I devlope advertising data app in iOS.
My app advertising data is good in foreground.
But I want to advertising beacon data in ios background.
I set up background-peripheral setting.
and advertisingData
advertisingData = [CBAdvertisementDataLocalNameKey: localName,
CBAdvertisementDataServiceUUIDsKey: [serviceUUID]]`
that's well show foreground
when, my app stopped(home button), ios beacon scanned,
but all data not showing.
I already know in background mode, services gone `overflow' area,
but is there anything you can do without a offical way?
I wrote my master thesis about this topic. The answer is no, it is not possible to make an iOS App advertise beacon data in background.
It doesn't work with the traditional CoreLocation APIs. What you may be able to do, is to replicate the iBeacon behavior in your app while supporting background broadcast and detection, but I did not manage to make the broadcasted signal to be recognised as a beacon.
Check this answer for additional information:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/19941436/3726570
Related
I need my app to act as a BLE beacon, even when it is in the background.
I've already made the beacon part - works fine when I'm using the app.
The problem is I've never made anything run in the background before, and not sure what the limitations are - if I will be allowed to let the app act as a beacon in the background.
Was wondering if this is possible or not (both technically, as well according to App Store rules)
Is this technically possible ? Can my app act as a beacon, even when the app is not in the foreground.
Is it within App Store rules ?
Unfortunately, iOS apps cannot emit iBeacon advertisements unless they are in the foreground. If you program your app to advertise iBeacon frames, as soon as the screen turns off or the app is not visible, iOS changes the advertising format to a special generic background advertisement that does not match the iBeacon format.
This proprietary background advertisement is useless for identification of a device. It is designed for connection to BLE GATT services from other iOS devices. Unless you want to advertise a connectable BLE GATT service to other iOS devices this advertisement has little value. EDIT: There is a way to make use of this advertisement. See below.
Apple's documentation describes this limitation here in the section titled "The bluetooth-peripheral Background Execution Mode":
you should be aware that advertising while your app is in the background operates differently than when your app is in the foreground. In particular, when your app is advertising while in the background:
The CBAdvertisementDataLocalNameKey advertisement key is ignored, and the local name of peripheral is not advertised.
All service UUIDs contained in the value of the CBAdvertisementDataServiceUUIDsKey advertisement key are placed in a special “overflow” area; they can be discovered only by an iOS device that is explicitly scanning for them.
If all apps that are advertising are in the background, the frequency at which your peripheral device sends advertising packets may decrease.
It may not be obvious that the above causes iBeacon transmissions to break, but I assure you that is absolutely a consequence.
Read my blog post here for more information on how to put useful beacon data into this background "Overflow Area" advertisement.
I'm in the process of developing an iOS app that uses iBeacons.
I understand that my app can get woken up to the background when an enter event is triggered (when the iPhone detects a iBeacon with a certain UUID).
Can I use this to send back a beacon signal myself? (All while the phone is locked)
I know that my app would only have a few seconds in the background after being woken up by the enter event, but normally this should be enough time to send a beacon signal.
Any help is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Unfortunately, an iOS device cannot send a standard iBeacon transmission when in the background. While you can execute the code to do so, and iOS will transmit, background transmissions will.not be detectable as iBeacons by other devices.
Why? CoreBluetooth uses a proprietary technique to roll up all Bluetooth advertisements of background applications into a single advertisement. This is designed to work with advertising Gatt services, and it has the side effect of breaking the iBeacon format.
I'm using BLECommander to connect to a bluetooth device in the foreground and my code is heavily based off this sample app. I believe my app would use both bluetooth-central and bluetooth-peripheral. Additionally, I would ping in the background every couple of hours to retrieve any new missing data. I am fine with connecting to a device in the foreground; I simply want to send messages to it in the background and retrieve data.
I have read the apple documentation on using core bluetooth to operate in the background.
If you read the apple documentation, you should know that your options are quite limited on iOS on what you can do in general when your app is in background.
However, there could be ways to achieve what you want. If you have control over the other bluetooth device you can make it change the BLE advertisement from time to time. When you scan on iOS, you will also get a scan result in background (but only once for a certain advertisement!) and can then connect to the device and read/write.
Hope this helps!
SO. Initial data:
Device Xiaomi Mi Band 1 or 1S
Device paired with iPhone
Xiaomi iOS app has option "Vibrate on incoming calls"
How they implement it? It continue works if you reboot device or force quit an app. It is unusual for default BLE background. Any ideas how this app handle events?
For people who vote for closing this question. This is a very interesting issue which require some specific knowledge about bluetooth and background. For example there are three bluetooth background modes: external-accessory for old-school non-ble blueooth, bluetooth-central and bluetooth-peripheral. I have done a lot of experiments about last two. But it does not work as you expected after documentation reading. I have found few questions about this topic here on SO. All of them report about pure predictable for bluetooth background. And after all hours on this issue you see on Mi Band and them official absolutely legal app in App Store. And this App keeps connection or has some other "magic" mechanism to handle calls and initiate reaction on device. At a minimum it is curious. Is it? At a minimum it is useful for developers who works with peripheral devices.
It looks like Apple Notification Center Service (ANCS) integration, not Bluetooth Background + Core Telephony.
The purpose of the Apple Notification Center Service (ANCS) is to give Bluetooth accessories (that connect to iOS devices through a Bluetooth low-energy link) a simple and convenient way to access many kinds of notifications that are generated on iOS devices.
Documentation
CategoryIDIncomingCall is about incoming call
I have got a chip that has a iBeacon service as well as a standard BLE service.
I would like to use the iBeacon service to trigger the app that I am developing when entering a BLE signal range.
Once active I'd like the app to scan for peripherals using CoreBluetooth and then connect to the chip.
Is this against Apple terms and conditions?
Apple has no known restrictions on this setup. In fact, this is how the RadBeacon configuration app works.
Using this technique, detecting a beacon in the background will only give your app 5 seconds of background running time, which generally is not enough time to reliably complete Bluetooth pairing and data exchange. Your best bet would be to present a local notification to the user on beacon detection, and then if the user brings the app to the foreground, do the pairing.
An alternative would be to extend background running time using a technique like described in my blog post here. That post shows how to range for beacons in the background, but the same technique will work for bluetooth communication tasks.