So this is the #1 request we get for Subsurface-mobile on Android. Better
support for downloading from dive computers.
The future seems to be more and more BLE dive computers (which have their own
set of problems), but the current reality is that most dive computers that our
users have are cable based, and of them the vast majority are FTDI and Silicon
Labs based cables.
We have the ability to download from most of these computers on
Windows/Mac/Linux, of course, but more and more divers don't want to take a
laptop with them on dive trips.
iOS users of course are out of luck - BLE or nothing (unless you have a
specific hardware device to translate).
But on Android this should be easy. We have this sort of working with FTDI
based cables thanks to a GSOC project from a few years ago, but increasingly
new Android devices have additional security measures in place that prevent
access to '/sys' on the device which breaks the native code libraries that we
use.
As Anton has suggested a few times, the better path forward appears to be not
using those native libraries in the first place and instead using JNI to
connect to Java libraries that talk to devices under Android.
There appear to be two such projects, both oddly appear to have stopped being
actively developed a couple of years ago:
https://github.com/mik3y/usb-serial-for-android
<https://github.com/mik3y/usb-serial-for-android>
https://github.com/felHR85/UsbSerial <https://github.com/felHR85/UsbSerial>
This is all simply outside my comfort zone / area of expertise, and I'm hoping
to find someone who'd want to tackle this problem. I'm hopeful that Anton would
be willing to provide at least some guidance to get someone started - but sadly
he hasn't had the time to work on this himself...
If this is something that you'd like to help with, we'd love to hear from you!
/D
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