The amazing iOS 5 API and iPhone 4S hardware nobody talks about
de-de.comCoreBluetooth 4.0 LE Is it just me, or did the 5 use cases proposed in the article immediately give you the reaction "Yuck, I'm kind of glad that none of those things actually broadcast that crap (yet)." I'd go a step further and say that the 5 use cases proposed in the article give me the reaction "good thing no one does that yet, because it would probably kill the technology." These crazy would-be advertising innovations that rely on people cooperating with advertisers to look at more ads... what are they thinking?? (Wait. They're thinking "money money money", and apparently not much else. Duh. There's the problem.) But you wouldn't even see those broadcasts without something listening for them, right? Not too many years ago a lot of these same use cases were talked about for irDA and didn't really go anywhere. Bluetooth 4.0 LE - Non-paired communication in the 10s of meters range. Very low power. 250kbps or so max speed. It could be useful for easily interacting with devices, e.g. thermostats, exercise monitors, televisions, cars… There don't appear to be (m)any devices using it now. But it is in the phone, waiting. Indeed. CSR has a nice-sounding SoC for this, but their dev program sucks for hackers. $10k for a seat? Blegh. TI is a bit more friendly in this regard, see video in below link. I'm interested to see if anyone could potentially implement a lightweight data format for send/receive to create an open system for communicating from app-to-mote. Right now, any iPhone receiver app on the store wouldn't be allowed to download any drivers, however a common application-layer protocol transmitting JSON would probably work. After all, it wouldn't be code, just rules on how to interpret it. I've pondered a similar concept whenever I design an embedded system that needs a user interface. Provide a common formatted set of data (JSON say), a fallback interface (HTML,CSS,javascript), and an identifier for a better interface if the user's device can get to a network and snag an app or updated UI (URL). Look at all the things around you in daily life with awful user interface devices, and yet you almost certainly carry a really nice UI device in your pocket and probably have a really great device in your bag. UPnP already does this. It can even include a presentation URL. There's already a set of standard protocols for LE (such as heart rate) that are managed by the Bluetooth standards group. Their intention is to grow that list based on feedback from developers. That is good - $99 for an evaluation kit from TI. I used the CC2500 part a while ago for a hobby project with good results. Hmm - just using this to make a matchbox size robot would be feasible. Also, interesting to see the chipcon parts carrying on with the 8051 CPU cores. Wahoo fitness will be releasing a bluetooth 4.0 heart rate monitor soon. This is just OEMed from Dayton in Hong Kong. They're < $35 in volume. Given that the Wahoo ANT+ Dongle is $16 in volume from the same OEM (Wahoo has their own firmware), one has to wonder how high the price for the HRM might be. I fully expect Nike or Adidas to bring these to market, leveraging their very large channel and ability to take down more than the MOQ (5k pcs) to drop the price to around $45 at retail. Talking about iPhone and Bluetooth: is there any app that would make it easier to switch BT on and off? BT and WiFi are major power drains, so I always switch them off as soon as I can, but it's a major pain. By default you have to go to Settings -> General -> Bluetooth -> on/off -- 4 taps, which is ridiculous. It's slightly better for WiFi, "only" 3 taps. Ideally I'd be able to get buttons on my home screen that will quickly switch these on or off with 1 tap. This guy made some shortcuts usingthe new urls to individual settings. It's not 1 tap (it's 2!), but it's a bit better if you need to use any of the settings a lot. That's sweet. Incredibly useful AND a nice showcase of what's possible with special web clips on iOS. Installed and donated $10, well worth it. I use a jailbroken and unlocked iphone 3gs. I installed SBSettings on it, and I have a slide screen that shows many hardware options. I can toggle airplane mode, 3g, wifi, bluetooth, ssh, brightness, data and a user agent faker (and more). So.. it takes a slide and a tap. I highly doubt that Bluetooth 4.0 is going to remove the biggest obstacle to these sorts of applications on the iPhone, which is Apple's review process. Right now if your Bluetooth device corresponds to one of the handful of profiles with blanket approval from Apple (headsets, keyboards, certain accessibility hardware) you're fine, but if you're trying to do anything as exotic as serial communication with a third-party device you're shit out of luck unless you join Apple's MFI program. And the MFI program won't even talk to you until you've lawyered up, so it's pretty alienating to anyone who wants to build something as a side project. The same goes for serial communication. You can buy a nicely-built RedPark cable and make a stunningly beautiful app to talk to whatever device is on the other end, but your app won't make it into the store unless Apple has put the MFI stamp of approval on your device. Since Apple controls what goes into their App Store, it would require a major shift in their approval policy before we see any significant expansion of apps that talk to arbitrary Bluetooth-enabled widgets. (If anyone has heard of examples of approved apps using serial or bluetooth communication to talk to unapproved devices, I'd love to know!) I can't say much since I'm still under NDA, but I can tell you that my co-founder and I got all the way through the MFI approval process, without any kind of "lawyering up". Apple was great through the entire process—very eager to help us get our small project started. The MFI program isn't the easiest process in the world, but it isn't impossible. Definitely doable as a side project if you're motivated. That's good to hear. I remember starting to go through the signup process about a year and a half ago and by the third screen they wanted to know the contact information