location-samples | Multiple samples showing the best practices | Android library

I' trying to implement Google's android foreground location sample from github in my application. It works fine in the first run of the application. It requests for location permission and when the user grants permission, the service is starting flawlessly and fetches location.

But when the app runs the next time while it already has the permission, it crashes by showing a NullPointerException. I'm not able to narrow down the problem. What is different in the second run of the app which already has the permission? Getting error in OnStart() in mService.requestLocationUpdates(); line. Does it has to do anything with the package name that is declared in the LocationUpdatesService? or is it something else with permission? or with binding?

Stacktrace

I'm not sure what the behaviour should be in this case.

In the documentation it says that:

An app is considered to be accessing location in the background unless one of the following conditions is satisfied:

• An activity belonging to the app is visible.
• The app is running a foreground service that has declared a foreground service type of location.

In the example provided by google, they use an Activity which starts a foreground service in the foreground:

https://github.com/android/location-samples/tree/master/LocationUpdatesForegroundService

In my case, I need to start tracking locations once a bluetooth device is connected to my device (Using a manifest-registered broadcast receiver) - which could be in the background, or after the app terminated).

So, I'm declaring the service in the manifest like they say:

I'm trying to adapt Google's LocationsUpdatesForegroundService example into Kotlin to use in my app. Now, everything is going fine, until I need to make a reference to a service equal to null. That doesn't 'cause any problems within the Java code it originates from but, when I try to implement it in Kotlin, even if use null!!, I get a KotlinNullPointerException when I try to run the app and the app crashes. I'm not quite sure how to avoid this or set it in a different way. I've spent a few hours on this and sometime browsing StackOverFlow without really being able to find a solution for it. If anyone could help me, it'd be greatly appreciated. I've enclosed the link to the code I'm going off of here:

https://github.com/android/location-samples/blob/master/LocationUpdatesForegroundService/app/src/main/java/com/google/android/gms/location/sample/locationupdatesforegroundservice/MainActivity.java#L127

...as well as the necessary code I'm using below.

Relevant code from my Main Activity: