Controlling a device with CoreBluetooth

Question

I was looking at a couple CoreBluetooth tutorials for iOS. Based on the tutorials, it looks like one device is transmitting data and the other device is receiving. Like in this example: http://www.raywenderlich.com/52080/introduction-core-bluetooth-building-heart-rate-monitor the heart rate monitor is transmitting and the iphone is receiving. Is there a way to just connect to device to control it?

For example, I have a soundbar that is Bluetooth and can I write an app to do the same thing the remote it comes with does (volume up, volume down, input source change, power off)?

Answer 1

Adafruit proposes a lot of tutorials / material to learn how to use BLE (Bluetooth low energy)

• tutorial about their BLE module (that could run with an Arduino): https://learn.adafruit.com/getting-started-with-the-nrf8001-bluefruit-le-breakout
• tutorial about their iOS app (to connect to the previous module): https://learn.adafruit.com/bluefruit-le-connect-for-ios
• iOS app source code to connect to BLE devices or play with previous module: https://github.com/adafruit/Bluefruit_LE_Connect

If you need one way transmission with the maximun data rate you need to read this article: http://www.tbideas.com/blog/2013/04/Optimizing-Bluetooth-Low-Energy-Performance/ it talks about CBCharacteristicWriteWithoutResponse

Stackoverflow thread about the same one way communication subject: iOS. BLE. CBCharacteristicWriteWithoutResponse - How to make it work?

Hope this helps!