I have been searching and searching, but found nothing yet. Is it really true that there isn't a straightforward way to establish a BT connection from my iPhone to another (3rd party) BT device, i.e. an audio receiver. I know this is possible through the OS (I own a Belkin BT music receiver that works this way - it appears in Settings and from there I can connect to it). Note that I am not interested in pairing to iOS-devices, but an iPhone and my custom made hardware.
I've managed to find Google's BTStack at code.google.com, iBlueNova, Celeste and more, which all must be run through Cydia or similar and also I stumbled upon Apple's MFI-program, which seems fairly complicated.
Does anyone have any experience with bluetooth and iOS, if so, how and where do I get started?
If one might be interested, the project I am developing involves a piece of hardware with a BT device attached on it. The app should be able to send simple commands via bluetooth (basically just ASCII characters) to the device, which will react depending on what it receives.
If you are developing accessories that need to connect to iOS devices and want to use your own communication mechanism then your only option is to join the Apple MFi program.
Related
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.
I'm developing an iPhone/iPad app that requires it communicate with another device. I'm actually more interested in receiving input from another device that the iPhone is connected to through USB. The solution needs to work with any iOS device and cannot require it to be jailbroken.
I've heard of apps that communicate with a piece of hardware that can be plugged to the iOS' serial connection, which is similar to what I'm going to develop except that the other device I'll be connecting to is a standalone music keyboard.
best regards,
fbr
If you are developing accessories that need to connect to iOS devices and want to use your own communication mechanism then you need to join the Apple MFi program.
Several options:
Forget MFi unless you have 1000s of $ backing up your product development. Apple won't even talk to you. I've tried.
Take a look at the Serial Cable from Redpark (http://redpark.com/c2db9.html)
I've got one of those and it's ideal for apps that you can deliver on your own, but you might also be able to get them into the App Store.
Another option is to use Wifi with a Wifi-to-Serial adapter on the other end. I've used the RN-174 and RN-134 from Roving Networks successfully.
However, these solutions only get you Serial connections, but can be quite fast, especially with the RN modules. There are also Serial-to-USB converters you can use on the device's end, but that would require the device to work as a USB host, usually. If you have a USB device that wants to act as a client, these common adapters won't do the trick.
So, unless you can actually afford the MFi program, and if you really need USB connectivity, you'll have to let someone create a small box containing a USB host adapter with a Wifi chip. I don't know of a ready-made solution for this yet, although I've seen quite a few area where people would like to have such a unit.
could i connect my nokia phone to iphone using the following Object..?
1)GKPeerPickerController
2)GKSession
i mean (GameKit)
note that here not two iPhone but it is one iPhone other one is only one Bluetooth device..
thanks and regards
jalju
Could you be a little bit more specific about what your purpose is?
Are you trying to create a cross-platform game or simply transferring data between the devices?
Though the documentation clearly states that:
The GKPeerPickerController class
provides a standard user interface to
allow an iPhone to discover and
connect to another iPhone.
So I don't think this is the right way to go.
I'm in the process of getting hardware for an iPhone prototype, and I'm wondering if it's possible to access bluetooth (ExternalAccessory, Bonjour or GameKit) exposed by development box (eg. a macbook) using the SDK's simulator as of the latest version (3.1.3 at the time of writing)
Before I get any answers on the subject, I accept that I will need an iPhone for the actual development - this is simply a prototype.
I'm not sure I understand your question entirely.
I can state that in iOS (as of May 2011) the only access you have to bonjour is through the Gamekit functionality. That functionality is fairly robust, but (for instance) you will not be able to create a BT based bonjour service that other non-iOS BT enabled devices can find.
On the simulator, even if the underlying device HAS bluetooth capabilities, you will NOT be able to perform "real" bluetooth operations. Instead the simulator will simulate some capabilities, and ignore others. You really do need multiple devices to load your code onto and run, in order to test out BT code.
Bluetooth connectivity is inaccessible using the Simulator. If WiFi is good enough for you, that works with Bonjour and GameKit on the Simulator as well. Otherwise, just like for the accelerometer and several other components of the device, you will need an actual device.
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.