Starting and stopping an Android app remotely through PC or another smartphone

Question

I have an Android Data collection App which collects sensors data. First, I enter the activity name in this app and then press the start button. After the recording is completed, I press the stop button and exit the app. For another activity, I restart the app again.

In my experiments, now I am using 5 smartphones on a participants's body while performing an activity so its bit difficult to start and stop this app for each activity manually as each activity is for 3-4 minutes and is a bit annoying.

I want to control this app remotely, either through another smartphone or PC. For example, like Airdroid: http://airdroid.com/

However, Airdroid doesn't have the ability to start and stop (plus enter any data) at this point.

Is it possible to enter a name in this app, start it and stop it on multiple smartphones at the same time remotely ? May be using Bluetooth, local WIFI, or internet.

To summarize, I want to the following actions on an app remotely: 1) Start an App 2) Enter a name in its field (it can be worked around too so its optional) 3) Press start button 4) Press stop button when needed.

I looked it up online but most work has been done on controlling PC though smartphone and not the other way around.

Thanks Zubkan

Answer 1

Integrate a HTTP server into your app, then you can control it easily using a web browser. A very nice option for Android is NanoHttpd, which comes as a java class.

Edit: Some additional notes:
This probably requires the phone to be connected via WiFi, because carriers might not allow this. And if the phone isn't rooted, you cannot run the server on Port 80, but Port 8000 or so will do.