Apples external accessory (bluetooth) only for MFI devices?

ios bluetooth external-accessory
ManuelSchneid3r picture ManuelSchneid3r · Feb 28, 2013 · Viewed 8.2k times · Source

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?

Answer

Dan F picture Dan F · Feb 28, 2013

The External Accessory framework is indeed for MFi only, but you have two options:

  1. Jailbreak (I can't give you any advice there).

  2. 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.

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