Make a mobile device a remote control for a tablet?

Question

I'm trying to make an app on an Android device that will control an application on an iPad or Android tablet. (I'm testing with an Samsung Galaxy S2 and an iPad 2).

The application is pretty simple for now. When one selects a colour on the Android mobile, that colour displays on the tablet device.

The question is, how to connect the two devices. Just now I've verified that I can pair the two devices using Bluetooth. Also, the Samsung has a "Kies" Wifi Direct feature (which I don't understand fully), that allows the iPad to connect to the Galaxy as a wifi hotspot.

The connections are there, but I don't know if either protocol can be used to actually get the apps to talk to each other to get the control I'm looking for.

Should I be using Bluetooth, Wifi, or something else?

And in whichever case, how?

Answer 1

My opinion is that you should not stick so much around the physical medium used for connectivity either is WiFi or Bluetooth. You should abstract this aspect, in both cases you will be using sockets (I'm speaking about Android), if it's Bluetooth you will be using Bluetooth Sockets, if it's WiFi: TCP sockets. You could have a intermediate layer that abstracts the type of connection and through a factory to use either Bluetooth or TCP.

Bluetooth - http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/wireless/bluetooth.html

For WiFi you should study if P2P would help.

You will need two applications: - one on the tablet - the server which listens for commands from the client (change color, do this or this) - second on the smartphone - the client which sends commands.