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How can I make a Bluetooth Mac app that connects with an iOS app and sends messages ?
Or an iOS app that connects with a Mac app via a local WiFi network ?
NOTE: this answer is now outdated as with the introduction of CoreBluetooth (Bluetooth LE v4) since iOS6 and OSX 10.7 any iOS device is open to any kind of communication with any other BLE compatible device, either a Mac or PC or external hardware.
The answer below is still valid if you cannot support BLE, due to old hw or specific requirements (e.g. required bandwidth)
As far as I know, this is almost impossible. Bluetooth connection between iOS devices is well supported with the GameKit framework but there is no support for connection with other OSes, OSX included. The only connection between Mac and iPHone I have ever seen is with the hotspot feature (when it works).
Consider for example the Keynote Remote app. This app allows you to control a Keynote presentation using your iPhone as a remote. It allows this control when the two devices are Keynote-paired on the WiFi, but this connection is not allowed using Bluetooth, while with Bluetooth you can control a Keynote presentation between two iOS devices. And you can find this statement in Apple tech note 2152:
An important consequence of the first point is that Bluetooth peer-to-peer networking can only be used to communicate between iOS devices; you can't use it, for example, to communicate between an iOS device and a computer running Mac OS X.
As far as the WiFi question (I forgot to reply to it in my first question) essentially you to kind of problems to solve: discoverability and data transfer. In order to determine if two devices are in the same network, you can use the Bonjour protocol. Essentially one of the machines publish itself as service-provider for a specific service (you can create your own service: e.g. "_mytype._myprotocol") and the would-be client will search for a server. Besides Bonjour takes care of other things like addressing and DNS without the two apps to know the details of the local network they are in. This is explained in Apple docs here: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/NetServices/Articles/about.html
Note that Bonjour is at the base of features like AirPlay (Apple TV), AirPrint and probably also AirDrop but it is supported by a lot of devices, e.g. some NAS. In the SampleCodes section of the Apple developers site you will find a great example, called "BonjourWeb" that shows how service discovery works. You can easily try it in your iPhone simulator or device and if you have some Bonjour-enabled device you will see it in the list.
The second problem of course is then real data communication between the two devices, is up to you to define a custom client/server or use a standard web-server based approach. This depends on the application and the data flow. The first approach is better as it is highly customized, you must study the NetworkStreams concepts and check out the SimpleNetworkStreams code in the apple library (this is a simple communication app between a Mac and an iPhone; not always working but it is a good starting point)
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I have been fiddling with Bluetooth lately and I feel as if there is some elusive thing I am missing, anyways here are some of my questions. What I want is to have my Bluetooth enabled laptop running Windows, communicate with my iOS and later Android devices.
Is Bluetooth LE compatible with older Bluetooth technologies?
-My believe is that Bluetooth LE is the same as other Bluetooth versions
only that of course, as the name implies, it is low power. My confusion arises from the fact that on the iOS page they refer to some of the schemes as GAT servers , and what I am guessing is another protocol, ATT. Upon reading the article posted Here there is no mention of these two only L2CAP. As well as there is no mention of those in the Bluetooth API for windows Programming with Windows sockets The protocol that this article mentions is RFCOMM
-How is a connection between the two devices started?
I know that there are service ID's which can be published in an internal Service Description server according to the article previously referenced. However there is no concrete mentioning on the iOS bluetooth pages. They mention peripherals advertising bundles of data and the central device connecting to it. No mention of SDP, unsure if the windows docs do. And I' am bit confused about how the process flows, do the two devices connect first and then one device checks what services are available and the other one subscribes? Here by services I mean which applications are running, and by connection I mean as in establishing a connection from say (in iOS) Settings>Bluetooth and then starting the application on your phone, and then it is able to scan, or can the process of enabling Bluetooth and establishing a connection be done in the application itself. Same for windows, do I have to start the Bluetooth device by Settings>Bluetooth or can it be triggered within the Bluetooth enabled application?
-Is it pivotal to assign which device is the central and which is the peripheral?
