Custom capacitor plugin android fails to load after adding 3rd party lib

i created a new custom plugin.
with just echo parms logic, the plugin loads and methods are available

now to add the real logic… it calls a 3rd party library

build is successful,

but load fails

2024-05-14 10:37:21.335 10764-10764 Capacitor               io.ionic.starter                     
           E  NativePlugin com.sd.plugins.estimoteplugin2.sduwbPlugin failed to load
                com.getcapacitor.PluginLoadException: Unable to load plugin instance. Ensure plugin is publicly accessible
               	at com.getcapacitor.PluginHandle.load(PluginHandle.java:107)
               	at com.getcapacitor.PluginHandle.<init>(PluginHandle.java:65)

the class name didn’t change, only the addition of the dependencies in the plugin from before with echo type method

this is my build process

npm run build – plugin
npm install …/plugin - app
npx cap sync - app
npm run build - app
sync project - android studio
build - android studio
debug (or run) android studio

I have rechecked, and all the plugin dependencies are listed in the app as external libraries.

if I comment out the external lib code the plugin loads and executes as expected…

app import

call method on plugin
     plugin invoked,  extract parms
         call implementation with parms
              implementation executes and returns value
     plugin set the value in result JSObject and call.resolve() it
app gets plugin data response

are these dependencies in the wrong location for the plugin to find? (classpath?)

on the ios side, I had to explicitly add the 3rd party framework to the app Podfile or the file would not be loaded
here it appears as a dependency of the app…

is there some place I can find the error causing the not loading?

don’t know what changed, suddenly it works…