As the title says
i've searched for this on Google for about a week.
lots of instruction and articles about programming serial port of iOS.
but all of them have one precondition:
your iOS has to be jail broken first！
Actually i want to develop a app enabled audio peripheral which connected to iDevice(iPhone, iTouch,iPad) by the serial port and ship it by the App Store, where the user can download the App there! At this scenario, i can't tell my user to jailbreak their iPhone in order to use my App.May be lots of them don't even know what jailbreak is.
Help me!
Thanks
David zhu
You will need to join the Apple MFI program in order to obtain this level of access to the iPhone/iPad hardware. Alternatively, investigate the use of Bluetooth Low Energy - this does not require MFI program membership
Related
how to make iOS app with bluetooth?
I need an app which connects and exchange data via bluetooth with other devices, laptop for example.
Many packages for BLE and cant find for classic bluetooth
If you want to use the classic Bluetooth interface of an Apple iOS device, you have to comply with/accept Apple's MFi licensing programme (Made for iPhone/iPod/iPad), which is a major hurdle and the reason for the lack of corresponding libraries.
Short answer: you don't want classic Bluetooth for this. You want BLE. It supports everything you want for this kind of use case. See Core Bluetooth.
Much too long answer about classic Bluetooth and iPhones from my years building earbuds:
Continuing from Risto's answer, even with MFi certification (which requires adding an extra chip to your device, not just licensing), you still don't get general access to the BR/EDR ("classic") interface. You only get access to iAP2, which is an SPP-like serial protocol, but is not SPP. If you're porting from Android, you probably are using SPP, and sorry, that's just not available. You're going to need to switch to BLE.
MFi certification is a useful if you build an audio device that also needs a non-audio control channel. It makes it easy to ensure that both the audio connection and control connection are connected to the same device. This is extremely difficult to do with BLE. But iAP2 isn't a particularly nice protocol, and has weird corner cases. You should not go through the cost and trouble of MFi just to get a SPP-like serial protocol.
On iPhones, access to BR/EDR non-audio profiles is limited to the proprietary iAP2 and GATT over BR/EDR (which is less useful than it sounds since most chips don't support it). Classic audio profiles are limited to what Apple's audio frameworks support, which is not very flexible.
If you make a Bluetooth audio device, have a little extra room on your board, enough margin to add a chip to your BOM, and your SoC supports it, MFi is definitely worth exploring. You can improve the pairing experience marginally and it makes it a bit easier to manage an extra control channel. Plus, you get to add that "Made for iPhone" logo to your packaging. For hearing aids (which I have less experience with), I expect that MFi is a must-have today. From my casual investigation, it looks like it adds some really nice capabilities.
For everyone else, you want BLE.
The plan is to have a custom built Bluetooth device, which is not part of the standard bluetooth profiles (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204387), and also we can't go the BLE way (not my decision) and pair it with either an android or an iOS phone. It works OK for android of course, but cannot be connected to from an iOS phone, due to restrictions of Apple.
I understand we should enroll to the MFI program and have a license for our device so an iphone can be paired with it and a connection can be established. My concern is that how can I be sure that it will work as there seems to be no opportunity to try it without enrollment to MFI program.
Any help would be appreciated as I'm quite a rookie in this topic. Thanks a lot.
You must apply for MFi program just to get access to the Bluetooth APIs that you need. There is no other way without bypassing Apple's legal requirements.
I have a general question about using bluetooth in apps. I'm doing a college program that involves communicating with a serial bluetooth device from a phone. I originally found that Iphone apps are easier to create (I have C/C++ but no java, hence the lean away from android) but Ive came across several posts about having to register with MFI in order to use bluetooth serial. Can college students do this as a once off basis for one app? Is it worthwhile or expensive?
Any help'd be great!
You have to choose the bluetooth device first and know about its category i.e BLE or Classic. For BLE you can use Corebluetooth and for Classic one you have to use MFI. Yes MFI will be paid and expensive too. Refer to developer site for this and also this question.
iPhone bluetooth and "Made for iPod"
https://mfi.apple.com/MFiWeb/enroll.action.
Hope this helps.
I want to get data from glucose meter devices by connecting into iPhone or iPad devices. I have different vendors glucose meters some uses simple HID interface for communicate and other uses serial communication.
These are the two possible ways of communication:
USB to 30-Pin connector.
3.5 jack to 30-Pin Connector.
USB or 3.5 jack will be connected to glucose meter and 30 pin connector will be attached with iDevice.
After having hours of research I did not find much help on internet for iOS specific.
I do find ORSSerialPort but I think it is for OS X apps only.
There is RedPark serial Cable but that is for RS232 to 30-Pin communication and secondly that can be only used in internal projects. I want to sell my application on Apple Store.
Someone also was discussing about using IOKit framework. We can communicate with iDevie but that is private framework.
Someone help me with this issue or let me know if that is even possible in iOS application.
Do Apple have any consideration on this type of working?
An iOS device can talk to external devices by following means of communications only:
Wifi
Bluetooth
GPRS &
GSM
USB (Don't exactly know what it is called)
There is no possible way to have RS232 serial port communication with iOS device.
Now What are the options left then?
Get a communication convertor in between your external device & iOS device. It can be
Serial to ethernet adapter
serial to USB adapter etc.
