Anyone have example code for ESP32 as media controller for Android/iPhone Media Apps

Question

There's actually another post with this very same topic but no answers on that post. Back in January of 2020, the last commenter said he had sample code and then he went dark without posting the actually code. The thread is here:

Want to create bluetooth audio control (volume up/down, play, pause, etc.) for smartphone

My problem is the exactly the same as the original post. Amazon and Aliexpress have literally hundreds of these "media buttons" that you can buy and pair via bluetooth with your Android or iOS. You can then playback media on iOS/Android and the "media buttons" can control the playback. Pretty common controls are volume up/down, next, previous, play and pause.

I've written a lot of Arduino code for Nano, Uno and even MKR. I've written a bunch of ESP8266 and ESP32 code as well. Usually when I try and learn something, a few google searches will find an example that I can figure out. For this, I've been able to find nothing.

Every tutorial or sample code is about how to send commands to the ESP32 via Bluetooth or pair an ESP32 with a bluetooth joystick, etc. None of those examples help me understand what's needed for an ESP32 to pair with my Android and act as media buttons, sending volume up, down and play/pause commands via bluetooth.

Can anyone help with example code for doing this with an ESP32? (by the way, this forum would not let me comment on the original post or I would have. it said I didn't have enough karma points or something)

Answer 1

Well after I posted this question, I kept googling. Literally hours of googling at this point. Then I stumbled across this example:

https://github.com/T-vK/ESP32-BLE-Keyboard

I wrote that sketch to my ESP32, paired my iPhone and it immediately starting controlling music playback on my phone. After looking at the code, it's so simple that I'm embarrassed I couldn't figure this out on my own. In case the link goes dead, I'll paste the code here:

#include 

BleKeyboard bleKeyboard;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
  Serial.println("Starting BLE work!");
  bleKeyboard.begin();
}

void loop() {
  if(bleKeyboard.isConnected()) {
    Serial.println("Sending 'Hello world'...");
    bleKeyboard.print("Hello world");

    delay(1000);

    Serial.println("Sending Enter key...");
    bleKeyboard.write(KEY_RETURN);

    delay(1000);

    Serial.println("Sending Play/Pause media key...");
    bleKeyboard.write(KEY_MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE);

    delay(1000);

    Serial.println("Sending Ctrl+Alt+Delete...");
    bleKeyboard.press(KEY_LEFT_CTRL);
    bleKeyboard.press(KEY_LEFT_ALT);
    bleKeyboard.press(KEY_DELETE);
    delay(100);
    bleKeyboard.releaseAll();

  }
  Serial.println("Waiting 5 seconds...");
  delay(5000);
}