Bluetooth standard profile to connect accessory to iOS device

3
votes

I am developing an iOS accessory, and I am trying to find out what options I have to establish a connection that are outside the MFi program.

Is it possible to connect from an iOS device to an accessory over Bluetooth using a standard profile like PAN and not having to be MFi certified?

I read that peer-to-peer can only be used among iOS devices and reading this post, I am not sure if it is possible. How can an iPhone access another non-iPhone device over wireless or Bluetooth?

But I also read that MFi certification also applies to accessories connecting to iOS devices via bluetooth that are not using a standard profiles, which implies that if you want to use a standard profile you don't need to be certified, thus the confusion.

Also, is it possible to achieve this using Bonjour and NSStream? Would I need to port Bonjour to my accessory platform?

Do you know of any examples (even if they use BTLE)?

Please advice,

1
iosbluetooth
Nothing using Bluetooth LE needs to be MFi-certified (and will use a heck of a lot less power than standard Bluetooth). I don't believe standard Bluetooth PAN is a service that's supported at the system level by iOS. Apple has their own proprietary implementation of this in Game Kit using Bonjour discovery, but I'm not sure if anyone has reverse engineered that for use in an accessory. – Brad Larson♦
@BradLarson According to this document PAN is supported. – ThomasW

1 Answers

3
votes

You don't need MFI if you use Bluetooth LE or any of the standard Bluetooth profiles.

iOS supports the Personal Area Network Profile (PAN) as one of the standard profiles (source: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3647). So you are fine using PAN without MFI.

As for other ways of communicating without MFI, I only know of one: The audio port. You could actually connect your device via a standard audio cable and communicate using standard modem technologies. This is what Square did to circumvent the MFI requirement.