Week 12

Progress summary for Week 12 (August 10-16, 2026) of the AGL Bluetooth Integration project.

  • Integrated Bluetooth media metadata, playback controls, phone volume, and direct AVRCP cover-art retrieval into ivi-homescreen on AGL.

Status#

  • Status: Completed
  • Timeline: August 10, 2026 to August 16, 2026

Progress#

1. Reviewed Gerrit Feedback for the Bluetooth Settings UI#

Review feedback on flutter-ics-homescreen change 31887 identified broad ref.watch(bluetoothProvider) calls that rebuild widgets when unrelated Bluetooth state changes, and I will start work on it.

I also revisited the earlier native crash during pairing and disconnection errors. It was caused by a compiler toolchain and ABI mismatch, so bluez_native needs to be built with Clang to match the Flutter application.

The phone still disconnects automatically immediately after its first pairing. I reproduced the same behavior with bluetoothctl, without the Flutter UI or native library, which indicates that it is not caused by the application. I will compare a direct connection with a manual pair, trust, and connect sequence to isolate the BlueZ behavior.

I also observed that the first pair-and-connect attempt does not establish AVRCP. After disconnecting and reconnecting the phone, AVRCP and the media features work correctly. I will test the connection sequence to determine whether trust, timing, or profile initialization causes the first connection to miss AVRCP.

2. Integrated the Bluetooth Media Player into AGL#

  • Displayed the current track's cover art, title, artist, album, elapsed time, and duration in the AGL media screen.
  • Connected the previous, pause/play, and next buttons to the remote Bluetooth player.
  • Displayed the current shuffle and repeat states.
  • Added the phone's media volume to the bottom horizontal volume control. This value represents the volume reported by and controlled from the connected phone; it is separate from the vertical vehicle audio controls on the left.
AGL ivi-homescreen Bluetooth media view paused on Nancy Mulligan by Ed Sheeran from the album Divide (Deluxe), showing the Divide cover art, elapsed time 01:20 of 03:00, previous, pause and next controls, shuffle and repeat states, and the phone volume slider at the bottom.
Bluetooth playback paused on “Nancy Mulligan” by Ed Sheeran. The screen shows the “÷ (Deluxe)” album name, Divide cover art, 01:20 of 03:00 playback progress, transport controls, shuffle and repeat states, and the phone volume along the bottom.

3. Documented the Runtime Requirements#

Direct cover-art retrieval without mpris-proxy.service still requires:

  • bluetoothd for pairing, connection, AVRCP, and MediaPlayer1.
  • obexd with BlueZ's experimental Image/BIP API enabled.
  • BlueZ experimental features enabled with -E or --experimental.
  • A remote phone that publishes both MediaPlayer1.ObexPort and Track.ImgHandle.

Without mpris-proxy, the system does not expose an org.mpris.MediaPlayer2 desktop proxy or mpris:artUrl. The Flutter application does not require either one because CoverArtService downloads the image directly.

Next Week Plan#

  • Continue working on flutter-ics-homescreen change 31887.
  • Compare BlueZ's direct Connect operation with manually handling the Pair → Trust → Connect sequence, then determine which approach handles the initial connection and AVRCP setup more reliably.