Discovery Manager

At the heart of Connect SDK is DiscoveryManager, a multi-protocol service discovery engine with a pluggable architecture. Much of your initial experience with Connect SDK will be with the DiscoveryManager class, as it consolidates discovered service information into ConnectableDevice objects.

DiscoveryManager supports discovering services of differing protocols by using DiscoveryProviders. Many services are discoverable over SSDP and are registered to be discovered with the SSDPDiscoveryProvider class.

As services are discovered on the network, the DiscoveryProviders will notify DiscoveryManager. DiscoveryManager is capable of attributing multiple services, if applicable, to a single ConnectableDevice instance. Thus, it is possible to have a mixed-mode ConnectableDevice object that is theoretically capable of more functionality than a single service can provide.

DiscoveryManager keeps a running list of all discovered devices and maintains a filtered list of devices that have satisfied any of your CapabilityFilters. This filtered list is used by the DevicePicker when presenting the user with a list of devices.

Connect SDK device discovery can be started in one line.

DiscoveryManager.getInstance().start();

Features

Filtering devices by capability

It will be necessary in many cases to filter out devices that don’t support a desired feature-set. DiscoveryManager provides the setCapabilityFilters method to provide for this ability.

Here is a simple example that discovers devices that support (video playback AND any media controls AND volume up/down) OR (image display).

CapabilityFilter videoFilter = new CapabilityFilter(
        MediaPlayer.Display_Video,
        MediaControl.Any,
        VolumeControl.Volume_Up_Down
);

CapabilityFilter imageCapabilities = new CapabilityFilter(
        MediaPlayer.Display_Image
);

DiscoveryManager.getInstance().setCapabilityFilters(videoFilter, imageCapabilities);

DeviceService registration

By default, Connect SDK is configured to discover all the services that it supports (webOS, Netcast, Chromecast, DIAL, & Roku). It is possible to support only a subset of these services by manually registering those services before starting DiscoveryManager for the first time.

DiscoveryManager.getInstance().registerDeviceService(AirPlayService.class, ZeroconfDiscoveryProvider.class);
DiscoveryManager.getInstance().registerDeviceService(CastService.class, CastDiscoveryProvider.class);
DiscoveryManager.getInstance().registerDeviceService(DIALService.class, SSDPDiscoveryProvider.class);
DiscoveryManager.getInstance().registerDeviceService(RokuService.class, SSDPDiscoveryProvider.class);
DiscoveryManager.getInstance().registerDeviceService(DLNAService.class, SSDPDiscoveryProvider.class); // LG TV devices only, includes NetcastTVService
DiscoveryManager.getInstance().registerDeviceService(WebOSTVService.class, SSDPDiscoveryProvider.class);

Pairing level

Connect SDK has support for pairing with certain devices. Having pairing disabled may reduce the number of supported capabilities that a ConnectableDevice has. Certain devices, although they may support the features you are filtering for, may not pass your CapabilityFilter if pairing is disabled.

See the Supported Features list for information on what devices require pairing for certain capabilities.

For the best user experience, Connect SDK has disabled pairing by default. Pairing can be enabled very easily, but it must be enabled before DiscoveryManager is started for the first time.

DiscoveryManager.getInstance().setPairingLevel(PairingLevel.ON);

Device store

When devices are connected to, there is certain information that is retained. This information is helpful for app relaunches, pairing, remembering commonly-used devices, and more. Connect SDK provides a ConnectableDeviceStore protocol to allow you to store ConnectableDevice information in a manner that suits your use case.

A default implementation, DefaultConnectableDeviceStore, will be used by DiscoveryManager if no other ConnectableDeviceStore is provided to DiscoveryManager when startDiscovery is called.

See also