SmartScan Android Client

Overview

The SmartScan Client library enables Android apps to connect to the SmartScan app’s AIDL services for generating embeddings from text or images. It provides simple client interfaces for the Text Embedder and Image Embedder services.

Note: The SmartScan app must be installed on the same device for these clients to function.

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Dependencies

The SmartScan Client depends only on and re-exports the smartscan-sdk core module.

This provides users with the minimal core non-ML functionality (indexing, search, embedding-utils and more) used in the SmartScan app, while allowing access to the ML inference capabilities via the AIDL services and the SmartScan app.

For details, see the smartscan-sdk.

Usage

1. TextEmbedderClient

Provides access to the Text Embedding Service.

Purpose: Generate vector embeddings from text strings or batches of text for downstream tasks such as semantic search or similarity comparison.

Usage Example:

val textEmbedderClient = TextEmbedderClient(context)
textEmbedderClient.connectService()

val text = "Text to embed"
val embedding = textEmbedderClient.embed(text)

textEmbedderClient.disconnectService()

Batch Example:

val texts = listOf("first sentence", "second sentence")
val embeddings = textEmbedderClient.embedBatch(texts)

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2. ImageEmbedderClient

Provides access to the Image Embedding Service.

Purpose: Generate vector embeddings from images (as Bitmap) for visual search or similarity tasks.

Usage Example

val imageEmbedderClient = ImageEmbedderClient(context)
imageEmbedderClient.connectService()

val embedding = imageEmbedderClient.embed(bitmap)

Batch Example:

val images: List<Bitmap> = ...
val embeddings = imageEmbedderClient.embedBatch(images)

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Connection Lifecycle

Both clients expose:

• connectService() — Bind to the SmartScan service.
• disconnectService() — Unbind and reset the connection.
• isConnected: StateFlow<Boolean> — Reflects connection state in real time.

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Error Handling

Embedding methods throw EmbedderClientException if:

• The service is not connected.
• The embedding operation fails.

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Direct AIDL Usage (Without the Client Library)

Developers who prefer to manage service binding and communication manually can use the AIDL interfaces directly.

ITextEmbedderService.aidl

package com.fpf.smartscan;

import java.util.List;

interface ITextEmbedderService {
    int getEmbeddingDim();
    void closeSession();
    float[] embed(in String data);
    float[] embedBatch(in List<String> data); // concatenated output
}

IImageEmbedderService.aidl

package com.fpf.smartscan;

import java.util.List;

interface IImageEmbedderService {
    int getEmbeddingDim();
    byte[] getDelimiter();
    void closeSession();
    float[] embed(in byte[] data);
    float[] embedBatch(in byte[] data); // inputs and outputs are concatenated
}

Using these interfaces, apps can bind to the SmartScan services (com.fpf.smartscan.intent.TEXT_EMBED and com.fpf.smartscan.intent.IMAGE_EMBED) and handle embedding operations directly without the SmartScan Client library. You will also need to add the necessary permissions and entries to your Android manifest if bypassing the library; refer to the library’s manifest for the required configuration.

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