Since at the end of the day they are able to both exchange data. In my case I want to have my computer running windows communicate with my iOS 7 device. Now as mentioned there are two roles that you could choose from in iOS: Peripheral and Central. It makes sense to me that the phone should be a peripheral since the main application will run on my computer, and I want my computer to enter the listening state before the device, and have the device connect afterwards. But it makes sense to have my computer advertise its services and then letting the iOS application choose the correct one. If someone could give me some pointers on what the best practices are and how to tackle this problem, I'd appreciate it.
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Target of my bachelors thesis will be to connect optoserial devices via bluetooth adapter to an iPad. Currently I'm struggling with Apples restrictions. I read often in the web that I can use the supported profiles to connect to any devices that support at least on of those. But Apples technical FAQ points points out that "the External Accessory framework is designed to allow iOS applications to communicate only with hardware accessories that are developed under Apple's MFi licensee program". I dont think that those people writing here are just lying for fun.
Can anybody tell me out of experience if it works or not in conjunction, and thats the point, with non-MFi accessories?
The External Accessory framework is indeed for MFi only, but you have two options:
Jailbreak (I can't give you any advice there).
Use CoreBluetooth instead.
I've used CoreBluetooth in my own applications and it can get the job done, depending on how much data you're looking at transmitting. I don't know what an optoserial device is, how how much data you would need, but we're talking data transmission on the order of bytes efficiently. CoreBluetooth operates with Bluetooth 4.0 LE devices, right now that is any iOS device released after (and including) the iPhone 4S.
Certain types of BT devices (ie. hands-free modules, BT headsets) of course don't need to be MFi.
Serial communication, on the other hand, is completely different story. BT accessory has to implement an identification process - usually by using identification chip.
Interesting thing is that SPP (Serial Port Profile) is not even listed under supported profiles.
But sill you can find some MFi GPS modules.
And this module is also interesting: OEM Bluetooth iPhone / iOS Accessory Module OBS414
You have to enter the MFi program before you can even get technical specifications though. Otherwise manufacturer would be breaching NDA.
There is one more workaround on how to communicate via BT: you can always implement hardware FSK (or similiar modem) on one side (audio BT link) and a software counterpart in the app.
I'm working on an application that does does lots of iOS <--> OSX communication. For the most part I have this solved.
I'm using CocoaPort to do the communication. Over Wifi this worked nicely and was plenty fast.
I'm using Bonjour to find my server. This required publishing the service with a modded DNSSDObjects-style net service on iOS. Apparently services published over Bluetooth on OSX cannot be seen by iOS, but the other way round works nicely, except that you need to keep the devices paired and connected.
Now my question is, how can I improve the speed of the Bluetooth connection? I'm getting maybe 100kb/s max and that seems to just stop after about 1 minute even though the connection is still open.
I think I need to use the AMP/HS stuff in Bluetooth 3.0 to get a fast connection. My understanding is this creates an AdHoc wireless network between my devices (MBP retina and iPad3, so should be capable of a decent speed.)
According to Wiki, Bluetooth 4.0 includes the HS spec in Bluetooth 3.0 and according to Bluetooth Explorer, the iPad is 4.0 spec. Is there a way, maybe via IOBluetooth, to request a high speed connection?
According to an engineer # Apple, this is not currently feasible. The best you can do is Bluetooth Classic, which is probably the speed I'm getting.
If you want this feature, consider opening a feature request at bugreporter.apple.com.
I've been banging my head against this for the last week or so. I've already gone through the following resources:
StackOverflow: Bonjour over bluetooth WITHOUT Gamekit ? (3844189)
StackOverflow: How does Bonjour Over Bluetooth Work (3350094)
StackOverflow: Using iOS GameKit's “Bluetooth Bonjour” with other platforms (8070998)
Technical Q&A QA1753 -- Apple Developer
WiTap sample application
SRVResolver sample application
DNSSDObjects sample application
I'm using Mac OS 10.7, Xcode 4.5, an iPhone 4 with iOS 6, and an iPad 1 with iOS 5.1.1.
