Can I use Serial Port Profile (SPP) to communicate with iOS devices over Bluetooth Low Energy (v4.0) without the need for MFi Chip?
If you're designing something from scratch (rather than trying to interface to an existing SPP-enabled device), there is a possible solution.
Laird Technologies make a Bluetooth Low Energy Module (BL600), which can be loaded with a virtual serial port application. This creates a service which is similar to the SPP; at the remote end it can just be treated as a plain serial port (albeit rather low speed). You could roll your own service to do something similar on other devices.
It's not the most elegant solution, but seems to work okay, and far easier than trying to get MFi certification.
If you cannot control the peripheral's protocol choice:
The Serial Port Profile (SPP) is still supported by Bluetooth 4.0. However, Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy uses different pysical and link layer protocols that are not backwards compatible with older Bluetooth standards. Current iOS and Android devices use "dual mode" interfaces that support the backward compatible part of BT 4.0 and the Low Energy standard.
Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy does not support SPP whereas regular Bluetooth 4.0 does!
I found a Cordova/Phonegap Plugin on GitHub that might serve as a source of inspiration for you. They advertise to support SPP on iOS and Android alike.
If you are in control of the peripheral, i.e. you implement the peripheral's software:
Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy communication makes use of the Generic ATTribute Protocol. Based on GATT there exist a number of profiles but no serial port profile.
The good news is that implementing your own proprietary serial port profile on iOS, Android and your device is fairly simple. The API instructions for your BTLE module/SoC should provide some examples for existing profiles.
As soon as you see how simple implementing your own profile is, you will probably choose to go for a more use case specific profile which will save you lots of power on your (battery powered?) peripheral.
Just to clear up John Parsons comment from Feb 16th - the BL600 is definitely not discontinued whatsoever.
vSP works well for a low level, low throughput data connectivity using BLE for iOS devices, as well as Android. Video showing the solution working to an iPad are at this link and full source code is available for the iOS application as well http://www.lairdtech.com/Support-Center/Technical-Library/Videos/VSP-Bridge-Command/#.UwYvzGJ_s1w
There are no MFi requirements for BLE connectivity on iOS.
MFi is only relevant to Classic Bluetooth data connections to / from iOS devices, where you need to use Apple's iAP protocol, be a MFi licensee, use an external Apple Authentication IC and pay a royalty to Apple.
NO,you can't. BLE not support SPP.
No, you can't. In general, it's important to remember that any Bluetooth Classic profile isn't necessarily applicable for Bluetooth Low Energy. With BLE however, you can easily create your own custom service/profile, specially tailored towards your particular application. As far as I know, all BLE communication with iOS is currently allowed without participating in the MFi. You can also take a look at this page for further information on SPP and BLE.
I'm searching for SPP for iOS myself and found a German supplier, lintech.de, that has products for "Bluetooth meets Apple" claiming to support/emulate SSP, apparently using their own embedded software layer combined with iAP. "BlueMFI software communicate with APPLE devices using the iAP (iPod Accessory Protocol) and manage the data communication with the Apple authentication chip...BlueMFI software is designed to run on a variety of hardware platforms (Bluetooth modules), and interested users can obtain the relevant evaluation kits. LinTech’s Bluetooth modules with BlueMFI software not only support the APPLE iAP protocol via Bluetooth, but they are also able to communicate with standard Bluetooth devices." Haven't tried this yet, just exploring and sharing.
I won't say SPP is directly supported under iOS 7, Apple says no. Won't argue :)
But...
I use connectblue modules OBS421 and OBS425 on a data collection project.
BLE modules have SPP profile enabled and I transmit data from my sensors to the iOS devices using BTLE module in SPP mode.
Works pretty fine under iOS 6 and 7
That said, I was having trouble with MFi bluetooth devices under iPhone 5S, that's why I moved to BTLE.
Drawback with BTLE, it's limited to 20 bytes at a time.
I had to adjust hardware and software, but was easy.
You have programmable chips such as Bluegiga BL112 that are doing the job. It is the cable replacement code.
