Bluetooth

[flutter-painter]

Thank you so much for sharing this repo :)

I would like to provide thermal printing using bluetooth for a Flutter desktop app used on windows.
It seems this could be achieved using the win32 API calls mentioned :

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/_bluetooth/

Once implemented, it could also lead to a dedicated bluetooth repo similar to your filepicker_windows.

[timsneath]

I'd be happy to work on this with you. Would you be interested in collaborating a little?

There are a lot of Bluetooth APIs provided by Windows, so it would be helpful to know which ones provide the base functionality you need, and then we can always extend this. It might also be good to connect with someone like @pauldemarco who has written a high-level Flutter API with flutter_blue and add a Windows implementation that depends on my win32 repo for the low-level APIs.

[flutter-painter]

Thanks for your quick reply !
I also looked after at flutter_blue and indeed noticed they had already opened issues for mac and windows.

Starting next week I'll be happy to dive into this.
I'll revert after more reading and a selection of key bluetooth APIs.

[timsneath]

Sounds good. I've started work on this here: https://github.com/timsneath/win32/tree/bluetooth

[pauldemarco]

Great stuff. I’d love to help in any way I can. Perhaps it’s time to convert flutter_blue into a Federated plugin. @timsneath do you happen to know if the federated plugin framework is stable?

[timsneath]

Yes, the federated plugin model itself is stable. There may be minor changes to the plugin APIs for Windows and Linux themselves, but you should feel confident to migrate the overall plugin across.

[timsneath]

@926 I checked in some initial support for Bluetooth device discovery with win32 1.6.7. See https://github.com/timsneath/win32/blob/master/lib/src/bthprops.dart and https://github.com/timsneath/win32/blob/master/example/bluetooth.dart.

One slight challenge is that I don't have a modern Windows laptop (I'm doing my development from a Macbook connected to a cloud instance of Windows at present), so testing is a little problematic. I'm going to see what I can lay my hands on.

[flutter-painter]

Hi, @timsneath, thanks for this, and sorry for the delay, I've had more work than planned,
I borrowed a pc to test device discovery,
if needed I can run queries

[timsneath]

No worries!

…

On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 2:04 AM Pierre ***@***.***> wrote: Hi, @timsneath <https://github.com/timsneath>, thanks for this, and sorry for the delay, I've had more work than planned, I borrowed a pc to test device discovery, if needed I can run queries — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#57 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AARWL66VMCDXPRBEILYTIC3R3VWIFANCNFSM4OMOSH3A> .

[flutter-painter]

Hi Tim,
Please excuse me but I will have no time to advance on this, work caught up.
Ambition was to combine bluetooth with thermal printing using : https://github.com/kakzaki/blue_thermal_printer
There are a bunch of use cases, such as Point of Sale apps, that will find it super handy.

[timsneath]

No problem. If there's someone else out there who wants Bluetooth on Windows from Flutter/Dart, I'm more than happy to collaborate on the Win32 API side of the house /cc @pauldemarco who may have some ideas on community contributors.

[Sunbreak]

I'd like to help. But I'm only familiar with BluetoothLE: https://github.com/woodemi/quick_blue

Any document for thermal printing on Win7?

[catchkvs]

@timsneath I also have usecase for bluetooth on windows. I was trying the example
https://github.com/timsneath/win32/blob/main/example/bluetooth.dart
But i am not able to discover any bluetooth devices. I am not getting error.

In the above example https://github.com/timsneath/win32/blob/main/example/bluetooth.dart#L16
no sure why btRadioHandle is not being used anywhere?

[timsneath]

Hi @catchkvs, there were some limitations with the FFI support in Dart 2.12 which made it hard to fully implement Bluetooth support. As a result, this sample doesn't work on the current stable release of Flutter or Dart. (That's why it wasn't listed in the README.)

Dart 2.13 will add support for packed structs and arrays, which makes this possible. I've updated the example accordingly, and now for example, on my machine it returns the following:

[C:\src\win32] dart example\bluetooth.dart
Found a radio with handle: 0x00000204
Radio name: TIM-SURFACE
Radio address: 03:55:55:8E:34:C8
Bluetooth radio is discoverable.
No devices found.

You'll need the dart2.13 branch of this package, along with the latest dev or master branch of Flutter or Dart, to be able to execute this sample, but you'll find the updated version here:
https://github.com/timsneath/win32/blob/dart2.13/example/bluetooth.dart

Until it's released, you can use this version of the package from your code by adding a dependency directly to the git reference, like this:

dependencies:
  win32:
    git: 
      url: https://github.com/timsneath/win32.git
      ref: dart2.13

Hope this helps!