My problem is this: I am modifying an application that currently uses GameKit's peer picker to connect between an iPad and a iP{hone|od touch}. We want to modify this to use Bonjour over Bluetooth instead because we've had issues with reconnecting the devices using Gamekit if the connection is lost. I've used dns_sd.h API to some success and have gotten the service to advertise and resolve over wifi, but even though I am passing kDNSServiceFlagsIncludeP2P I am not getting any success over bluetooth.
I thought possibly Bluetooth Bonjour need a PAN established between devices already, but even pairing the iPad to the iMac and browsing for DNS-SD services gives me nothing...and the iPhone won't pair to the iPad anyway.
I just finished solving this in my own app in the last 24 hours. I used the core classes from the OS X sample app DNSSDObjects. I only had to change three lines of code to add support for bluetooth. This works great in my iOS app.
In DNSSDBrowser.m, the call to DNSServiceBrowse needs to have kDNSServiceFlagsIncludeP2P passed in for the 2nd parameter.
In DNSSDRegister.m, the call to DNSServiceRegister needs the same change.
In DNSSDService.m, the call to DNSServiceResolve also needs the same change.
If you want to limit yourself to just bluetooth, and not WiFi, then the same three lines of code should be updated so the 3rd parameter is kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexP2P instead of kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexAny.
Indeed, it looks like the kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexP2P flag won't work on OSX.
If you run the code on IOS, you'll notice that Bonjour will publish two IP Adresses: one for your local WiFi network, and an 169.xx.xx.xx adress for Bluetooth.
The same code on OSX never publishes the 169.xx.xx.xx adress, so it's only found over WiFi.
I am working on a major product release for my company. We are designing a new device that we would like to integrate into an iOS app. (FYI, we have recently been accepted into the Apple MFi program so we are past that step.)
What we desire is to create a hardware/software eco-system where our users can start our iPad app (yes, it is specific to the iPad and the not iPhone or iPod Touch devices) and the application will automatically discover and link up with any close-proximity hardware that we've developed.
This means that I will need to implement some form of device connection process on both the iPad and within the hardware.
Is there any way to code automatic connectivity to a Bluetooth device from within an iOS application?
I am aware of the Core Bluetooth Framework which has this capability, however, it only works with the new iPhone 4S. That's not an option.
I've also researched about the External Accessory Framework, which can be used to connect to external devices whether they are connected via the iPod port or Bluetooth. This is an option but, if my understanding is correct, our hardware must already be paired with iPad before the iOS software can connect to it. This is less than preferable because although many of our devices may not be in immediate vicinity at one point in time, our customers could potentially own 100's devices that they may desire to connect to with our software.
What are my reasonable options or alternatives? The end goal is to provide a very easy means for our users to be able to connect to our devices, from within our software, on an iPad.
NOTE: I MUST NOT jailbreak the iPad or break any Apple TOS agreements.
UPDATE (3-7-2012) I saw today that the 'New iPad' (as it is being officially called) will be Bluetooth 4.0 capable. I assume this means that this iPad device will be able to use the Core Bluetooth Framework. This doesn't immediately solve my problem because we do want remain compatible with at least the "last generation" iPad device, but this is worth pointing out for others who may be looking for such an answer.
You cannot connect an iOS device to a bluetooth device without pairing first. It is purposely built that way by Apple to reduce the likelihood that someone could connect a bluetooth device without the user knowing about it. If pairing each device is unacceptable (and it sounds like it is), and you don't want to develop a dongle, the only remaining path I can see is to make your devices capable of relaying data between them like a mesh network. That way the user would only have to pair with a single device, and that paired unit would relay communications between the other devices and the iPad.
One of your alternatives would be going WiFi (AdHoc or Infrastructure) with Bonjour. For example you would be able to detect the device nearby (if it is maintaining it's own AdHoc then by SSID; if it's in infrastructure network then by service being announced). One big drawback would be that you couldn't connect directly (from app) to the device's network - user would have to do it manually.
As for BT: big drawback is lack of a serial protocol (not implemented in iPhone/iPod/iPad).