Does the iPhone 3.0 SDK support serial communication? - iphone

There is already a hack to get serial communications working through the iPhone's 30-pin connector, which requires a jailbroken phone. Looking at the the iPhone development website, the 3.0 SDK seems to be a bit friendlier when it comes to communication with 3rd party hardware.
I'm not part of the developer program so can't dig into any of the technical details of the 3.0 SDK, but I'm wondering if serial support through the physical connector is going to be supported. It says Bluetooth is going to be supported, and that it's possible to go blutetooth<->serial, but I'm asking about the physical connector specificially.
What I'm considering is an iPhone app which connects to and existing device I have which speaks serial. I've never done any iPhone development or hacking.

The 3.0 SDK is still under NDA, so no registered developer is at liberty to talk about it. Just wait one more week, there's a good chance that the 3.0 SDK will go public at the WWDC keynote on June 8.

The physical and bluetooth connections are both restricted to "Made for iPod" devices. If your device is MFi then you can communicate over whatever protocol you want. If not then you are not going to be connecting without jailbreaking.

Related

List (and connect to) Bluetooth devices from within iOS App

I have a device that broadcasts data via bluetooth. It is MFI certified and I already have an application on the AppStore that communicates with it, using the External Accessory Framework.
The problem is that my application assumes the device is already paired.
Is there a way to enumerate all such devices within reach and allow the user to select (and therefore pair) to one of the devices in the list?
No, you can not do this unless two criteria are first met.
Your device must be a Bluetooth Low-Energy device.
The device must have the Bluetooth 4.0 integrated chip which, at the moment, is just the iPhone 4S and the New iPad.
These devices, if operating in the low-energy mode, can be discovered and paired through the CoreBluetooth framework. There is no walk-through form of documentation on this framework, but if you are a seasoned iOS developer, you should be able to figure out how to use the framework through the cut-and-dry framework docs.
As mentioned, information regarding the MFi program and hardware development is locked down under an Apple NDA. However, the information regarding pairing to these devices in this manner is readily available through information in Apple's own documentation.
In IOS 6.0, they introduced showBluetoothAccessoryPickerWithNameFilter:completion:
I haven't had much success with it (when it does find devices, they become lost a few seconds later, but this may be an issue with my code).

iOS 5.0 SDK - USB host OTG

I would like to connect to the iPhone a device that was not manufactured specifically for the iPhone. It can be accessed from a PC through USB, so what I'd like to do is connect it through an iPhone dock connector-USB adaptor. I am aware of the previous questions regarding this topic but most of them seem outdated.
Can it be done in the newest iOS SDK (5.0 or higher)? (If no, can I dit it with a jailbroken iPhone?)
Are there any limitations?
Do I have to join the MFI program? AFAIK, MFI program is aimed at companies that are creating hardware components together with the software.
You should be able to do it with a jailbroken phone.
Otherwise you would have to join the MFI, and it would additionally require custom hardware on the device.

iPhone Bluetooth SDK - discover Android / Windows phone 7 devices and background discovery

I am an Android developer and .Net developer and not yet have acquired the needed knowledge regarding iOS .
I did a search on-line but couldnt get conclusive answers to several questions I have which are the following :
1.iOS Bluetooth , do I have to use the Bonjour or Game Kit or can I access a lower level API.
2.Do currently I have an option to perform pairing between an iPhone device and an Android device ?
3.Can an application access the iPhones MAC ID and Friendly ID Bluetooth slots and change them while its in the background ? Or while the device is sleeping ?
4.Can an application set if the iPhone is discoverable or not discoverable to other devices - not iPhone ? Can it perform it while in the background ?
Regards !
Jessy85
This might be helpful to you: How can an iPhone access another non-iPhone device over wireless or Bluetooth?
Generally, there is NO option to communicate with non-iOS device via bluetooth in regular iOS API. GameKit is intended for using between only iOS devices. However I don't know the lower level API which open to only licensed accessory hardware developer except acquiring the license is incredibly hard differently with software license.
1) You can only get to the base API if you are developing specific hardware and are a MFi member. http://developer.apple.com/programs/mfi/
2) Don't think so. But Not really sure
3) You want to change the mac id in the background? Not that I know of. Also it seems like a really questionable idea.
4) Again don't think so. Maybe with MFi but I don't know.

iPhone: Software Development And Distribution

I have a few quick questions about the iPhone software development. I did some research about the topic, but there are a few specific things I would like to ask here, because I will have to estimate the cost of the required hardware and software, before I am allowed to buy anything. I never did any Mac development nor have I ever owned an iPhone, so needless to say this is quite hard for me.
I will buy an iMac mini with 2 GB RAM for iPhone development. I will have to use it at the same time as my regular PC, but the majority of the time I won't use the Mac at all. Do I have to buy an additional monitor, a mouse and a keyboard or is there a better solution?
I will have to port a C library to the iPhone platform and develop an iPhone application that uses the ported library. Do I need anything else than the iPhone SDK to do this?
If I use an external library (see above), can I test the application with the integrated emulator, or is it recommend to buy the device?
I will have to send data to a remote webservice. Aside from this I don't require any other features. Can I just buy the iPhone online from another country (the iPhones here are sim locked), or should I buy one with a contract?
When the application is ready, it will be installed on a few iPhones owned by our customer. Because of security reasons it is crucial that there is no third party involved in this process (i.e. the application should not be distributed on the app store). Is this possible?
If you don't use both computers at the same time it's perfectly possible to use the same monitor and keyboard / mouse for both computer
With the SDK you're set, also, you probably won't need to port the library since C is a subset of objective-C and your library will be available for use with the sdk right away.
The simulator can understand external library just fine
Countries like italy sell the iphone without a contract, you won't have any problem with those. Bear in mind that if all you need an iPhone with a camera then the 3g, 3gs and even the 2g will suit your needs, as all of those have cameras.
Yes, there's an option for distribution called "Ad hoc distribution". Using that you can install you app in your client phone without going thru the appstore

Can i use iphone's wifi to comunicate with my own wifi module?

Including data exchange. I can not find such api in apple doc site. If it is not open in 3.1.2 sdk ,would apple release it in sdk4.0? I've heared that google released wireless api on android earlier . Thanks!
iPhones support ad-hoc wifi networking, so I expect you can make your device start an ad-hoc network and have the iPhone user connect manually. I doubt there will be an API for that, it's a security issue.