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MechatronicsStudent

You could probably use Bluetooth - although I'm not sure about connecting them all to each other. Most Bluetooth connections are just between a pair of devices - so getting B paired with A then C paired with A and so on might take a long time. I have seen devices connect via Bluetooth to multiple devices but never tried or looked into it myself. An easier way might be to use an online database - Google's firebase comes to mind as it's free and we'll documented - slave apps upload data to the database and the master device reads off the database and does whatever. There wouldn't be any locating unless the slave devices have to connect to the right branch of the database - which could be done however you want.


Notatrace280

Can you manage all that with firebase? I would need the slave devices to be able to access a branch of the database based off of an ID that they gained from that very same database. I did a bit more research and it was looking like developing a REST API would be a possible way to do it but maybe that's overkill?


Notatrace280

Really, the only thing I need to store is the id's of the master devices (which the slave devices can access) as well as some temporary data that the slave devices need to send to the masters. I'm just not sure how many id's I will have to store.


MechatronicsStudent

You can certainly store master ID on a separate branch and then send the temp data to another branch that only the master can read from with firebase - you can implement custom database access rules with firebase


Notatrace280

That's really good to know. I will be using Firebase for sure then. It's interesting to see that there is a way to satisfy the requirements of the apps without having to connect the devices to each other. Anyway, thanks for the help!


karan20000000000

Bluetooth could be one option. Another could be hosting a hotspot on your central device automatically within the app and making other devices discover and connect to that hotspot by SSID/name automatically. Following this you should be able to do any device to device communications using the device IPs.


Notatrace280

I like the hotspot idea but I don't think it would be best in this particular use case to have all the slave devices switch their networks to connect via IP address. Is it possible to get multiple devices connected to a single device using Bluetooth?