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iosbluetoothbluetooth-lowenergy
Mia Lemoine
Mia Lemoine

Reputation: 157

Connecting an iPhone app to a PC app via Bluetooth

I am currently researching the possibilities of connecting an iPhone app to a windows app via Bluetooth.

The Windows App is written in C# and uses Serial ports to transfer Data. Windows allow me to connect a serial port to Bluetooth. This setup allows communication via Serial over Bluetooth. I know this setup works because I have managed to communicate with this setup from an Android phone.

I don't seem to be able to do the same with an iPhone 5s (I can't even seem to pair the iPhone to the Windows PC). I haven't been able to test this with a more recent iPhone, but I don't expect it to work either since it's an Apple device with a Windows machine.

I've done some research regarding the possibilities of connecting an iPhone to something else (like a PC) over Bluetooth, and it doesn't seem to be possible. I have found this SO answer which seems to say that I cannot use Bluetooth Classic to connect an iPhone to a PC.

Since I can't seem to be able to use Bluetooth Classic, I have also tried to use BLE, but I haven't worked out how to simulate the PC as a "peripheral device" to connect to it from the iPhone. I don't even know if that's possible.

So basically my questions are:

1) Is it possible to communicate via Bluetooth between an iPhone and a PC?

2) Would it be possible to use some sort of adapter for the iPhone to connect to the PC (For example, an Arduino with a Bluetooth chip, acting as a BLE peripheral, and sending the data to the PC?)

3) What alternative would I have to this? I know WiFi might work, but I am uncertain if the PC running the app will be network enabled when the project goes live.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1186

Answers (1)

Sudhin Philip
Sudhin Philip

Reputation: 644

You can connect an iPhone with PC over Bluetooth using BLE.

I tried with Linux machine (Ubuntu 16.04 with BLE dongle 4.0) which acts as BLE Peripheral and iPhone 8 with BLE 5.0 as central application. Both could able to successfully communicate using custom GATT service that we developed. The throughput i observed here was 2.5 kiloBytes per sec.

If you are so specific on Windows to act as BLE Peripheral, then i believe there are apps available in Windows store to download which enables Windows PC to act as peripheral. Once peripheral mode is enabled, you can always communicate to this over BLE using iPhone [recommended latest phones]. But you need to try this out.

Upvotes: 3

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