How would I sync the contacts to MFi device so that it can be displayed on the device using Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP).I am able to get the contacts from address book. I would like to know is there any alternative to this? How to initiate Phone book request from the device and how do I transfer it to MFi device.Please let me know any examples to sync the contacts using Bluetooth or any pointers to accomplish the task.'MFi' device supports Serial Port Profile (SPP). I would like to sync the contacts in the delegate method mentioned below, but I am not sure how to start this. Any pointers to accomplish this.
- (void)accessoryDidDisconnect:(EAAccessory *)accessory
what kind of bluetooth device? If you are making your own it must be Bluetooth 4.0. Low Energy. Then you can transfer any data using Core Bluetooth.
You must then define your own Service UUID, your own Characteristic UUID.
Search for devices (with your Service UUID for instance or 'nil' for all)
Connect
Find Services
Find Characteristics for each service
Now you can use GATT profile access to transfer data in whatever format you want. It can be the data from the phonebook if your bluetooth low energy device know how to decode that. Maybe you want to make your own format...
If you don't want to do this then you must join the MFI program to get the documentation.
Also you should really go to iTunes, then find the WWDC 2012 Session Videos. There are several which can explain stuff for you.
Session 701 is great about IOS Accessories
Session 703 about Core Bluetooth
Session 705 about Advanced Core Bluetooth
BR
Henrik
Related
I want to connect a robot, via Bluetooth, with an iPhone (4S or more) via Bluetooth low energy (BLE) 4.0. This robots require to send all the notifications of the iPhone to the device.
For example: If the iPhone gets a new email, I must send the event to the robot, and it will blink an LED. Stop.
I want to know if the iOS Bluetooth APIs of the Bluetooth framework can do this, or better, can share the Internet connection or whatever that can do this work.
I'm asking this, because I have heard that the APIs have some restrictions.
PS: ANY solution that can do this is very accepted (no Wi-Fi connection solution).
Bluetooth LE would be the way you want to go here, because standard Bluetooth requires your device to be MFi-compliant. Standard Wi-Fi could also work, if you're able to require the presence of the supporting network.
As of iOS 6.0, you can set up your iPhone as a Bluetooth LE peripheral, which would allow it to send notifications to your device, if it is configured in a central role. That would be a pretty power-efficient way of updating your device with new data.
However, there's one large hurdle to doing what you want here. iOS applications have no access to system-wide notifications, so you won't be able to listen for incoming emails or other notifications like that. You'll be able to send data to your device via Bluetooth LE, but you're not going to know when emails come in so that you could send that to your device.
With bluetooth 4, you could control a robot, as well as create a "notification" bot. It could be done quite easily. However as mentioned, you can't access system wide notifications in iOS.
However, you could use an external solution to listen for system notifications and then an API to listen a singular encoded notification and have your app listen to that.
One such system is https://ifttt.com (no affiliation)
There are also some great plug and play BLE options for rapid prototyping.
You can do it. A simple solution would be let a phone check your email periodically. Don't rely or try to use external Apple applications to do that, but use services provided by your mail.
In the case of Gmail, try to go to https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom. If you are logged in your Gmail, you will see the unread mail in XML format. The way you would login using a URL is: https://username:password#mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom
So what you can do is periodically parse the output and when <fullcount>0</fullcount> value changes call your robot service via BLE which should act as a callback for this specific event.
I'm trying to determine what functionality I can add to a BT accessory by paying for the MFI authentication coprocessor. For example, could I...
A. Pass location data to the accessory?
B. Push incoming SMS messages to the accessory?
C. Launch my app on the phone from the accessory?
As Dennis mentioned, all information regarding the MFi program is covered under a VERY water tight NDA. However, what can be said is that all devices that connect to the iPad through Bluetooth or the docking connector port are accessed through the External Accessory framework. Documentation on the External Accessory framework is easily accessibly from Apple's documentation pages and can also be easily googled.
Communication with devices through the External Accessory framework is fairly simple once you've established a connection with a device. In short, the process is to find the desired connected accessory from an array of devices, establish a connection session and the session object contains a input and output stream. Data by creating a delegate that with the device and finally, monitor the associated input and output streams which you use to communicate with the device.
Again, the majority of the information associated with MFi is tightly sealed. However, as far as connecting to devices (that you have the right to connect to) is simple, well documented and is easily searchable since the framework is part of the standard, iOS library.
One other note on Bluetooth. There is also a Core Bluetooth framework that is available with iOS 5.0 and up. This is a much simpler framework that you can use to discover and auto pair with Bluetooth Low-Energy devices (which are part of the new Bluetooth 4.0 spec.)
If you are planning on making an iPad application or desire to have a fairly high level of backwards compatibility with earlier iOS devices, I wouldn't recommend using the new CoreBluetooth framework. The reason is because only the iPhone 4S and the soon to be released "New iPad" have the necessary Bluetooth chipset to connect with Bluetooth LE devices.
