I want to control a string of LEDs directly from my iPhone. The LED controller chips talk the i2c serial protocol.
Can I do this with Apple-supported APIs on a non-jailbroken iPhone? Which frameworks do I need to use?
Yes, but you will need an external hardware to do that. iOS does not give you access directly to I2C in the docking connector.
KissBos has a OEM board to do that, with a special firmware. You can connect to their board via WiFi, using a TCP based protocol, or via a RTP-MIDI based protocol (RTP-MIDI is implemented in iOS, you don't have to deal with the protocol details, it's just a MIDI port for your application).
If you want to go through the dock connector, you will need their USB interface (it will transform the USB into RTP-MIDI, which goes in the OEM board)
I'm quite sure that you can't do that. Apple is very strict about what you are allowed to and not. I spent days trying to find a way to get access to the iphone's bluetooth layer and ended up with my head against the wall (only a limited game api is public, else you have to go with the Made For Iphone program). However, you are able to do some stuff using the usb cable, but I guess that the possibilities are limited with that too.
Related
I want to access car data from an OBD2 device so I can access car speed, RPM speed, fuel consumption, live data, error codes, etc. How can I connect and read from an OBD2 device in iOS?
It depends on OBD device you are going to use.
There are devices on WiFi, accesible by IP-address (using TCP or UDP protocol), by bluetooth, works like RS-232 port, and some other devices, which can directly be connected by cable.
I have recently open sourced my OBD2 library for iOS & macOS that abstracts the transport protocol (WiFi, BTLE, CaptureFile), vehicle protocol (CAN, KWP, PWM, ...) and more into a set of reusable classes. Check out https://github.com/mickeyl/LTSupportAutomotive which might help you creating an own OBD2 application.
I would highly recommend going through the stream programming guide on the iOS developer library as this has code that does exactly what needs to be done for talking to a ELM wifi device.
It's really not much more than that, be sure you have the right IP and Port when connecting.
I have an external device that we manufacture that basically monitors 4 voltages, converts them to a 16 bit digital number then streams this info back to a PC every 100mS or so, using a serial over USB style chip. Basically a data logging system.
We would now like to collect this information on an iPhone and I am wondering what is the best way to get the data into the iPhone?
I am assuming there is no way we can physically connect directly to the iPhone dock connector as the protocol to do this is not available to iOS developers?
Obviously we could do it over a WiFi network but there will not always be one and we want to keep the external hardware fairly simple, i.e. no need for a computer or Wireless router etc.
If we add Bluetooth connectivity to our hardware would this work? I read that only 'Made for iPod' type Bluetooth devices will connect, in which case how can we achieve 'made for iPod' status? It would be relatively easy to add the necessary Bluetooth chips to get the system up and running.
In an ideal world we would like to do this without having to use a 3rd party interface.
I have been thinking about trying to digitise data as an audio signal – like a modem, and send it into the line input jack, but I don’t think it will be fast enough – this would be new territory for me.
Anyway all suggestions gratefully received!
Thanks!
I want to create an iPad app that connects to another machine, laptop or otherwise, via USB and communicates to some other application I develop running there.
I know that this is easy to achieve via Bluetooth or WiFi but this particular set of solutions must be done via a USB cable.
Is it possible to do so without access to the Apple MFi program? (I am about 5 weeks in and the response is not looking good).
iOS App --> USB Cable --> Mac OSX --> Desktop App (without MFi access)
Thanks
To use USB communication Apple does not provide any API within IOS SDK. The only option right now is MFI. I don't think Apple will allow this in near future.
To use serial communication, you need MFI as you may have discovered. However, there is a poor man's way of achieving this. I have done so during development.
Enable "Internet sharing" on your device and connect to it. Use "ifconfig" on your Mac to find out the interface to use. You do not need to use this as the default connection, but it needs to be active. If I remember correctly, only one end can initiate connections (it was a while so I am sorry that I don't remember the details).
EDIT: I would also like to point out that I did this on an iPhone, not an iPad.
Not over USB but over RS232 (serial port)
Look here: http://www.redpark.com/c2db9.html
But:
The cable uses the old 30 pin connector, but according to them it's compatible with the Lightning adapter
The application won't be accepted on the AppStore, it's for internal use only.
There is a (small) book that explains how to use this cable to connect an iPhone directly to an Arduino, it's been published in late 2011. "iOS Sensor Apps with Arduino Wiring the iPhone and iPad into the Internet of Things" http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021179.do
I'd love to be able to mod the iPhone tcp/ip stack to route packets over the accessory port either serial or better yet USB or Firewire...
The applications I'm researching wouldn't be able to use WiFi, 3G or bluetooth...
Custom apps could be written to use the serial port available via the accessory port, but it would be nice to support generic apps that need network access.
I haven't tracked down much info relating to this, anyone have thoughts??
About the only way this could work would be to Jailbreak the device, and do some quite low level hacking. OS X supports NKEs (Network Kernel Extensions) that would allow you to introduce a new network interface. I don't know if the iPhone OS has these (as there's obviously not much information on it - it's supposed to be a black box). Even if it did, you'd have to make your KE lie and claim to be e.g. the Wifi device, as many applications will probe for network availability by searching for the Wifi interface.
Basically, I think this is an untenable idea. You can use the External Accessory APIs to allow your custom apps to use your dongle as a network service provider, but you can't use it to provide a new network interface. If you want this kind of open, extensible platform, then the iPhone is not really the right platform.
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