Reading data from Arduino Bluetooth on Windows Phone 8.1 - windows-phone-8

Question

I am developing a code that will allow me to send small amounts of data between my arduino mega and my windows 8.1 phone using a HC-05 bluetooth module.
Sending data from the phone to the arduino was pretty simple, but I am having a dire time attempting to read data that comes back from the arduino that I send on the serial port.
For testing purposes my code is simple, sending ascii charaters 'a' & 'b' to turn an LED on & off, this could not work any better, but I am having trouble trying to figure out how to correctly read the data that I send back to my phone.
I send a single arbitrary ascii character back to the phone but I cannot for the life of me figure out the correct way of reading this data from the bluetooth stream I have setup.
I have been trying for nearly two days, but everything I try ends up freezing my phone with no exceptions thrown? A lot of posts online send me to the Nokia dev site which is now inactive.
I have tried using the 'datareader' and the 'streamreader' classes to do this but it always freezes, does anyone know how to make this work? And why my streamreader keeps freezing my phone?
I have tried to annotate my code appropriatley (seen below). The problem occurs in the 'Tick' event handler at the bottom of the code.
(FYI: All capabilities have been added to the manifest files so this shouldn't be the problem).
Thank you.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Navigation;
using Microsoft.Phone.Controls;
using Microsoft.Phone.Shell;
using Bluetooth_SL.Resources;
using Windows.Networking;
using Windows.Networking.Proximity;
using Windows.Networking.Sockets;
using Windows.Devices.Bluetooth;
using System.IO;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework;
using System.Windows.Threading;
using Windows.Storage.Streams; // <-- for the datareader class
namespace Bluetooth_SL // silverlight, does this matter?
{
public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage
{
DispatcherTimer Timer = new DispatcherTimer();
StreamSocket socket = new StreamSocket();
StreamWriter writer;
StreamReader reader;
public MainPage()
{
InitializeComponent();
Timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(1000); // dispatcher timer used to check for incoming data from arduino
Timer.Tick += Timer_Tick; // event handler for dispatcher timer
}
protected override void OnNavigatedFrom(NavigationEventArgs e) // frees up memory
{
socket.Dispose();
}
private void Connect_But_Tap(object sender, System.Windows.Input.GestureEventArgs e)
{
ConnectToBluetooth();
}
private async void ConnectToBluetooth() // sets up the connection // this works fine
{
// Configure PeerFinder to search for all paired devices.
PeerFinder.AlternateIdentities["Bluetooth:Paired"] = "";
var pairedDevices = await PeerFinder.FindAllPeersAsync();
if (pairedDevices.Count == 0)
{
Debug_Block.Text = "No paired devices were found.";
}
else
{
Debug_Block.Text = "Found";
PeerInformation selectedDevice = pairedDevices[0]; // pick the first paired device
try // 'try' used in the case the socket has already been connected
{
await socket.ConnectAsync(selectedDevice.HostName, "1");
writer = new StreamWriter(socket.OutputStream.AsStreamForWrite());
writer.AutoFlush = true;
reader = new StreamReader(socket.InputStream.AsStreamForRead());
Debug_Block.Text = "Connected";
}
catch (Exception x)
{
Debug_Block.Text = x.ToString();
}
}
}
private void SendButton_Tap(object sender, System.Windows.Input.GestureEventArgs e) // this works perfectly
{
try { writer.WriteLine("a"); } // attempts to write the ascii 'a' to the arduino which turns on the on-board LED
catch { Debug_Block.Text = "Failed to write"; }
}
private void SendButton_Off_Tap(object sender, System.Windows.Input.GestureEventArgs e) // this works perfectly
{
try { writer.WriteLine("b"); } // attempts to write the ascii 'b' to the arduino which turns off the on-board LED
catch { Debug_Block.Text = "Failed to write"; }
}
private void ReadButtonToggle_Tap(object sender, System.Windows.Input.GestureEventArgs e) // toggles the timer on and off
{
if(Timer.IsEnabled == true)
{
Timer.Stop();
Debug_Block.Text = "Timer Stopped";
}
else
{
Timer.Start();
Debug_Block.Text = "Timer Started";
}
}
void Timer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e) // THIS IS THE PROBLEM
{
Debug_Block.Text = "Tick";
Debug_Block.Text = reader.ReadLine(); // <-- ALWAYS FREEZES HERE
Timer.Stop(); // This line is temporary for debugging
}
}
}