I'm trying to figure out if an iPhone can connect to another non-iPhone device over wireless or Bluetooth and have seen conflicting information. Much of what I've found was before version 3.0 of the SDK came out, when it certainly wasn't possible. Looking at Stack Overflow questions, like Can the iPhone 3.0 SDK provide full access to Bluetooth devices (headsets)? mention you can't connect to an arbitrary device unless if it's part of the "Works for iPhone" device. Do I need hardware that is part of this program?
Looking through the Apple documentation, Peer-to-Peer Connectivity, it mentions connecting two iPhones, not an iPhone to another Bluetooth device. Then there are articles like iPhone SDK focus: Bluetooth enhancements that includes this quote
...and with the newly-announced "standard support" should allow file transfer between the iPhone and a computer, as well as between nearby iPhones
Another Stack Overflow question, GameKit in iPhone SDK 3.0, mentions Bonjour, and the Apple documentation for Bonjour talks about connecting to Bonjour devices, but can an iPhone connect to any Bonjour device? Does it have to have a Wi-Fi connection, or can it use Bluetooth?
Even if I could use Bluetooth to connect to another device, it won't be available on first generation iPhones and iTouches, I believe. Is that correct? I'm thinking of an iPhone application that would need to communicate with other non-iPhone devices in the area, probably using Bluetooth, but possibly a direct wireless connection. What are the possibilities and limitations of this approach? Is it not possible to have an iPhone connect to an arbitrary Bluetooth device? Does the other device have to be on a wireless Bonjour network that? I'm trying to figure out if it's even possible for this to work or if it's not worth the effort.
The only way to communicate with other Bluetooth devices via the External Accessory framework in iPhone OS 3.0 is if they are in the Made for iPod accessory program. Even though they communicate through standard Bluetooth connections, accessories need special hardware in order to process the data stream coming from the iPhone / iPod touch. Unfortunately, this means that your idea of communicating with generic Bluetooth devices won't work on iPhone OS 3.0.
If the devices you want to talk to are Bonjour-discoverable via Wi-Fi, they don't need to be part of the Made for iPod program. However, that doesn't sound like your case.
Third-party developers in the near future may produce dongles that connect through the 30-pin dock port and give access to existing Bluetooth devices. If these developers opened up their communication protocol, that might enable your goal of communicating with these devices.
You can use NSStream for opening IPv4/IPv6 sockets on the iPhone. The devices to which you're connecting do not have to be iPhones or use Wi-Fi necessarily. Because of how network communication protocols are laid out, you simply don't have to care what kind of device your iPhone is communicating with.
Bonjour, on the other hand, uses NSStream internally. It's basically a nifty little wrapper which allows for auto-discovery. You need the Bonjour protocol installed on all devices which you want to participate in the auto-discovery process. There is even an implementation for Windows.
As part of the iPhone OS 3.0 SDK, Apple announced the ability to control hardware accessories through either Bluetooth or the dock connector. The dock connector supports standard protocols (that is, play, pause, etc.) as well as any custom protocols the developer wants to implement.
As far as connecting via Bluetooth, you can talk to other iPhones or other devices. For example, you can use stereo Bluetooth to connect compatible Bluetooth stereo headphones, car kits, or other accessories.
As far as what devices support Bluetooth communication, everything except the first generation iPod Touch should be okay.
See also Apple's page on iPhone OS accessories.
Related
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'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.
Has anybody succeeded in developing a bluetooth application on the iPhone that prints to a Bluetooth printer?
I have been investigating the feasibility of developing an iPhone application that could print to a Bluetooth-enabled printer. I've gone through the most of the postings in this thread and was confused by the mail exchanges.
As per my analysis:
Gamekit - can be used for bluetooth connectivity between iPhones and IPods ONLY
Bonjour - can be used for wi-fi connectivity between iPhones/IPods and bonjour-enabled printer
We can use an external accessory to connect to a third party Bluetooth-enabled printer provided the 3rd-party printer complies with the necessary regulations from Apple (registering for either “Made for iPod”/ “Works with iPhone”, and also customizing their printer with specific hardware/software, etc.)
Could someone please share their experiences?
You want their external accessory framework. Not GameKit. Happy coding!
The External Accessory framework provides support for communicating with external hardware connected to an iPhone OS–based device through the 30-pin dock connector or wirelessly using Bluetooth.
(This is exactly what you were looking for)
To detect and connect to external devices ExternalAccessoryFramework should be used.Me too developing an application for connecting iphone to other hardware devices via bluetooth .A'm facing the problem with the protocol.The protocol should be the hardware supported ones and the protocol should be given in the info plist file..
Happy coding.
You can want to try this Bluetooth printer, which is Apple MFI approved
http://www.bluebamboo.com/other_file/P25i%20Datasheet%20%28EN%29%20v1.0%2009-Oct-2011.pdf
I would bet that you would need to use Bonjour and Wi-Fi for this application. The bluetooth hardware is restricted to gameplay from what I've seen.
well i have sucsessfully accomplished bt printing on a customers I-phone both devices have to be in discovery mode to do so and then the combination wireless and bt will allow only photo printing though otherwise you will need an app
we can connect by bluetooth only iPodtouch or iPhone using GKSession and GKPeerPickerController right ? , or can we connect other bluetooth device ?
Bluetooth communication using GameKit (GKPeerPickerController and GKSession) is limited to iPhoneOS devices.
You can also use the internet instead of bluetooth, but once again, you are still limited to iPhoneOS devices.
If you are interested in using External Accessories, I suggest you check out Apple's Documentation on the matter. Their documentation states that:
Accessories can be physically connected to the device through the 30-pin dock connector or wirelessly using Bluetooth.
This still will not enable you to play games between devices that aren't iPhoneOS, as you need the iPhoneOS, and it's GameKit framework on both ends. If you are interested in setting such a thing up, you will have to look into managing it manually.
I would strongly advise against using bluetooth, as it's buggy, slow, and has a short range. Peer to peer Wifi or LAN play will be your best bets. I suggest looking into using Bonjour of you're using LAN play. Here are two tutorials (one, two) on using Bonjour. Happy gaming!
the last i heard, bluetooth is 'crippled' on the iphone meaning you can only transfer data via bluetooth to another device with an Apple approved bluetooth chip in it. check out the apple docs for developing 'accessories'.