I have a non-A2DP single ear BT headset (Plantronics 510) and would like to use it with my Android HTC Magic to listen to low quality audio like podcasts/audio books.
After much googling I found that only phone call audio can be routed to the non-A2DP BT headsets. (I would like to know if you have found a ready solution to route all kinds of audio to non-A2DP BT headsets)
So I figured, somehow programmatically I can channel the audio to the stream that carries phone call audio. This way I will fool the phone to carry my mp3 audio to my BT headset. I wrote following simple code.
import android.content.*;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.media.*;
import java.io.*;
import android.util.Log;
public class BTAudioActivity extends Activity
{
private static final String TAG = "BTAudioActivity";
private MediaPlayer mPlayer = null;
private AudioManager amanager = null;
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
amanager = (AudioManager) getSystemService(Context.AUDIO_SERVICE);
amanager.setBluetoothScoOn(true);
amanager.setMode(AudioManager.MODE_IN_CALL);
mPlayer = new MediaPlayer();
try {
mPlayer.setDataSource(new FileInputStream(
"/sdcard/sample.mp3").getFD());
mPlayer.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_VOICE_CALL);
mPlayer.prepare();
mPlayer.start();
} catch(Exception e) {
Log.e(TAG, e.toString());
}
}
@Override
public void onDestroy()
{
mPlayer.stop();
amanager.setMode(AudioManager.MODE_NORMAL);
amanager.setBluetoothScoOn(false);
super.onDestroy();
}
}
As you can see I tried combinations of various methods that I thought will fool the phone to believe my audio is a phone call:
- Using MediaPlayer's setAudioStreamType(STREAM_VOICE_CALL)
- using AudioManager's setBluetoothScoOn(true)
- using AudioManager's setMode(MODE_IN_CALL)
But none of the above worked. If I remove the AudioManager calls in the above code, the audio plays from speaker and if I replace them as shown above then the audio stops coming from speakers, but it doesn't come through the BT headset. So this might be a partial success.
I have checked that the BT headset works alright with phone calls.
There must be a reason for Android not supporting this. But I can't let go of the feeling that it is not possible to programmatically reroute the audio. Any ideas?
P.S. above code needs following permission
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS"/>
Best Answer
This thread may be long dead but for those who might be trying the same thing, some notes from the AudioManager docs may be useful. It looks like the missing element is the startBluetoothSco() command but there are restrictions on the use of this channel. From the Android Dev site here:
Note that I have not tested this, I'm just passing along a lead I found in researching a similar project. I think Jayesh was close to the solution and the restrictions above may have been what was keeping it from working.