I made a simple device made by a friend with some sensors and a bluetooth module. Right now the module is 3.0 so I know it's next to impossible to connect with my iPhone to it.
My questions is what specs and settings are required for a Bluetooth Low Energy module to connect with an iPhone so that I can receive data from it ?
First of all, you need to connect to the device
Next, once connected, you need to start looking for the device services
After that, when you discover your main service, or the service you want, you have to look for its Characteristics
Finally, once you discover the wanted characteristic, you need to subscribe to it by using the
[myPeripheral setNotifyValue:YES forCharacteristic:aChar];
Actually, It too long to explain all the detail, take a look at the official documentation, and its really something.
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternetWeb/Conceptual/CoreBluetooth_concepts/CoreBluetoothOverview/CoreBluetoothOverview.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40013257-CH2-SW1
good luck ;)
Related
I realise most of the searches are quite old on this topic and not after Core Bluetooth now supports more than just BLE connections (https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/901?time=556).
Simply by running the RxBluetoothKit example app I am able to discover my speaker and inspect its services. However I am unsure how to actually get the speaker to pair with the phone, after a while the speaker disconnects. I am struggling to get information on the protocol and/or how to proceed.
Or is this still not possible: "And so if you're calling connect on a BR/EDR device, if your app is in foreground, then we'll try to make a connection out to that device for you." - it seems like querying and communication with an already paired device is what they were getting at in the talk.
Thanks in advance.
Is it possible to send data from any computer the supports BLE (Windows or Mac) to an iOS app's CBCentralManager?
The data I want to send is purely text based. I'm searching for it but I am not being able to find if it is possible or a tutorial of how to do it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, normally you can do that. What you have to do is:
From the peripheral device (transmitter), advertise an CBService
(iOS) with a CBCharacteristic that support write value.
From the receiver, you create a CBCentralManager to search for the service created by the transmitter, then discover the right CBCharacteristic. Once the CBCharacteristic discovered, you can try to write value to that characteristic.
The processus look simple, but you have to do step by step on the receiver's side:
first, look for device
if device found, try to connect
then once connected to that device, try to discover the service
then once the service discovered, try to discover the characteristic
then once the characteristic is discovered, try to send
then you will receive the result of sending (ok or failed)
Take a look at my project in github, it's not complete but it show you how to exchange data between 2 BLE devices. The application is for iOS, but I'm pretty sure that you have the same code in Mac OS. I don't know how it works on PC.
I've looked everywhere and tried everything, but nothing seems to work :(
On iOS, I'm making an app (for iOS 6 and above) in which iOS devices need to exchange data. Therefore, both devices need to be peripheral and central at the same time. I've done exactly as specified in the WWDC video, but the devices can't connect successfully with each other.
When I make one device only central and the other only peripheral, the central connects seamlessly to the peripheral.
However, when both devices are peripheral and central at the same time, I get random errors: at any stage (discovering services/characteristics or setting notify value to YES) errors sometimes happen, and sometimes discoverServices doesn't even call didDiscoverServices
Is there something different I should be doing? I simply merged the peripheral and central code into one view controller. I've noticed that if device "a" connects to device "b", and then device "b" connects to device "a", it works more often than not. I manage this by using NSThread sleepForTimeInterval: manually for different amounts of time on each device, but how could I get one device to connect first (and then the other) in a reliable (and not manually pre-defined) way?
If I do get errors, usually they're simply Unknown error
Please let me know if you need any code or any other information :)
Yes, it can be in both roles at the same time. You just have to initialize a CBPeripheralManager and a CBCentralManager. As soon as the peripheral manager is initialized and you receive the POWER ON state the device starts acting as a peripheral. You can add your services at this point and receive connections from other devices. At the same time you can use the central manager to scan and initiate connections to other peripherals.
Note that you cannot connect to your own device even if it acts as a peripheral.
For your errors, I suggest:
Turn off scanning before initiating a connection. That is, scan, find peripheral, stop scan, connect. Connection and scanning do not like each other.
