I was wondering if it was possible to make GameKit broadcast data so that an Android device can get the information. I plan on sending XML data, (a Plist, nothing complex) if this is possible. I don't need any confirmation on the iOS device, I just want to send the information.
In theory, Android should be able to receive the raw encoded bytes (or bits) and then the decoding them on Android, becomes my problem, but I can't imaging GameKit broadcasting information until it has a "peer" to send to.
Is it possible to send information from an iOS device to an Android device through bluetooth?
It is not possible,
GameKit requires iOS devices or MFi complaint devices, so it will not even connect with a standard Android or any other device unless it is MFi complaint and thus will not be able to send any data to it.
It IS possiple (by Bluetooth), but you have to be jailbroken and download a package (AirBlue Sharing) from bigboss repo (or *cough*a cracked version*cough*)that allows you to transfer files between that idevice and other non-apple devices via Bluetooth. Here is a link to an article about it:
JailBreak
There is also another similar package called celeste, but I haven't looked at it so don't ask me about it.
Related
I would like to build an IPhone app that should check the identity of a BT device, by name or MAC.
If the device is not part of the MFI programme what profiles should the device support in order for an IPhone app to connect to it and validate its MAC or name ?
Cheers,
Ionut
I'm not sure you need to connect to something to get a MAC address or a name. My coworker's iphone seems to see all other bluetooth devices in our work area and displays the names, it just won't connect to them. And I'm sure it gets the MAC before it gets the name, but avoids displaying it to the user because names are a lot more friendly.
I do know that with android and blackberry, you actually use MAC addreses as your basic internal identifier, and only pull out the name when you want to identify your remote devices to the user.
If you really do need to make a connection from iOS to non MFi bluetooth radio, the advanced audio distribution profile (A2DP) would do what you want. There's a product out there I've seen that is a bluetooth controlled power board, and it used audio pulses being transmitted over A2DP to get around MFi requirements. Though you should reconsider this approach because it's problematic for a non audio device to advertise an audio profile. And this fake audio device will get seen by by a lot more than your application.
If you're happy to only work with iphone 4s and above, I've also heard rumours that bluetooth LE(4.0?) devices are not required to have the apple verification chip... but haven't really looked into it
I really searched on this topic for a while now. Especially when iOS 3 was the latest software version on the iPhone.
I wonder if there is a possibility to connect the iPhone to an external device via Bluetooth using the SDK and retrieve measured data?
Thanks for your help!
Greeting!
mary
If the Bluetooth device can masquerade as a Bluetooth keyboard, then it can send data to an iOS device encoded as keystrokes.
If the Bluetooth device is or can masquerade as a headset, then it might be able to send data encoded by an audio modulation scheme, such as FSK. A matching modem/codec will need to be running in the iOS app.
For the newest iOS devices (4S) you can use the new Bluetooth LE protocol to send data (older Bluetooth data communication protocols are not available to apps unless you are in Apple's NDA MFi program).
You have to look into the MFi Program by apple since you want your devices communicating. It provides support on using an external accessory with your iPhone, though you have to register/pay for it.
After searching on Google, I found that people say it's only possible to connect an iOS device with a non iOS device with the 'MFi program'. Is that true?
My project is mainly focused on sending and receiving information with the Arduino device via Bluetooth directly.
Is communication between iOS and non iOS devices without jailbreak possible? If yes, is there a reference?
(I viewed Stack Overflow question How can an iPhone access another non-iPhone device over wireless or Bluetooth?.)
As I stated in the above-linked question, general Bluetooth communication to external devices on non-jailbroken iOS devices is restricted to MFi-compliant Bluetooth hardware.
However, newer iOS devices (iPhone 4S, new iPad) are capable of Bluetooth 4.0 LE communication with external devices without the need for those devices to be MFi-compliant. This interaction is done through the new Core Bluetooth framework, which lets you send and receive arbitrary data to and from Bluetooth LE devices. This only works with those listed newer iOS devices, though.
Tim points out an interesting hack that you might be able to get away with in making your device appear like a Bluetooth HID keyboard. Devices like this barcode scanner have special modes to appear as HID devices to iOS. You might be able to pull something together based on this, but all data transfer will be one-way from your device, and it looks like this will require entering that data into text fields as if you had a keyboard connected.
Alasdair Alan's "iOS Sensor Apps with Arduino" is a good resource to look at. I've used Wifi with another microprocessor (mbed) but not sure about bluetooth. Alasdair is active on Twitter and he usually is kind enough to answer questions.
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.
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.