I am looking for equivalent of inputStream, OutputStream and BluetoothSocket in Swift.
What do we use when we are coding with Swift instead of those things in Android?
I have an app for Android now I want to create for iOS as well.
Typically Android's BluetoothSocket is used with SPP, which is not available on iOS. How you need to redesign this depends on what you're doing, what your firmware offers, and how much control you have over the Bluetooth device's development.
For MFi(*) devices, iAP2 (via ExternalAccessory) is very similar to SPP, so the same basic protocol and designs can be used. But in most cases, you have to develop a completely different protocol (most commonly over BLE GATT). CoreBluetooth and the class you've listed (CBPeripheral, etc) are how you interact with BLE GATT.
You can also dig into L2CAPP. It provides an interface similar to SPP, but I haven't worked with any firmware ADK that supports using it as an alternative.
(*) MFi is "Made for iPhone," and requires an extra chip in the hardware and has to go through Apple certification. It's worth looking into if you're building your own hardware. It gives you a few extra capabilities, though not nearly as many as people expect.
As #Sulthan already commented:
Simply said, there are no direct counterparts. You cannot rewrite the functionality 1-1 only changing names of classes.
For BLE devices use Core Bluetooth framework.
For Bluetooth Classic you need to use External Accessory framework (only for MFI accessories).
Related
I have written a code that transfers the data from one i-Device to another i-Device, but since Apple is coming with official unlocked devices, I want to extend the solution to transfer data from an i-Device to another platform based device.
What changes it will require? How to write this code?
Is there any reference that I can use?
Obviously you can not use the Game kit to communicate with a non-iOS devices.
You would have 2 options:
1 - Enroll the "Made for iPhone" program which allows you to create your own communication protocol, but I think you can not use bt profile for data exchange(like png,mp3..), this program is related to the development of external accessories like bt headsets etc. In this case you have to use EA Framework.
2 - If you want to develop apps for jailbroken devices, you can look at BTStack.
Is it possible to identify devices around me that have their bluetouth enabled?
I don't need to communicate with them, just know they are there.
I am looking for something similar to android's BluetouthDevice.startDiscovery()
Is something like this possible?
Apple turns out to be very restrictive about Bluetooth communications for iOS platform.
Focusing about a native application with Xcode (but not PhoneGap based - PhoneGap is a Xcode plugin that allows web apps to be converted into native ones; btw it gives a quite nice but limited access to underlying hardware resources) for a iOS device to communicate with bluetooth devices (even with discovery actions) the following conditions have to be met:
-) The device you're trying to discover must be equipped with Apple Bluetooth authentication chip (you can ask to Apple directly for the MFi program);
-) Internally your app must declare a protocol name (e.g.: net.yourcompany.proto0) which the devices you connect with must conform to;
-) You must use Apple's External Accessory Framework to establish communication with such devices.
In short, by this procedure Apple guarantees that the only Bluetooth communications an iOS device can establish are just with authorized and certified Bluetooth devices.
I've gone 400 Mph about this thing but I hope it can give you some pointer to start your search.
The topic is too wide to be treated here in its full length.
One thing you might want to look into is Bonjour and NSNetServiceBrowser.
You can publish a service and also search for other services around you. There are ways to run Bonjour in the background (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6345554/bonjour-in-the-background).
The only limitation with this approach is that everyone else would also need to be running the app as well. Also, by default Bonjour discovers over both WiFi and Bluetooth, something else you would probably need to look into.
(I am not interested in pure theory, but as a practical near or mid-term possibility, say within 12-24 months.)
As a developer familiar with (but not specializing in) two major smartphone platforms, should I expect an Android library to come out which can spoof itself onto an iPhone app's GameKit-based network. It seems reasonable that a Bluetooth interface between platforms might square the opportunity to make useful applications, in the same way that modems benefited PC/Mac platforms via Metcalfe's Law.
I am looking for one of two answers:
Is this obviously not likely (e.g. because of encryption)? If so, what is the reason? Is it possible in principle, but requiring years of reverse-engineering (like SMB/CIFS/Samba)? Or is it a no-brainer and just a matter of time? Please give evidence supporting your reason.
Is there an alternative way to have direct peer-to-peer networking besides GameKit? For example, a hand-rolled network using Bluetooth or ad-hoc WiFi? It would be nice to spoof an Android device into an existing iPhone app but my main question is, can the devices speak with each other at all!
Yes, it is possible. GameKit is a protocol using TCP and/or UDP over a BNEP Bluetooth connection. It also uses a trick to identify other iOS devices using the Extended Inquiry mechanism in Bluetooth 2.1+.
I was able to simulate the EIR responses, now, someone needs to reverse engineer the GameKit protocol. This doesn't need Bluetooth, as it is also used for GameKit connections over WLAN.
If anybody can re-implment GameKit for WLAN connections, I can finish the Bluetooth version.