All Mfi information is under NDA.
It dosent cost anything to sign up and get access to the information , you can do it here.
https://developer.apple.com/programs/mfi/
I've been trying to find examples on communicating with bluetooth devices on iOS and have been coming up short. As I understand it SPP is not yet supported. At the simplest level, I'd like to send a simple 1 or 0 signal to the bluetooth device I'm creating. (It's a bluetooth switch that would turn something on and off). Is there a way to cleverly do this through the HID or HFP profiles?
The short answer to your question is that you can't connect to an arbitrary Bluetooth device you may happen to have, you can only connect to a Bluetooth device that has come through Apple's licensing program (i.e. the "Made for iPod/iPhone" label). From Apple's documentation:
Q: [The External Accessory framework allows] my application to communicate with Bluetooth devices. So why doesn't my application see the Bluetooth accessory sitting next to my iPhone?
A: The External Accessory framework is designed to allow iOS applications to communicate only with hardware accessories that are developed under Apple's MFi licensee program.
So there is no public API for accessing an arbitrary Bluetooth device from within iOS: you have to go through the External Accessory Framework to communicate via Bluetooth, and the EAF's mission is "communicate with MFi devices," not "communicate with arbitrary external devices." A sufficiently ingenious developer could probably hack something in there, but -
it's a non-trivial undertaking
you are spectacularly unlikely to get past the App Store approval process
So there's just not much percentage in it - the effort of doing so is unlikely to reward you.
If there already exists an MFi device that can be coerced into doing something that you want, that's probably your best chance - short of going through the MFi approval/licensing process yourself, of course. If you want to do so, have at it and good luck.
I'm answering this question late because Zeroxide's answer is incorrect (you can use a random Bluetooth keyboard with your iOS device because Apple implemented that connection, which is different from giving you a public API path to doing likewise) and I find Rokridi's answer to be incomplete-though-headed-in-the-right-direction.
Edit: A caveat has since been added to the linked Apple page about Bluetooth Low-Energy devices. So there's a loophole, but it's not a big one because very, very few Bluetooth LE devices have actually been produced as yet.
As far as i know, if your external device is non iOs device then you should use External Accessory Framework to communicate your application with it. Threfore, you external device should be certified by Apple through the Made for Ipod program (MFI). Hope this helps.
If you want to use classic Bluetooth (not BLE), then you have to first PAIR the iOS device to the Bluetooth device (in Settings). If you can't do that then you can't communicate with it with your app.
NO. whether device is MFi certified or not, you can connect device to iphone if bluetooth profile is HFP, or HID's (ordinary profiles. not iAP profile). Think about bluetooth headset or keyboard. does it need MFi mark on it to use? NO. Never.
Anybody knows how to integrate iPhone with other non-iPhone devices using serial port?
You can't directly. There may be some sort of serial line (i2c) on the dock connecter, but it is not exposed through the SDK, the Made for iPhone/ExternalAccessory.framework stuff is only for USB and BT.
You could conceivably use a WiFi/serial bridge (such things do exist) since you can send whatever you want over a TCP tunnel, but I doubt that is what you want.
Underlying ExternalAccessoryFramework for 30-pin connector it's the real UART handshaking (using Tx, Rx, Gnd, Vcc and some detect pins and no flow control) but not USB. Those pins of USB are only used for iTunes, Xcode and powering. The iOS app does not need to understand UART and only needs to send/receive bytes through NSOutputStream and NSInputStream.
But you need to pay Apple for MFi(Made For iPhone) Program first and buy some confidential IC to enable your accessory to communicate with iOS. They will require you to propose a product plan and expected sales and consider whether they would accept you as a MFi manufacturer.
You can get the info on using the ExternalAccessory framework from apple's developer portal.
You can't get the required serial handshake(?) info without joining the Made for iPhone program. This requires that you are developing a commercial device.
I have tried to get information on this protocol from apple through my university and have thus far failed.
I successfully received serial communication from the Arduino on the iPhone. I made a google doc explaining my process.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yi9_hcw8XSyYNCG2OJT9oHlTG-dC-Dnuc58VIULa81Q/edit
Ok, before I get a ton of responses. I know you cannot talk to other bluetooth devices (exchanging data or otherwise). I was just wondering if the bluetooth id's appear when you use the Peer Picker as I'm currently investigating just the ability to detect other bluetooth devices not the actual pairing.
Think of it like bluetooth RFID.
Cheers
If the Bluetooth endpoint is published through Bonjour (usually the case) you can scan for it through standard Bonjour mechanisms, but AFAIK you can't scan for raw Bluetooth IDs. The peer picker hides all that even more and limits the scan to devices that publish with the same application service ID (so you only see others around you that are running the same app).