CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidiosmysqlsocketsgoogle-cloud-messaging
PotatoManager
PotatoManager

Reputation: 1775

Sending realtime location updates from J2EE server to android

I have a IOT project where multiple devices update their current locations to the IOT server. The server parses the hex data received and stores them in a MySQL database. I have a independent REST API server that queries this database to retrieve the current position of the device and display it on a map in Android.

Now because of the refresh rates of the device and the Android API request, there is a considerable latency in updating the positions on the map. How can I convert this to a real-time design, eliminating the need to read from the database but just directly sending the data to the Android client?

Note: Multiple android devices may request live updates of the same GPS device.

I am considering using firebase GCM push notifications to deliver the position to an Android/iOS device which has requested for the live view updates. However, I think this would be inefficient. As this would not be very stateless as I would have to monitor the list of devices currently requesting push notifications and do some handshaking to start/stop the notifications.

Can I use web sockets instead to make a connection between the android and the server app itself? Does the quality of the internet connection matter excessively here? I realize that somewhat like UDP for updating the position the most recent packet alone matters here and any skipped position data won't contribute much.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 214

Answers (1)

Sir1
Sir1

Reputation: 742

based on our discussion I think GCM is a good enough option for this kind of problems.

Your total number of users and concurrent users are not that much, As I know there is a limitation for FCM that is " For each sender ID, FCM allows 1000 connections in parallel." you can find it here

The other limit is about number of stored messages at FCM. Offline users do not receive messages until the become online and the limit is 100 messages. so this can be a problem, but when the user become online FCM will send a message that can be handled in client, I mean you will informed of the situation so you can ask the server to send last update messages, but if the only last one is important for you, this is not the case and you do not have any problem, because the client will receive the last update very soon.

Anyway, based on GCM/FCM you just need to worry about sending messages when you will get updates. Consider that GCM is not about only push notifications, you can handle the messages inside BroadcastReceiver.With FCM, you can send two types of messages to clients: reference

  1. Notification messages, sometimes thought of as "display messages."

  2. Data messages, which are handled by the client app.

in this case you need to use data messages.

So, based on these information, I suggest following scenario :

  1. Devices send updates to the server side.
  2. server will send GCM messages for the interested clients on the server side, you can handle the interested clients and you need to make it parallel.

Hope this helps you. if there is any other aspect we should consider, let me know.

thanks

Upvotes: 1

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