No, and it wont come soon or even at all... Apple pride themselves with their security features, and bluetooth connections can access private data. There will probably not be any cross platform bluetooth framework until something is agreed upon by both companies.
Bump as said by a previous answerer uses a remote server, and the data transferred is not via BT.
GameKit is Bonjour so a Bonjour (which is on IP) over Bluetooth on Android should work.
That should be possible as Bluetooth is capable of setting up tcp/ip networks. Though I have no knowledge of the IPhone SDK whatsoever, but Android does have a BluetoothSocket and BluetoothServerSocket for TCP connections.
This article, http://blog.moritzhaarmann.de/blog/2014/04/27/sorry-state-of-p2p/ written in 2014, suggest it is possible via Bluetooth LE. Available in Android 4.3+ and iOS6+
Two issues:
According to the Android Dashboard only around 30 percent of Android devices support Bluetooth LE https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html?utm_source=ausdroid.net
Communication between Android-to-Android must be done using some other method (which is not a big problem) because Android devices cannot act as server for B LE connections.
Bounjour on the iPhone gives you full access to all of the Bluetooth protocols, so you don't have to use GameKit. As for when someone will provide an easy to use iPhone to Android GameKit like framework - hard to tell.
An iPhone can already talk to any other Bluetooth device using Bonjour today.
-t
It is absolutely possible! In fact I am amazed that more people haven't done it!
Theory:
Bluetooth is just a wireless socket that you push data across and it comes across the other side, just like tcp/ip.
Practice:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/bump-goes-cross-platform-with-new-android-app-upgrades-iphone-version-too/
Better yet, Bump is cross-platform, which means that you can bump an Android phone with an iPhone and it should work seamlessly.
I'm in the process of planning out a personal project that will be a media player and one of the things I would like to do is be able to dock my iPod touch (or any iPod or iPhone) and control it and play music off it like the speaker docs do that you can buy.
I found some information while searching around online for this but my question is can I make up a cable and use the serial protocol from any device or does Apple have this locked down so only certified/approved devices can communicate this way?
If you are looking to do this for yourself, I would recommend jailbreaking and the following resources on the web. These describe some methods of the Apple Accessory Protocol, and include some parts (at sparkfun) to execute. To get approved for the Apple method you need a corporation (or similar structure) and even legal counsel before you can get approved to even see the agreement you have to agree to in order to join.
http://nuxx.net/wiki/Apple_Accessory_Protocol
http://www.sparkfun.com/categories/101
There are even some great articles out there such as:
http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/ee476/FinalProjects/s2007/awr8_asl45/awr8_asl45/index.html
Good luck!
EDIT:
Since this is a relatively popular post, keep in mind that you can now use Bluetooth 4.0 LE for serial communication without approval from Apple (other than AppStore approval).
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternetWeb/Conceptual/CoreBluetooth_concepts/AboutCoreBluetooth/Introduction.html
Only devices in the Made for iPod program which use Apple's proprietary authentication chip can communicate with the External Accessory framework on the iPhone or iPod touch. Such devices must also expose a protocol that iPhone applications can use.
It is a reasonably involved process to be approved as a Made for iPod vendor of products (similar to the App Store approval process, but for hardware), but it has become a lot easier than it used to be. With iPhone OS 3.0, Apple has opened up the program to many more third parties than just the usual large accessory providers.
In your case, I'd actually wait and use another vendor's iPhone-controllable stereo. Manufacturers are just starting to come out with hardware controllable via iPhone applications, so it's only a matter of time before one of the larger accessory providers creates something like what you want. If they expose a protocol for controlling the device, all you'll have to do is write your application to control the device via that protocol.
Is it possible to transfer files of a bluetooth device, lets say a digital pen (e.g. Nokia or Logitech io2) to the iPhone? I am interested if I could do a native application that could somehow get that binary file sent by the digital pen and do something with it.
I am used to rfcomm and obex but I can only find inconclusive results when I search for that and the support in the iPhone SDK... Any ideas?
No, on a normal iPhone you are totally unable to do this.
However, it is totally capable and the functions most likely exist, but Apple doesn't want people using them so you aren't going to find anything in their documentation. An extremely large number of these functions exist. If you wrote an app containing one of these functions, Apple wouldn't let it into the app store.
They're extremely and reasonably concerned about safety. Bluetooth isn't exactly known for being secure in any form.
Look at the EAAccessory reference.
It seems like it should be possible to write a custom app that talks to any bluetooth device - you'd have to implement the file transfer protocol yourself, but now that apps are free to talk to bluetooth devices I don't think the API will prevent you from doing what you stated you want to do.
To my knowledge, no – the iPhone OS does currently not support filetransfers via Bluetooth. I think you will have to jailbreak the software to get enough access to the Bluetooth stack to pull it off.
It is very telling that even if you have Bluetooth turned on in your iPhone, it does not show up on other devices when searching for units to transfer files to. I suppose it's saying something in its Bluetooth signature that tells other devices that it doesn't receive files.