I'm using an app that uses Bluetooth low energy to scan and detect devices however it does not detects other phones
is there a specific way on flutter to make it detect other mobile phones
You can only detect BLE devices that are advertising their services. A mobile phone often does not do that on its own. There are two solutions:
Use an already available app on the other device to advertise some service. One of the possible apps I personally use is nRF Connect, another one would be BLE Peripheral.
This might not be sufficient depending on your project and goal this might not be sufficient. If you need some specific service or characteristic that can't be generated by pre-existing apps you have to develop your own app for advertising. This would be possible with flutter_ble_peripheral (limited functionality on iOS)
Related
I want to write an app that when installed makes the smartphone broadcast a unique string to other smartphones using the app. So the app shall broadcast and check for broadcasts constantly in the background while not draining to much energy. I'd like to implement the app in Flutter. So if you could suggest a plugin or a native android/ios api that is suited for this usecase I would greatly appreciate it.
how to detect beacon signal and do we need to make any app to manage it or any predefined app or site is available?
I want to know how Beacon works and which Beacon is suitable for retail.
You need a mobile phone with Bluetooth 4.0 to detect beacons. They emit a BLE signal which is a little different from the normal Bluetooth signal. There are many generic apps in the play store and maybe in the app store to detect them.
But if you are looking for real functionality related to that, then you'll be needing the retail store-specific mobile app so that it can show you relevant updates in the app.
I'm trying to compare the possibilities of use beetween Apple WatchOS and Android Wear when it comes to using them without the phone nearby. And without conection to internet (Wi-Fi).
I own a Android Wear and have tested the possibilities but cant get an Apple Watch and all the info I can find is this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205547
It says that with wifi you can: Use apps that support Wi-Fi. But what does it mean to support Wi-Fi? Does that mean third party apps cannot be used without internet in any case?
Thanks very much for the help!
Third party apps can run on watchOS without a network connection even if the Watch is not connected to the paired iPhone.
That piece of documentation you linked is only showing which system apps can be used without being connected to an iPhone with/without network connection.
If your watchOS app is not network based, it can fully function even when the Watch is not connected to the iPhone and there are no known Wifi networks available.
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 want to place bluetooth devices in different locations and record when the phone gets into each's range. I realize iphone can only connect to mfi devices but can it find out a device id for non-mfi??
If there is a way, would this pass apples app review? I need this app to be able to get into the app store.
Yup, if you have Bluetooth enabled on the iPhone other devices can connect to it. In particular they could do SDP queries (or Remote Name Requests or even a RFCOMM connect).
Or if the phone is in Bluetooth discoverable mode the other devices could do device discovery (inquiry) to find it. (Does the phone stay in discoverable mode when locked?)
It's not entirely clear from your question whether you want an iPhone app to detect the devices, or the devices to detect the phone.
If you have the former in mind, your requirement is exactly what BtLE's (Bluetooth 4.0/Smart/LE) advertising capability is for. Apple's iBeacon technology is such an implementation, or you might roll your own. It'll allow you to do fine grained location in an iOS6+ app running on 4S, 5, and recent iPads. BtLE advertisement detecting apps will easily pass App store guidelines.
From the other direction, devices with BT 2.x - 4.x radios, or with wifi radios, or with various scanners and software radios, will be able to detect mobile phones, tablets, and other radio equipped devices. How much can be discovered is wildly variable.