iOS device communication with bluetooth enabled device

Question

I have a specific requirement to communicate an iOS device with a wifi/bluetooth enabled device. At this moment, I'm confused with some points and requires an expert advice.

• Can I use adhoc wifi method for communicating? but in this case, can I connect to another network? On my research, I found no so I'm opting for Bluetooth.
• If I go in bluetooth communication,
  • Do the device need MFI licensing or can we use classic bluetooth?
  • From few blogs I found out that Bluetooth low enrgy devices with 4.0 can be used to communicate with ios without licensing. Will this work?

PS: My requirement is to send strings of data to and fro from the ios and other wifi/bluettoth enabled devices.

Answer 1

An iOS device can only be connected to a single Wi Fi network at a time, so an Ad-hoc network connection probably won't work for you.

If you join the MFi program you can use the Wireless Accessory Configuration (WAC) feature to simply the process of connecting your device to the user's existing network.

If you use Bluetooth Low Energy/Bluetooth Smart/Bluetooth 4.0 then you don't need to go through the MFi program, but you are limited to iPhone 4S and later and iPad 3 and later. If you use "classic Bluetooth" (Say Bluetooth 2.1 Serial Port Protocol) then it will work with all devices but you need to go through MFi.

Bluetooth Low Energy isn't great for high data volumes (say video streaming) but is fine for smaller amounts of data (you talk about "strings" so it will probably be suitable for you).

The other advantage of BLE is that it is independent of the iOS device's Internet connection so the user can cary the BLE device around and maintain communication regardless of their WiFi connection.