I'm integrating it actually for both iOS and Android 4.3. It works at least on the demo board.
Related
I want to create hardware accessory for iPhone and iPad but there is very less resources out there. I am not a programmer or engineer. My concept is very simple building a number pad connected through lightning cable. It will have 6x4 keys layout, in this 4 keys can be customize as per need means key a will work as copy(command+c)key b will work as paste(command+v) this keys can be customised in diffrent kind of shortcuts. I dont want a blueetoth connectivity.
Do I need a arduino or raspberry pi kind of device to program and test run a functional prototype?
What kind of cable do I need to sue to communicate with the device?
What kind of programming langauge do i need to learn?
Do I need to first register for Mfi program or I can do it after I develop the product?
As far as I'm aware, you'll need to join MFI for developing Lightning accessories.
However, you don't need Apple's permission for designing and building your own Bluetooth LE (Bluetooth 4.0) accessories. You should be able to do what you want by programming a Bluetooth LE capable microcontroller to act as a HID device that sends the key events you want. I've not done this specific type of project myself and I'm far from an expert on embedded stuff, but Adafruit have a bunch of resources and development boards on Bluetooth LE using Arduinos and other dev boards. I believe they even have something that already acts as a HID device. I'd start researching in that direction.
Another option is to program a microcontroller to act as a standard USB HID keyboard device, and plug that into the iDevice using the Lightning to USB Camera adapter. iPads recognise standard USB keyboards without needing MFI approval, but you do need to use Apple's adapter. Note that the adapter allows the USB device to draw very little power (50mA I think) so it will not work with any device that requires more. The USB3 version of the adapter has an extra power input and so allows you to attach a USB device that draws more than that.
As far as I understand eddybeacon (just released by Google) is effectively a new 'operating system' for Bluetooth 4.0 Low energy devices (iBeacons). I have been experimenting with iBeacons for sometime now and want to try out a few things with eddybeacon. Has anyone had a go with it yet? I've read a few sites and they say it can be installed to some devices... Can anyone share how to do this?
If you want to start out by playing with Eddystone, you have a couple of options:
You can use a software transmitter. Just download my free Locate App in the Google Play store which will both act as an Eddystone transmitter and decode other Eddystone-compatible beacons in the vicinity. Google also has posted an Android app that can transmit the Eddystone-UID frame here, but you have to compile it yourself.
You can get a few hardware beacons for testing with a Developer Kit from Radius Networks (my company) here.
Once you have a transmitter, you can try writing some software to work with it. Here's a tutorial I wrote on how to build a basic Eddystone-capable Android app.
One other thing that might be useful is an Eddystone detector tool. You can use the free Android Locate app to detect and decode all of the frames transmitted by Eddystone.
So:
Eddystone is a specification for Bluetooth Smart (usually just called BLE) devices to behave like beacons — it defines the Bluetooth frames and content they need to broadcast to be seen as beacons.
iBeacon is not a generic term. iBeacon is actually Apple's specification for Bluetooth beacons. Eddystone and iBeacon are both examples of beacon specifications for BLE devices.
There are a few ways to get started with Eddystone beacons.
a. A number of hardware manufacturers sell developer kits that will let you get started with Eddystone beacons right away, and there is plenty of example software out, either from those vendors, or from the google pages on GitHub — github.com/google/eddystone and github.com/google/beacon-platform.
b. Some people have had good luck with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis. You can see an Arduino example here (Note: I have no idea how well that project works, I've just seen it used a few times.)
I'm trying to learn something about iBeacon and I have a question:
As far as I understood Apple provides API in order to develop iBeacons app since IOS7, but for android how does it work? The only thing I found is that It works only from version 4.3 (Is it correct?) But are there any sdk or library to use?
Yes, you can use the open source Android Beacon Library, which gives Android the same basic capabilities to detect and transmit as beacons as provided by CoreLocation on iOS devices. This library is designed to be vendor neutral, and works with a wide variety of beacons. There are also a number of proprietary Android SDKs offered by beacon manufacturers, some of which harness special features that only work with those beacons.
