CBPeripheral interaction with Windows - ios

I have an app in my iPhone device. The app is advertising CBPeripheral service. I already created one app on mac which allows it to interact with MAC desktop using CBCentral. It basically exchanges some data with MAC initiated handshake. I wanted to make interact the Windows 7 PC to interact with the iPhone app in the similar manner. I am unable to find any proper way to do it.
I have found this, but it is minimum supported in Windows 8. Is there any way to do it?

There is no support from Microsoft for Bluetooth 4.0 AKA BTLE prior to Windows 8.

Related

Connecting an iPhone app to a PC app via Bluetooth

I am currently researching the possibilities of connecting an iPhone app to a windows app via Bluetooth.
The Windows App is written in C# and uses Serial ports to transfer Data. Windows allow me to connect a serial port to Bluetooth. This setup allows communication via Serial over Bluetooth.
I know this setup works because I have managed to communicate with this setup from an Android phone.
I don't seem to be able to do the same with an iPhone 5s (I can't even seem to pair the iPhone to the Windows PC). I haven't been able to test this with a more recent iPhone, but I don't expect it to work either since it's an Apple device with a Windows machine.
I've done some research regarding the possibilities of connecting an iPhone to something else (like a PC) over Bluetooth, and it doesn't seem to be possible.
I have found this SO answer which seems to say that I cannot use Bluetooth Classic to connect an iPhone to a PC.
Since I can't seem to be able to use Bluetooth Classic, I have also tried to use BLE, but I haven't worked out how to simulate the PC as a "peripheral device" to connect to it from the iPhone. I don't even know if that's possible.
So basically my questions are:
1) Is it possible to communicate via Bluetooth between an iPhone and a PC?
2) Would it be possible to use some sort of adapter for the iPhone to connect to the PC (For example, an Arduino with a Bluetooth chip, acting as a BLE peripheral, and sending the data to the PC?)
3) What alternative would I have to this? I know WiFi might work, but I am uncertain if the PC running the app will be network enabled when the project goes live.
You can connect an iPhone with PC over Bluetooth using BLE.
I tried with Linux machine (Ubuntu 16.04 with BLE dongle 4.0) which acts as BLE Peripheral and iPhone 8 with BLE 5.0 as central application. Both could able to successfully communicate using custom GATT service that we developed. The throughput i observed here was 2.5 kiloBytes per sec.
If you are so specific on Windows to act as BLE Peripheral, then i believe there are apps available in Windows store to download which enables Windows PC to act as peripheral. Once peripheral mode is enabled, you can always communicate to this over BLE using iPhone [recommended latest phones]. But you need to try this out.

Bluetooth iOS Windows

I recently developed an application for a client, an app iOS, Android and windows, the mobile app acts as a controller and launches certain events on the windows application. The Windows application also shares data at random (not known to the mobile app) moments. The communication was done by TCP. And works great.
The client now wants it for bluetooth. Between Android and Windows, it's not been a problem and has been done, and works well. But iOS is sadly not the same story... The use of Bluetooth low energy seems to complicate things.
I've hunted high and low on google to find anything on communication between a .net application and a Swift application, to no avail. This surprises me that no one talks of a bluetooth communication between Windows and iOS.
My question is, very simply. Is it possible? I know very little about bluetooth and I've tried researching devices and all I find is a BeeWi device that's in our office, not my computer (I maybe need to launch something on computer first? The devices are paired)
My computer has a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle and the BLE emulator is present in the Device manager.
If this isn' possible, tell me know and put me out of my misery, otherwise give me hope!
Any additional advice is warmly welcome - Thank you all !
Beau Carrel
Windows has support for being a BLE client. Just Google it and you'll find many examples, such as https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/Samples/BLEGatt2.
You need to set up iOS to be an advertising peripheral.

Does iOS 8.3 now support Wifi debugging?

I updated iOS on my phone to 8.3 and I saw this message popup on first boot, but I have not seen it since:
I have been searching all day for information and I can't find a single reference to this message or to Xcode supporting wifi debug.
I am using a macbook pro 2009 model, and I have read that this is not compatible with the new continuity features (as well as airdrop etc). I am wondering if this is part of the wifi debug (and also if BTLE is involved at all). Of course it is all speculation since I cannot find any documentation about this.
Has anybody used wifi debug, or can point me to any documentation?
No, the feature was disabled as it causes serious security flows, for example when debugging you can fake location for any app, access confidential data like your number, udid etc. WiFi can be used now only to sync using iTunes.
It's restricted to USB only. You would need to write a bridge between USB and WiFi. You could in theory connect iPhone to Raspberry Pi, use open source crossplatform libMobileDevice. And mirror all USB requests from your XCode to this device USB.

Ios filesharing without iTunes or an internet connection

I am working on developing an enterprise application for ios 7 that needs to work offline and then sync with a desktop client (that I also need to write) for data transfer.
My company does not allow wireless or cell data in this area, and would strongly prefer to not use iTunes either.
The question is, how do you transfer data from an iPad over the usb cable to a custom windows program, without iTunes.
The simplest answer would be: iExplorer (http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/) plus some kind of a script to automate the data sync.
Otherwise, you can use the ExternalAccessory framework to communicate with the desktop via a USB tether. This would necessitate a desktop client running simultaneously to communicate with the device.
peertalk (https://github.com/rsms/peertalk) does what you want, however the computer side library is only for mac os. Maybe you can port the protocol to windows by looking at that (the license is BSD)
Edit: this guy managed to have it run under linux. It sits on usbmuxd, which also has a windows port, so it shouldn't be impossible.

iPhone SDK bluetooth capabilities and their limitations

When I connect an iPhone to a mac computer, what are the limitations on what I can send over bluetooth?
My goal is to freely transmit data one-way from the iPhone to the OSX machine via the bluetooth. Is there a way to wrap your own communication class so that it sends any kind of data it wants? What are the limitations?
Can I send any data I please to the mac OS ?
Have you looked at using Bluetooth low energy ver 4.0 (CoreBluetooth Framework) ? Depending on your application it could be the best for you. Its supported on all latest iOS and Mac devices.
If you wan to use the Classic Bluetooth (Ver 3.0, 2.1 or 1.2)
Unfortunately currently is is not directly (easily) possible using Classic Bluetooth.
To do it ideally you would have needed the SPP profile (Serial Port Profile) but the iOS currently does not support SPP.
The iPhone can talk to the Mac (or any other device) using only the standard profiles it supports, and there is no direct access for your application to tap into standard profile data on the iOS device.

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