Bluetooth Projects And Apple Cellphone Users

You happened to be in an unfortunate group due to Apple's support policies on Bluetooth and Serial Communications. 

Here is an Apple response regarding this topic:

iOS has no API for accessing generic USB peripherals. Some USB peripherals are managed by iOS and made accessible to our app via high-level APIs — for example, events from a USB keyboard are routed to apps via the UIKit event system, including low-level events via UIPress — but that’s not the case for USB serial devices.

If you’d like to see serial support added in the future, I encourage you to file an enhancement request describing your requirements. Please post your bug number, just for the record. 

Apple only supports BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) version of Bluetooth. The Bluetooth projects in the PicoBricks list happen to utilize the Serial Port Protocol (SPP) version of the Bluetooth implemented in modules like HC-05, HC-06, etc. Therefore, you cannot make these modules work with your Apple Cell phones.

There is another reason why you cannot use your Apple Cell phones: the BT projects require an Android APP to generate voice controls for your project. Since you cannot run this APP in your cell, there is no point in even trying to use an Apple Cell phone.

So, what are your options:

  • Most obvious one is to get a hold of an ANDROID cell phone.
  • If you cannot do that and still want to experiment with SPP Bluetooth, you need to get access to a Windows laptop with Bluetooth. Then using a simple terminal program like Termite or Bluetooth Serial Terminal you can send and receive messages to /from your project. This will not be the same as issuing voice command controls, but it will get the job done in a simpler way.

 I will try to summarize general Bluetooth tips in another write-up.

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