The main thing to understand on Android is that while 4.3+ devices can all detect Bluetooth LE transmissions, there is no native beacon framework, and working with beacons typically requires quite a bit of logic beyond reading the Bluetooth LE packets they send out. As a result, Android beacon apps typically bundle a small library like mentioned above with the app to provide beacon detection and/or transmission capability.
Full disclosure: I am the lead developer for the Android Beacon Library.
You can use as well kontakt.io Android SDK which handles Beacons with IBeacon profile. In the latest release some optimizations in terms of battery consumption were made. Additionally, it supports filtering and modes (Android Lollipop and upwards) according to which scan is performed (explanation in brief here).
To start, visit http://docs.kontakt.io/android-sdk/quickstart/ and follow the instructions.
There is a sample app demonstrating SDK functionalities here. I suggest observing the project as it is the first place where new changes are being introduced.
As #davidgyoung pointed, there is no native framework for IBeacons in Android at the moment.
I already have an home automation ios app. I can able to control devices that are configured in my home. I can able to access my device via local and remote network.
I just read apple's new ios8 HomeKit support. I want to integrate HomeKit compatibility into my app.I heard HAP(Home Accessory protocol) supported devices can only able to communicate with HomeKit Framework. Also apple said there is a bridge for third party devices to communicate with HomeKit. There is not much information about hardware protocols or procedures, how to use bridge between third party device and HomeKit ?
Is my HomeKit bridge is a real hardware?
Also i have doubts on communicating with configured accessories. Because apple HomeKit Framework have commands like "startExecutingActionSet" to perform one or multiple task , but how this commands works with our Existing commands protocols defined in ios app.
I am new to hardware engineering . So please give me a simple example of communication between apple's homekit via bridge with my Hardware device.
Thanks in advance...
A HomeKit bridge is a piece of hardware that receives HK style commands from an iDevice and translated them into the specific protocol for the target devices in your home. Phillips Hue have one of these. Apple have a protocol that the hardware manufacturers need to conform to and you need to be signed up to their MFi program to get that protocol. However someone seems to have reverse engineered the specs and you can use their code to write your own software bridge. That's what I'm doing.
In HomeKit you do not talk directly to the devices. That's pretty much the main point of HomeKit. So that each developer doesn't need to know each device's specific protocol you just trigger iOS to do the talking for a predefined action. I believe you can also add triggers and action sets by building up a group of actions that you want to happen and firing of the event. E.g. Turn off all accessories in the garage when I go inside. You don't need to know how to turn off each one, you just tell iOS to run the Off command on each device and it knows the rest. Or at least it does for the ones that have signed up to the MFi program and can listen to HomeKit commands.
I wasn't able to find a clean answer on this, is there or is there not a way to connect my iPhone to a bluetooth printer to execute some printing tasks?
I'm developing the app myself, so what framework could possibly do this? i read that Apple's External Accessory Framework handles bluetooth communication, but is it possible to print using that framework?
Thanks!
Since this question is 2 years old, things change and this was the first result for what I was looking for I decided to submit this answer after some "research".
From the SAME Apple Technical Q&A
Note: Bluetooth low energy accessories do not interface with the
External Accessory framework and are not required to be MFi compliant.
Instead, apps use the CoreBluetooth framework to communicate with
Bluetooth low energy accessories from iOS or OS X.
So, it may have not been possible 2 years ago, but it is possible now.
Edit: As the accepted answer points out, things are different since I posted this answer in 2010. The answer is left for posterity.
From an Apple Technical Q&A:
The External Accessory framework is designed to allow iPhone OS applications to communicate only with hardware accessories that are developed under Apple's Made For iPod (MFi) and Works With iPhone licensee program. MFi compliant accessories can be implemented as wired devices, meaning they plug in to the iPhone or iPod touch's 30-pin connector, or as wireless devices, whereby they use Bluetooth as the communication channel. Either way, an application that uses the External Accessory framework will not be notified of an accessory's presence unless the accessory identifies itself as being MFi compliant, i.e., it was specifically designed to interface with an iPhone OS application.
More information about developing MFi accessories can be found here.