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My iPhone connects over adhoc wifi to a wifi sensor module.

The challenge is to code an app that uses this sensor module. But I'm not sure what specific API's to use to best architect this implementation.

I've started looking into the CocoaAsyncSocket class as it seems to be an appropriate tool for such use.

Does the user always have to manually connect to the adhoc wifi device? (through the Settings app) or can my own app handle the searching, making, and breaking of the wifi connection?

I doubt iOS lets me programmatically toggle whether Wifi is on/off.

Once the sensor data is being received, what container would best handle the stream? For example, on other platforms, I coded a rotating queue buffer.

Thanks for your input.

Edit: The protocol in question is straight CSV formatted ASCII. Not HTTP, FTP, etc. Just raw data. The app is to simply open a port on the connected IP, and read/write.

Sebastian Dwornik
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2 Answers2

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Your application cannot turn wifi on/off, or select a wifi network.

Without more information on what protocols this wifi sensor module speaks, it will be impossible for anyone to give more than vague recommendations. If the module can serve data over an http connection, that would probably be ideal. If it requires your software to open a connection on a specific port and communicate over something other than http or ftp, your job will be a bit more complicated. CFNetwork and projects derived from it's usage, such as CocoaAsyncSocket which you mentioned. You can see another implementation of an HTTP connection over CFNetwork in ASIHTTPRequest, that may help as a reference for handling download streams, queuing operations, etc.

As for storing the data, again it's hard to give any concrete recommendations without more information. If you want to store the data to the filesystem of the iOS device, NSData will probably meet your needs. If you need/prefer to use a queue for buffering data, there is a simple category on NSArray which provides queue semantics. The link to CHCircularBuffer in that SO article is dead, but this github project appears to have it.

edit: Here is the official version of the CHDataStructures. I don't know if it's an improvement over the previous link, but it appears to be updated for the more recent iOS SDK.

Community
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RyanR
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Add the SSID of your wifi ad hoc networks in settings. When you see the SSID of the network, click the arrow and choose connect automatically. After this, the phone will automatically connect whenever it comes in range. After this, the two devices can communicate using regular socket APIs.

Andy
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