I would like to explore the connectivity options for domotics software to connect hardware on a house compatible to iOS (iPhone/iWatch/iPad).
My first thoughts go to RFID tags applied to the devices or hardware transmitting Wi-Fi signal. However I am not sure that iOS is a system "open" enough to receive external signals.
For example when developing an App is not possible to let it access the main background thread whilst in background so it would be difficut to receive notifications from external hardware. My solution would be to send those notification to the device using the push notification system and paired to a server.
Could anyone help me clarify the reality of this?
Any useful link or resources? What are the latest advances as of iOS 8? And what are the best practices for this type of problems? What are the SDKs available for RFID?
Related
i have an application that is connected with a chip by bluetooth.
Device and phone are constantly connected to calculate the distance between them by bluetooth delay in reply.
App is working fine in foreground.
When i go background the app is still running, but cannot connect to the device.
I already tried to fix with this guide: Core Bluetooth Programming Guide
but i didnt made it.
Some suggestion?
You need to introduce more detail.
Your app will not run in background mode even bluetooth connection is on.
But your app still have a chance to execute some code in a short time if some bluetooth event happen.
Connection lost.
Notification received.
If your application work like anti-loss bluetooth tag, you need
Enable background in iOS app.
Write your code in core bluetooth delegate.
And One reminder: Calculate distance based on bluetooth relay is not smart. Bluetooth communication is not designed to support this kind of feature.
It work on license free 2.4G band and human body has big impact on it.
I'm currently digging my through the nest of using Bluetooth in my iOS application and I find it quite hard to find the information I'm looking for.
Can I turn on Bluetooth from within my app or does the user have to do it manually?
Can I use the basic Bluetooth fetaures (such as Discovery, connecting and Sending Data) with other devices running Bluetooth < 4.0 (classic)
AFAIK CoreBluetooth Framework can only be used to communicate with devices running Bluetooth 4.0+. Which framework is used to communicate with Bluetooth < 4.0 devices?
Is it possible to use Bluetooth in such a way that Apple will reject my App on App Store? And which ways would that be?
Is there a difference between paired and unparied communication? Can one communicate with another device without being paried? Can pairing be initated from an app?
To give some Context to my question: I'm currently developing a part of a Home Automation Application where the App needs to communicate with an embedded device which does not yet have Wifi. It has not been decided which Bluetooth version will run on the embedded device. The same functionality will be implemented in an Android application.
Thankful for some input from some with Bluetooth experience for iOS.
you cannot turn on Bluetooth from your app. The user must do it using settings or the control center.
unless you device is MFi certified you can only communicate with Bluetooth Low Energy devices
the external accessory framework is used to communicate with MFi devices that use "classic" Bluetooth
I am not aware of any use of Core Bluetooth that will lead to app rejection. If your app supports an MFi accessory that isn't associated with your company then your app will be rejected.
you can initiate bonding (commonly known as pairing but it is actually different) by requiring encryption for an attribute. Once the bonding is complete there is no difference in how you transfer data, but the data will be encrypted over the air.
What I am trying to accomplish:
User enters a password on the iOS app. If the password is correct, then send a one bit value to the microprocessor that indicates the user got the right password. The microprocessor can then start up the step motor to open the door latch.
Has anyone tried to achieve this before? If so, can you please point me in a general direction. I don't know how to approach this problem. I couldn't really find a tutorial for this. My questions are:
Is there a specific Bluetooth I need to purchase? such as only BLE devices
I see a lot of examples of Bluetooth communication between iOS and Ardunio. Would the execution of events be similar for my needs?
Is there another approach to my problem? rather than using Bluetooth?
I think reading the Core Bluetooth Programming Guide is a great start. However, this assumes the device you're connecting to is using Bluetooth 4.x which is widely known as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). If the device you're connecting to is using Bluetooth 2.x, you'll have to use the External Accessories Framework.
EA supports only devices that have been certified MFI (Made for iPhone) by Apple.
To make a long story short, if the device you're trying to connect to is Bluetooth 2.x and it's not MFI, you're basically SOL.
Otherwise, you can start connecting to that device pretty easily. Check out LightBlue as a way to test if you connect to the device. It will work with any BLE device.
Here's a simple tutorial to get you going with Core Bluetooth.
I have a Mac application and an iOS application. I need to display a notification on iOS, coming from the Mac app.
Is there any easier way to do it than using Push Notifications or network sockets (UDP or TCP)? Maybe Apple provides it away?
I need to make sure that the user hears this notification. The application should launch in the background and start playing sound.
If they are on the same network you can use bonjour ( https://developer.apple.com/bonjour/index.html ) for communication between mac app and iOS app.
If they are on different network you have to use a server, the server will be connected to both mac app and iOS app via tcp, and you can send msgs via the server. And if the iOS device is locked or app is in background you have to implement push notification for sending data to the iOS app.
Not sure of your use case, but using Apple's push notifications to serve notifications for your app seems like a suitable choice. Again, not sure of your use case, but an alternative may be to send a text-message using the Twilio API.
There is another option known as BLE .With BLE you can interact between mac and iOS using core bluetooth framework.
When you receive any message from mac to iOS using this framework you can show a local notification and can wake an app, since BLE also works well in background mode.
For mac to act as peripheral there is a good open source project over here.
you can find more information about BLE here.
Hope this helps.
I think the only acceptable solution is to send push notifications via APNS from mac to iOS device due to limitations on app lifetime on iOS. There is nothing hard in implementing APNS, there are lots of ready implementations, like NWPusher - you may copy it to your project and setup the environment - keys, device tokens - and you're done. To transmit tokens from iOS to your mac app, you may use tons of ways. For example, implement simple web-service on mac and send tokens via http/https.
You may also use a ready server-side implementations, like parse.com, to send push notifications.
I am playing around with a TI CC2541 chip, and was wondering if it is possible to send a "keypress" over BLE. This would be similar to the new Muku Shutter for iOS and Android, because I am trying to figure out a way to interface with a mobile device without installing a 3rd party application. Essentially, I would press the button on the CC2541 chip, and then it would emulate a keypress of volume up?
I have been researching for a while now, and all solutions to handle this have included writing a 3rd party application to map the commands in the BLE packet to a system command.
Any help would greatly be appreciated. Thank you!
On iOS the answer is no
Edit:
Exception: You might be able to set up your BT chip as a Bluetooth keyboard.
You could certainly write an app that talks with a remote BLE device and uses an agreed-upon protocol to pass key presses to your app, and then you could interpret those messages using code in your app.
However, Apple enforces a "sandbox" on its apps, and apps are not allowed to interact directly with the system except through very tightly controlled set of APIs. If there is not an official interfere to do something, it is not allowed.
If you were to run on a jailbroken device then the answer would likely be different. I can't help you there however.
Edit:
#OliverMason says in a comment that iOS shutter buttons are apparently single-key BlueTooth keyboards that emulate the volume up button, which the camera app recognizes as a way to trigger a photo. Thus my answer above isn't quite accurate.