Bluetooth Drivers on Android Device

Question

I'm currently looking into communicating with a bluetooth enabled device from an android app that I'm developing. In order for a PC to communicate with this device, one must install drivers on the computer. My question is, if I am required to install bluetooth drivers on the PC, will I not be able to communicate with the device using an android app? Essentially I'm trying to find out how the drivers come into play with the communication of the dev

Answer 1

Android only supports certain Bluetooth device "profiles". What is the device you are trying to communicate with? Fortunately many Bluetooth peripherals use Serial Port Profile (SPP), so there's a decent chance you can easily talk to your device via a BluetoothSocket.

See this topic for more info on writing apps for Bluetooth

EDIT: Sorry, to more directly answer your specific question, your users will not/cannot install OS "drivers" on their Android devices for your Bluetooth peripheral. Assuming you can use BluetoothSocket to talk to your peripheral, everything else will be up to you and your app.

Answer 2

The idea of a driver is that it is software to enable a hardware component. Hardware drivers generally sit between the Hardware Abstraction Layer and device. In addition, hardware that works without having a formal driver installation step still has a driver which was bundled into the operating system. I am confused how your research could bring your understanding this direction: will I not be able to communicate with the device using an android app. If you mean, "will your end users require a driver", the short answer is yes and "will my development computer require a driver to write the computer side of my application", again yes.