Use a dedicated queue for handling bluetooth events, not the main queue. [[CBCentralManager alloc] initWithDelegate:self queue:my_dedicated_bluetooth_q]
Unfortunately, the stack sometimes become unstable. Even restarts are possible. But this usually happens only under heavy loads or several simultaneous connections. Hopefully, this will be improved in iOS7.
The unfamous Unknown error started to appear for several developers recently. Judging from your description there are probably a number of reasons why your setup may fail and it would require much more info that what fits well into a SO question.
For more info I suggest you search the bluetooth-dev mailing list archives https://lists.apple.com/archives/Bluetooth-dev or send a mail Bluetooth-dev#lists.apple.com. The community provides great help if you approach with reasonable questions like this.
As per my understanding one device can work with one mode at a time . That is if the device is working in the peripheral mode then it you cant work it as a central mode .If you see some standard examples like BTLE transfer or lilke Light Blue those are working in one mode at a time .
Firstly, what do you mean "the same time"?
If you mean the device advertising to other devices while it scanning for other devices, it can not.
But you can create two threads which share same lock to advertising and scanning.
Before scanning, stop advertising, before advertising, stop scanning.
I tested on my iPhone 4s and iPad air, worked well.
I'm looking for a way to be able to track another BTLE-enabled iOS device using mine, while within range. Basically, one device would have to log it's geolocation info, and then send it periodically to the other device, using BTLE.
How would I be able to do this? In general, I haven't been able to find much info on how to send and receive messages via BTLE, so any help in that category would be great. I've seen this answer already, but it didn't help me much, and I'm wondering if anything has changed since then.
If not possible through Apple's built-in framework, do you know of any external ones that would allow for this?
Long, long, long, longgg story short, but here ya go:
On one iOS device, adopt both the CBCentralManager and CBPeripheralManager. The CBCentralManager is responsible for connecting to external peripherals and maintaining that connection. The CBPeripheralManager will be what you'll use to read/write from the iOS device that your using a peripheral.
On the other iOS device, adopt just the CBPeripheralManager. You'll need add all the services and characteristics into the CBPeripheralManager that are stated in the GATT profile. Check out developer.bluetooth.org. These services and characteristics are necessary in order to connect from one device to the other.
In addition to just the gatt characteristics and services, you'll need to add in a custom service with a characteristic that you store your location data.
Check out the docs but for CBPeripheralManager in particularly you'll need to utilize
-(void) peripheralManager:(BLEPeripheralManager*)mgr requiresResponseToWriteRequests:(NSArray*)requests;
and
-(void) peripheralManager:(BLEPeripheralManager*)mgr requiresResponseToReadRequest:(CBATTRequest*)request;
in order to pass the location data between devices..Sorry for the brief overview, but there's just way too much to write up quickly.
I want to advertise a single id lets say "stackoverflow1" on a ble device. So people close to the sensor can get this message (welcome to wwdc2012) as popups on the iPhone. That's it! meaning that there is no update on the value or anything else in other words I just want to know which room I came in. In another room there's another sensor adversing "stackoverflow2".
Now the question is, should I put the rooms' sensor (advertiser) as Peripherals and visitors' iPhones as Centrals?
If your answer is yes, can I send this Id in advertising packet? i.e. can I skip connection to the room's peripheral? Please guide me a little but on this
Thanks
Yes, the iPhones should be centrals and the in-room device should be a peripheral. It's perfectly fine to put enough data in the advertisement that the iOS app can do something useful after simply seeing the peripheral advertised without actually connecting to it. That way, multiple centrals/phones can detect proximity at once without a single phone tying up an exclusive connection to the device. Instead of specifying the room in the service name, you should be able to put it in the advertisement data for the device, giving them all the same service name. That way the iOS app doesn't need to know the completely list of rooms (i.e. services) in advance and they can be added to without changing the app.
In short, the gist of what you described should work fine, and seems like a sound approach to me.
You can include information in the advertisement from the peripheral as "Manufacturer Specific" data. Then the iOS application can get it from the advertisement data dictionary using the CBAdvertisementDataManufacturerDataKey.