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I want to develop a toy car, which I can use iPhone to control it. My toy car has a bluetooth interface. So I am wondering is it possible to connect to it from my iPhone. The toy car is not a MFi (made for iPhone/iPod/iPad) program.

My iPhone mode is iPhone 4S.

If not possible, is there any alternative way?

Joe SHI
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  • I have just heard that about Core BlueTooth in iOS5.0 can connect to external accessories without MFi. Does it mean that my external accessory should have a BlueTooth LE interface? My toy car has only Bluetooth 2.0 interface right now. – Joe SHI Aug 26 '12 at 16:33
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    yes you can use CoreBluetooth to interact with BLE devices, and that would be a perfectly good way to go. A car remote doesn't need high data rate, so LE is well suited. But yes, you need the car to have a 4.0 BT device – TJD Aug 26 '12 at 16:45
  • Thanks, TJD. It's a greate answer. – Joe SHI Aug 27 '12 at 01:07

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Without joining Apple's Made for iPhone (MFi) program, your choices are really WiFi or Bluetooth LE. WiFi is more power-hungry and, unless you're very careful in your chip selection, can be difficult to implement. Bluetooth LE is only supported by iPhone 4S and the new iPad (i.e. 3rd-gen); it's likely to be supported in future iOS devices, such as the new iPhone and much-rumoured 'mini' iPad.

Just Bluetooth 4.0 isn't enough, from my understanding, it needs to be Bluetooth 4.0 LE (the low-energy variant). Support for such devices is provided in the iOS 5.0 SDK and later with the CoreBluetooth framework. See Apple's documentation on the CoreBluetooth framework [free developer registration required].

Calrion
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