Beacon scanning stops after 10 minutes when app is on foreground and enableForegroundServiceScanning is used.

[elican-doenyas]

Expected behavior

Beacon scanning should continue as usual independent of the time app is used.

Actual behavior

Beacon scanning stops after ~10 minutes while app is on foreground and enableForegroundServiceScanning is called. This is also reproducible in the AltBeaconReference application.

Steps to reproduce this behavior

• Call beaconManager.enableForegroundServiceScanning
• Start ranging beacons with call to beaconManager.startRangingBeacons()
• Open the app and leave it on foreground for 10+ minutes
• Observe that beacon scanning halts after ~10 minutes

Mobile device model and OS version

Samsung S23 - Android 14

Android Beacon Library version

org.altbeacon:android-beacon-library:2.20.5 & org.altbeacon:android-beacon-library:2.20

[elican-doenyas]

@davidgyoung I have pinpointed the reason for this issue, the DEFAULT_SCAN_TIMOUT_MILLIS was reduced from 30 minutes to 10 minutes in the Android OS with the following commit;

https://android-review.googlesource.com/c/platform/packages/modules/Bluetooth/+/2237636/1/android/app/src/com/android/bluetooth/btservice/AdapterService.java

So the variable in the CycledLeScanner class to restart scanning and enforce long scans below;

public static final long ANDROID_N_MAX_SCAN_DURATION_MILLIS = 30 * 60 * 1000l; // 30 minutes

should be switched to 10 minutes.

Also, as far as I understand, in order to enforce long scans we need to set the mLongScanForcingEnabled parameter of CycledLeScanner, but I could not find where we can set this as an integrator of the library.

[davidgyoung]

@elican-doenyas apologies for the delayed response here.

The limitation in long-running scans has been around since Android 8.1, but I was unaware that they reduced it from 30 min to 10 min until you reported this issue. The good news is that the library already has a built-in workaround for this as described in #529. The bad news is that the library mechanism to work around this limitation needs to be adjusted to 10 min.

I just made a new change that updates the library's interval for long scans from 30 mins to 10 mins match the change in Android #1207

In order to make this work, you have to update to 2.21.0-beta2 (just published today, it may take a few hours to sync) and then enable this option in your manifest as descried in #529

OR easier yet, library version 2.21 and higher has a new settings api that makes this much easier to configure:

        // Use new configuration API in library version 2.21
        val settings = Settings(scanStrategy = Settings.IntentScanStrategy(), longScanForcingEnabled = true)
        // This line below will apply the new beacon scanning settings immediately  Any individual
        // settings not specified on the new settings object will revert to defaults.
        // If you only want to make a partial change to the settings, without reverting to defaults
        // for any settings unspecified you may call `beaconManager.adjustSettings(settings)`
        beaconManager.replaceSettings(settings)

[davidgyoung]

Fixed in #1207