Send messages between iPhone & Mac - iphone

I'm fairly novice in iPhone development, but trying to create what would seem a fairly simple application.
I want to have 1 program running on my phone/simulator that has a slider and a button, and another receiving program on the mac, such as Processing/Supercollider.
When the button is pressed i want a String such as "hello" to appear in the post window of the program on the mac, and when the slider is moved up/down for an integer, say between 0-99, to correspond with the movement on the phone. I'm assuming a WiFi connection would be essential for the sending of messages between devices.
Does anyone know how I might go about writing this - tutorials/code examples/links to get me started?
Cheers

cocoaasyncsocket is a great wrapper around CFSocket and CFStream, that makes networking much easier. Bonjour has great documentation at developer.apple.com

This should be done over a TCP connection which is established between your iPhone and the PC. For that to happen you need to write 2 pieces of software:
1) A client: to be installed on your iPhone
2) A server: to be installed on your PC
The server will listen to connections coming from the iPhone and once a connection is made you can send messages quite easily between the two.
This will give you a good grasp on the theory
Guide to socket programming in C
Once you have that then you can find tons of Obj-C TCP examples.

Related

Establish Socket connection between window and iPad

I need to establish socket connection between window machine and iPads. So here window machine is a sever which can connect to one or many iPad. For window machine(server) code is already there.
So will it be any issue while connecting window machine with iPads using socket?? and what is the best way to do it ?
If you're asking for possible issues because one side is Win and the other iOS then you can be sure that's not gonna cause any issues.
Assuming you're talking about iOS TCP client - one good tutorial is here: iPhone Network Programming.
There is also Robbie Hanson's CocoaAsyncSocket: well written, easy to implement and comes with examples. Examples are OSX projects but can be quickly converted to iOS projects.

How can I build/install/run a server program to communicate with the iPhone?

I'd like to play with the idea of creating a server program that communicates with an iPhone app over socket connections. I've found several guides within Apple's documentation for client side programming (with CFNetwork, NSStream, etc) but I don't know where to begin on programming the server application, or even what language to use, or for that matter, how to deploy and run a server application on my current web hosting package through Go Daddy. A simple instant messenger style application example should get me started, but any advice is appreciated.
if you want to create socket connection is better to use CFNetwork , it has more flexibility for you I already used NSURLConnection but CFNetwork has better performance. this is my steps and how I developed my app :
configuration of server
selection C++ for my server side (service)
start to develop a client-side app for iphone to connect to server using NS classes
but I had some problems in sending and receiving message to and form server . so I changed it to CF classes it works better and faster now.
The easiest way to handle server-to-device communications is to use APNS (Apple Push Notification Services).
Communication in the other direction (device-to-server) can be handled simply with NSUrlConnection.
If you want to write your own socket code for this, well - good luck with that.
Do you want your client application to be able to run on more than one OS? If so, you might want to stay clear of anything Apple specific. Although, if you strictly want to run on iOS, using MusiGenesis' suggestion could save you a ton of time.
I have found that Python and Perl are both pretty great for socket programming. I know that Python has several libraries built in for handling HTTP requests etc. If you want to run your server as a daemon, I found this code very helpful:
http://www.jejik.com/articles/2007/02/a_simple_unix_linux_daemon_in_python/
Here is a general python sockets guide:
http://docs.python.org/howto/sockets.html
Good luck.

How to create a Mac/PC server app that interacts with iPhone/iPad App?

