Bluetooth Debugging on Android Wear

I’ve just bought a new ASUS ZenWatch and I’m working on a small application to extract the sensors data from the watch.

This post ( http://developer.android.com/training/wearables/apps/bt-debugging.html ) is describing the basic steps required to setup a device for debugging and to setup a debugging session. I’ve listed below some additional steps to help with the troubleshooting if things doesn’t work as planned.

Android Debug Bridge (adb)

Android Debug Bridge (adb) is a versatile command line tool that lets you communicate with an emulator instance or connected Android-powered device. It is a client-server program that includes three components:

• A client, which runs on your development machine. You can invoke a client from a shell by issuing an adb command. Other Android tools such as DDMS also create adb clients.
• A server, which runs as a background process on your development machine. The server manages communication between the client and the adb daemon running on an emulator or device.
• A daemon, which runs as a background process on each emulator or device instance.

Setup Devices for Debugging

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1. Enable USB debugging on the handheld:
   • Open the Settings app and scroll to the bottom.
   • If it doesn’t have a Developer Options setting, tap About Phone (or About Tablet), scroll to the bottom, and tap the build number 7 times.
   • Go back and tap Developer Options.
   • Enable USB debugging.
2. Enable Bluetooth debugging on the wearable:
   1. Tap the home screen twice to bring up the Wear menu.
   2. Scroll to the bottom and tap Settings.
   3. Scroll to the bottom. If there’s no Developer Options item, tap About, and then tap the build number 7 times.
   4. Tap the Developer Options item.
   5. Enable Debug over Bluetooth.

Set Up a Debugging Session

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• On the handheld, open the Android Wear companion app.
• Tap the menu on the top right and select Settings.
• Enable Debugging over Bluetooth. You should see a tiny status summary appear under the option:

Host: disconnected
Target: connected

• Connect the handheld to your machine over USB.
• In the Android Studio open the Terminal (Alt+F12 Windows) and run:

  adb forward tcp:4444 localabstract:/adb-hub
  adb connect localhost:4444

  Note: You can use any available port that you have access to.

  • adb forward forwards socket connections from a specified local port to a specified remote port on the emulator/device instance. Map a socket through the phone that is paired to your Wear device.
  • adb connect will connect to the device
• A message will appear on the phone to allow Wear Debugging, press OK

• In the Android Wear companion app, you should see the status change to:

Host: connected
Target: connected

Well, this is the happy flow.

While debugging I’ve encountered some issues, especially after disconnecting the phone from the USB cable.

First, print a list of all attached emulator/device instances:

adb devices
List of devices attached
LGD855bxxxxx  device

In this case you can see only the phone and not the watch, so you will need to execute

adb forward tcp:4444 localabstract:/adb-hub
adb connect localhost:4444

In other cases you may get the error message

error: more than one device/emulator

You may need to terminates the adb server process:

adb kill-server

Now you can execute the adb forward and adb connect commands

adb forward tcp:4444 localabstract:/adb-hub
adb connect localhost:4444

If you get an error message

error: device unauthorized.

Try revoking the permissions on the device – Developer options -> Revoke USB debugging authorizations. Then plug the device in and accept it again.