for my legal counsel. I may have to revisit my project in light of your comment :) this API is it. no approval process as far as is known. the CB api treats devices no differently than web sites as far as Apple is concerned. the reason that there are no apps yet is that only iPhone 4S has the heardware for CB and no CB chipsets out there yet in devices. chicken and egg problem which hopefully will be solved with the iPhone 4S adoption. Core Bluetooth, which is Bluetooth 4.0-only, doesn't require MFi approval from Apple, meaning it does remove the biggest obstacle. This stuff would probably be pretty useful for turning your iPhone into a remote control if Apple makes a TV And for home automation in general. Some rumors say they will in 2012 http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31747_7-20083044-243/rumor-new-... Some things that are not possible yet (though it would be super cool if they were on Apple’s todo list): - iPhone to iPhone CoreBluetooth communication This is a killer. All of the ideas suggested in the article would require custom built hardware- if we could do user-user connections then I think a lot more would be possible. You can already have user-to-user connections through BlueTooth. One way is to use GameKit (http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Networ...) but I believe you can just go with a BlueTooth connection. Are you thinking about something else? Is it some specificity of GameKit that's limiting you? Apple has just revamped their hardware partner program, supposedly providing easier access to BL4 chipsets. Other hardware makers will certainly follow. I bet (and hope) this will be bigger than RFID. What are you attempting to say here? While Apple has made recent changes to MFi (can't discuss, NDA), these are expressly NOT about access to Bluetooth LE or 4.0 "chipsets". What IS true is that you don't have to go through MFi to have a device that talks LE to an iOS device. Is this what you were trying to say? Yeah, I misused "chipsets". AFAIK you need an Apple-certified chip to interface to an iOS device via BT/AirPlay, isn't that right? I'm just relaying news I've hear somewhere else, feel free to correct me. As Timothee notes, peer-to-peer already exists, it was one of the big bullet points in iOS3, as part of the push towards improved gaming experience (which also yield GameCenter in iOS4). I've yet to see an application make use of peer-to-peer communications at all (as well as in-game chat, though I'm pretty happy about that one). I made a concept app that uses GameKit to share flashcards between iPads[1]. P2P in iOS is definitely underused, especially in non-gaming apps, but even GameKit requires some sort of connection setup. Having a zero-configuration P2P connection would be quite useful for many apps, such as Bump. looks like GAE quota was reached. fixing now. article is also mirrored on tumblr @ The only problem with all of these use cases is very few people walk around with their bluetooth on all the time! Cool technology but I don't see this getting picked up in the way you're imagining. Ironically this article looks terrible on an iPhone 4S http://i.imgur.com/H4FXD.jpg Doesn't even scroll on my iOS device. #irony oh man. can you retry? i think it's cause not all the assets loaded (ran out of free quota on GAE) fixing now. Ah! Much much better now. Usually Apple would use this kind of API to actually power some cool feature. Wonder why they didn't? Yet. Seems like a really good technology for, say, an Apple TV remote. My guess would be they have some cool (hardware) stuff waiting to be released when iPhone 4S sales start to slow down and people start to consider holding out for the next iPhone. Is the page layout broken for anyone else? (Me: Chrome 17.0.963.2 dev-m on Windows). is it still broken? rand out of quota for a few minutes so maybe not all the assets loaded. Looks good now! Anything wireless that doesn't require some sort of pairing is crap. Maybe fine for tv remote if you still want to be vulnerable to tv-be-gone. But since even tvs now have powerful cpus, not even it is worth What about audio? I'm incredibly frustrated that I have 4 different devices capable of exporting Bluetooth audio, but I have to go through a bug-ridden and annoying pairing process to hook one up to my car or home stereo, so I don't even bother. If you had non paired audio anyone walking by could hijack your audio stream First, as security breaches go, that's pretty minor. Someone could also shit on my front doorstep too, but somehow it doesn't happen that often. Second, there are better ways to link devices than pairing; for instance, hit a button on the receiver to see the closest device by signal strength, while also remembering all previous devices. Or, a UI for booting out the device ID of an accidental linkage or ne'er-do-well. Pairing makes sense for sensitive data usage, such as tethering. But it's a broken pattern for consumer purposes like multimedia and gaming. It's not that big of a security breach but it'd absolutely be annoying is anyone could do it on the train. People don't steal your mail but as soon a firesheep came out a dozen jokers a block were logging in to people's facebook. Make it so it doesn't interrupt your headphones and then all of a sudden it's trivial for anyone to listen to at least half of your telephone calls. Most BT headsets already pose a serious everyday security risk to people who might be targets of surveillance by as minor players as private detectives or journalists due to both protocol and chipset weaknesses. BT security has been improving since then, but the last thing it needs to do is go backwards because you can't be bothered to pair a device with your car once(!) if you're talking on the train, people know what you say, the other side is still pretty private. with open radio, anyone on the train could be saving a hi-fi copy of the entire conversation. in your analogy, he would have to be pushing a recorder between your ear and phone. very different from sitting in your door steps. but i agree, the current system is crappy. I never bother to use bluetooth. but removing pairing instead of fixing is dumb.