Can someone please point me in the right direction to create a Mac/PC server app that runs in the background and connects to an iPad app over the local WiFi network?
No matter how I phrase a search on Google it just brings up various apps like Remote Mouse and whatnot and no tutorials or even a hint of where to start.
I just need to send simple commands from iPad to computer over local wifi. A point in the right direction and I can likely fill in the blanks.
Thank you.
Thomas
EDIT: I am using web languages for the iPad version that I will build as a native app using open source tools.
OK, then. It actually depends on what you really need. I made the assumption you need real-time and perhaps binary data transfer.
Your best bet is to write your server application using standard C or C++ so it compiles on both as simply as possible.
If you want to avoid all the burden of writing a protocol for service discovery or asking users to enter the ip address of your server you will use a mDNS implementation for your server and your iPhone app.
If I were you I would try bonjour: http://www.apple.com/support/bonjour/
on iPhone You could start here: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Networking/Conceptual/NSNetServiceProgGuide/Articles/PublishingServices.html
Once you have your sockets you will have to implement a networking protocol between your server application and your iPhone app.
You will have to be careful about byte ordering and little subtle problems with latency, disconnections and other problems inherent to networking and WiFi.
In windows you will want to register your application as a service and in Mac OS X/UNIX you'll probably want to deamonize it.
Good luck!

iPhone best method to achieve device-to-device communication

What would be the best method to achieve realtime device to device communication within an application? I've been experimenting with the Apple Push Notification Service but find it spotty at best for realtime messaging. Is there a way to utilize sockets for this or am I just stuck into using the APNS?
If you are a beginner, use GameKit.
When you get sick of that, use AsyncSocket.
GameKit is so simple a child can use it; AsyncSocket is probably the most beautiful library in all of networking on any platforms - incredibly easy to use.
In both cases, you will first use Bonjour (two lines of code) to "find" the other device.
Here is the full explanation...
Tablet(iPad/Android)-Server Communication Protocol
Critical secret knowledge about GK you will need...
Client/Server GKSessions
Another quick summary ...
Most effective way to do networking on Mac/iPhone?
For the record, APNS has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what you are trying to achieve! Utterly forget about APNS.
WHAT IS THE RADIUS? -----------------------***
Please note that BLUETOOTH ONLY WORKS over about twenty feet. (Ten meters.)
Please note that for a local WiFi connection, you must both be connected to the same local WiFi hub. WiFi hubs have a range of perhaps 20 meters only, say one house and the next house only (depending on how thick the walls are).
Please note that: IT IS NOT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE TO CONNECT TWO COMPUTERS (OF ANY TYPE) OVER A COUPLE OF MILES.
There is no such networking device. (You could perhaps build one using say "ham radio" but to be clear it would be a completely novel, new research project that would take a large company years to complete.)
There is absolutely nothing that works like that - I'm sorry to tell you the bad news.
The ONLY two possibilties are Bluetooth and WiFi, and they work only over about 20 and 30 feet respectively.
So how do you connect two remote computers like that? The answer is, via the internet.
The only way to do it is with an internet connection. There is no 'direct' connection possible with any existing technology.
If you need to know more about how to connect two computers (say two iPhones) using the internet, you will probably have to ask a new question! You will be pleased to know it is very easy and will cause you little trouble.
Note that both iPhones MUST have a good solid internet connection. If they are more than say 30 feet away from each other, the ONLY way to connect to iPhones is via the internet. THey must each have a good internet connection, or there is no possibility.
I hope this helps clarify things!
You can use GameKit's peer to peer services (bluetooth)
Gamekit how to do p2p wifi connection in iphone
Check out Apples GameKit framework GameKit Or a sockets based networking look at AsyncSocket which also includes an iPhone demo.

How do you communicate to a Modbus device within an iPhone application?

I would like to be able to develop an iPhone application that can communicate with Modbus devices, but I'm not sure how to proceed. Has anyone had experience with this or are there existing libraries out there for this purpose?
You will need first to know how to make a simple TCP client on your iPhone, and a simple TCP server on your computer that your iPhone client will talk to via WiFi. Make sure PING command works and firewall does not block your server port before any client/server experiments, and make sure that server port for experimenting is greater then 1024 and not already used. Then take a look at MODBUS TCP specification from official site, get familiar with function codes you are interested in, and study C code found here. Then make a simple MODBUS TCP client that can send a request to MODBUS TCP server and interprete an answer. The best way is to start reading single register value, then progress in time and add more functions.
I do exactly all above points, my iOS Modbus lib works fine, application is now up on AppStore, PLCLink read and set any modBus data into my Wago home automation.
Installation guide : http://pautex.fr/plclink