Embedd a wifi/bluetooth module in the external device (If it is being manufactured by you/your firm)
Have something with USB cable & mfi .(Never worked on this, but have seen stuff working with this). By something I meant, register your external device under MFI license & implement USB between devices (Again lack of clarity about USB stuff). Menwhile, I would appreciate edits on my answer by people who might improve it with USB stuff.
Update:
I visited the site of your vendor "glooko". I could not find any clue about them having any libraries for developers. So according to my opinion, they have kept their library private. They don't want you to develop apps based on their communication protocol. If you still need to develop apps for them, contact them here & let them know about your zeal.. M sure they will give you their private code. Anyhow, you don't need to register for any MFI or anything now. What you need is just the code they are using for communication & about that, nobody other than them can help you. So, all the best .. :)
Update 2:
What I understood from your updated question is, you want to create an iOS application that works with various Glucose meters, from different vendors. In a way you can call it as "universal Glucose meter app"
The short and straight answer for this is .."You Can't" . But wait, apple is not responsible for this. Neither it is impossible.
Let me tell you why. When you want your application to talk with a hardware device, there must be a communication channel between you too. You are well aware of those two options available. now, if your app must run on iDevices, the communication channel cables must be registered for mfi. Here that is also not the issue.
What is the issue then?
Different vendons don't generally follow the same communication protocols between their hardware & softwares. What happens if a german commander commands to indian soldier. Obviously, nobody will understand.
So, to achieve your objective, the only way is, you have to include SDK provided by each supported vendors in your app. Let me know if you are not yet clear..:)
There is a device called Lightning Serial Cable, the link is following.Take a look at their SDK.
http://redpark.com/lightning-serial-cable-l2-db9v/
It seems work with your application. I'm also looking for the solution that iOS device can talk to another device via serial port. In PC world, all PC has USB ports, so there is large amount of USB to serial port devices and vendors, such as FTDI and Prolific. I don't know if similar situation happens in iOS world.
Unless you join the Made For iPhone program you can not directly connect anything to an iOS device unless you use Bluetooth or TCP/IP.
I'm working on my senior engineering design project and I need your help! For this I have my iPhone app receiving images from a external camera circuit, which I built.
To interface my iPhone app to the camera circuit, I have looked into the following approaches:
Build a bluetooth module on the camera circuit, to transfer images to the iPhone
Use Eye-Fi SD card to transfer images to my app somehow! link:http://www.eye.fi/products/iphone
Build a circuit, to make a wired connection to the iPhone with the 30-Pin dock connector
Here are the problems I'm facing with each of these. My actual questions for you guys are highlighted in BOLD:
The iOS BlueTooth framework (4S only), only supports Low Energy Devices. Looking at the the modules out there like this one, I'm doubting it will work for image transfer, which seems to be a bulky task for low energy bluetooth. I know there are jailbreak apps on the cydia store, which do regular bluetooth transfers, but I was unable to find those private APIs for such a task. (NOTE: I'm making this app for my purposes, so feel free to suggest any private/unofficial APIs). Question#1: How can I interface to a regular bluetooth device (not another iPhone) and transfer data?
EYE-FI card sounded amazing as a consumer because the company has their proprietary iPhone app to transfer the images from the EYE-FI SD card. Problem is I can't figure out how to easily interface with the EYE-Fi card in my code. I researched the iOS CFNetwork framework, but haven't had any luck. Question#2:How can I interface with the EYE-FI card in my app?
Building a circuit seems simple enough with this development board, but I read somewhere that the iPhone may not recognize an "un-registered" accessory. I have a developer license but not a MFi licence. Question#3: Do I need to be registered as a MFi developer to create and use this external accessory in my App for my own purposes???
You might try setting something up through a serial port since joining the MPi program is prohibited for individuals. You could possible use a connector like this one http://www.amazon.com/neXplug-Ultra-Small-Micro-Adapter/dp/B0055PCVDO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339309918&sr=8-1
The Apple website recommends individuals/hobbyists to use " recommend that you use a third-party solution which will allow you to connect iOS devices to serial devices and to write iOS apps that communicate with these serial devices" (from mfi.apple.com/faq).
I am also working on an external camera that can hook to the iphone/ipad. I will be using a serial port in order to get around the MFi requirement for external iphone/pad devices. Trying to use bluetooth is too complicated and the data stream isn't big enough for pictures. the wired version will work much better.
I hope this helps and that your college term and project are not already finished. Best of luck.
As T Reddy has already mentioned, if you want to create hardware the interfaces with external hardware framework, you have to sign up with the Apple MFi program which you, as an individual, can not do.
I'm not sure of how the Eye-Fi system works but it sounds to me that it basically syncs the images to their server and once you download their Apple App, the app can sync the photos for you.
Whether you are using Bluetooth or the 30-pin connector, there is no way to interface to an external device unless that device is MFi compliant and a part of the MFi program. I suggest you try the following options to solve this delimma--
If this is a "Senior Project" at some University, see if your University is part of MFi. Apple will not let individuals join the program, so if you are going to gain access, you have to access it through another organization or, possibly, an educational institution. I don't know if Apple has worked with schools in this regard, but you never know. It might be possible.
If your school isn't in the MFi program then you may want to consider re-writing your application for an Android device. Android devices are not locked down like iOS devices, so that may be a more reasonable approach.
I hate to bring bad news but circumventing these hardware restrictions on an iOS device is excessively prohibited. Your options are quite limited and none of them are probably what you either want or need to hear.