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6LoWPAN and iOS devices ?

donnib

Hi, I am interested to hear if anybody knows if it's possible to use 6LoWPAN on an iOS device together with nRF52832 ? I tried searching online but have not got any hits so either is to new or it's not supported yet either way it's not possible. I hope i am wrong.

/donnib

  • 0

    From what I can gather, Apple seems to have no stated plans to make the IOS a "gateway" for BLE/6LoWPAN connections. So this of course means it may never happen, or it could show up in IOS 10 developer version tomorrow. We don't know.

    Eventually, I highly suspect Apple/Android will have options to "approve" access for devices and those devices can get a gateway connection to the internet. I'm just not sure when this will be.

    I've read that the iWatch uses 6LoWPAN now.

    It sounds like we're in the same boat though. If there was a "universal" gateway for BLE/6LoWPAN it would drastically change my next product. Right now, I'm kicking around "find a way to get the device to talk to the cloud, then use the phone/tablet web browser as the interface" or the more traditional "Use the phone/tablet to run the app and use BLE to connect, any device to cloud has to first be translated and sent on by the phone"... If 6LoWPAN actually "existed" I wouldn't have to build an app, deal with the app stores, have any cross platform issues at all.... But so far as I'm concerned, if 6LoWPAN isn't transparently supported by the phones, it doesn't actually exist yet.

    Nordic's 6LoWPAN stuff has all been using a RaspPi to do the gateway work. Which works at home maybe, but not on the go.

    All that said... I've been told you can currently make a 6LoWPAN gateway app on IOS/Android that will take in your ipv6 connections and forward them on to the internet. However... You still need to run an app in this case, so I'm not sure what the point is!

    I wouldn't hold my breathe just yet. If you have the same options as me between an app or hoping your phone/tablet will gateway in a simple way for customers to understand... Get started on your app.

    Edit: I forgot... Google has shown indications of allowing web browsers to directly access BLE GATT. This means since BLE is considered low security risk, you could potentially access your local device via a webpage and relay the data back and forth. This imo is a better option for my class of product, and would be welcome - the issue is it's currently draft-only and Android/Chrome only, Apple would have to support a similar interface.

    Article here: developers.google.com/.../interact-with-ble-devices-on-the-web
    Draft here: webbluetoothcg.github.io/.../

  • 0 in reply to SRA

    @SRA thank you for your answer. I am developing an device that has a RESTful interface which has bluetooth, if i could get a way to expose the RESTful interface over BLE like i could with 6LoWPAN that would be great. I have no problems writing an app since i have to do that either way, my product needs to process data from the device. You say "i've been told you can...." is there an example somewhere for iOS for this type an app ?

  • 0 in reply to SRA

    Yea, we looked into RESTful and that's likely the way we'll go, but using the phone/app as the middleman.

    What you're talking about almost definitely will happen... but... Imo it's still at least a year or two out if not more.

    On the "6LoWPAN App" honestly, I don't. It was just in a conversation with a contractor when I was asking about exactly this topic. How can we use a 6LoWPAN device and talk "through" an iphone... The answer was it would work to write an app, but that's as far as we went with it. There are ZERO apps on the stores that I have found that say they can act as a gateway - which means to me it would have to be unique for the device. And on top of that seems like it would have to utilize as deep into core.bluetooth or whatever as you could get. It's possible this is under the mFI barrier as well.

    I don't know. If you find something, I'd be interested.

  • 0 in reply to SRA

    Is there any news on this from Apple, anybody know if 6LoWPan gateway is possible on iOS ?

    Is there an another way one could establish TCP/IP over BLE ?

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