B4A-Bridge-Relay-Free by 12Lab

About B4A-Bridge-Relay-Free by 12Lab Android App

This is the Free / Ad-Supported version of B4A-Bridge-Relay. The paid version uses a small fraction (<0.3Mb) of the storage space due to Ad overhead (5+Mb), and allows unlimited connections (within IP addressing spec). There are both banner and interstitial ads. There is no package management. There is a connection quantity limit.

Tired of manually switching the B4A IDE over between different devices, installing each test apk separately to each device? Are you interested in saving some time testing multiple devices?

B4A-Bridge is a tool for Basic4android developers which allows connection of the IDE to a physical device over the local network or a Bluetooth connection. However, if you have multiple devices to test on, the process of cycling the IDE through several devices worth of deploying the app is cumbersome, and takes more time than necessary.

Enter: B4A-Bridge-Relay (and now, -Free). Running just one instance of this app on one device, and registering the IPs of other devices, allows you to deploy an app to all of the devices at once from the IDE. It is not necessary to install B4A-Bridge-Relay on all devices, just at least one device, and connect the IDE to that one. The standard B4A-Bridge can still be used on the rest of the devices, if you prefer. But the Relay can be used on all of them; just don't configure a client if none is needed, and then it functions the same as the standard B4A-Bridge.

Additionally, the B4A-Bridge-Relay shows progress during an apk deploy, so you can be aware of the progress, rather than wondering if it is timing out. Perhaps you just want to confirm the deployment transfer started before walking away for a few minutes. If you find yourself in an area with poor WiFi and no BT available, this feature can save you some guessing. The 'H'eartbeat indicator will also assist with this situation, and the colored status text makes it easy to tell at a glance.

B4A-Bridge-Relay also displays more Server information than the standard B4A-Bridge. In WiFi mode, the port used is displayed after the IP address. In Bluetooth mode, the MAC Address and the Name are displayed. These identifiers are helpful in certain situations.

Use: Long-press on Use-Clients to add clients, Long-press on Skip-Clients to remove clients. Short presses just enable or disable the relay operation, respectively. After selecting Use-Clients, hit F2 in the B4A IDE to reconnect, which forces the downstream client connections to the other devices.

When adding a client address, you can now use a range or the '*' wildcard in the last segment. 192.168.2.4-8 will auto-populate clients .4,.5,.6,.7,.8. The end of the range can be left off, in which case it defaults to -254. If the wildcard is used, such as 192.168.2.* , then .2,.3,...,.253,.254 is auto-populated. And, if some of those IP addresses in the range do not actually have a real associated target device, that is fine; B4A-Bridge-Relay will just skip over them if the IDE-initiated connection attempt fails. Entering the device's address as a client will be ignored, as will any duplicate client addresses; this also functions as a cancel operation.

The Status area shows the first few connected clients in the client list. To see the full list, long-press on Skip Clients, scroll through it as needed, then cancel when finished.

See http://themr23.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/b4a-bridge-relay-by-12lab/ for more information, including directions for use. Original basis app has more information at http://www.basic4android.com.

B4A-Bridge-Relay does not contact any external server, although -Free does serve Ads from AdMob.
The "read sensitive log data" permission is required in order to show the app logs in the IDE.
A derivative work authorized by Erel. 12Lab is not affiliated with Anywhere Software.