairing".

I work on a project where I actually don't bother pairing since it's possible, and simply scan for devices and if the one needed is found, I connect to it. This move towards "Companion device pairing" for the connection procedure seems to enforce the pairing of a device, which has firmware/hardware implications.

Like in the initial message I also wonder if the Polidea's library will wrap the Companion device pairing of if we should do things home made.

Cheers

[dariuszseweryn]

Hello,

It is very likely that it will be added at some point but it is not a priority at the moment. I still struggle to get consistent time to maintain the library (or even review PRs...). The highest priority is to develop a new API that will allow for fixing the UndeliverableException which will allow for integrating the newest version of the library into other modules like the react-native lib.

As far as I can tell the Companion Device Pairing feature is fairly simple to use and integrating with RxAndroidBle shouldn't be a problem even if the feature itself is not yet added to RxAndroidBle / react-native-ble-plx.

[fabiendem]

As far as I can tell the Companion Device Pairing feature is fairly simple to use and integrating with RxAndroidBle shouldn't be a problem even if the feature itself is not yet added to RxAndroidBle / react-native-ble-plx.

Yeah, I realise that. Background story is that I would need the wrapper for a React Native project, so in react-native-ble-plx, and I understand that having it in RxAndroidBle is a first step. I will play around with the custom way for now.