IOS Application & Bluetooth : Technical feasibility

Hi,

I am a experienced software engineer, but rather new (actually totally new) to IOS development and I had a quick questions about the technical feasibility of a small project I had in mind. Knowing that Apple has certains restrictions regarding Bluetooth devices, I am unsure if the following project is technically feasible.

I want to develop a simple Bluetooth device that is able to connect to the phone, and transmit to an application, the value of a binary sensor (on/off)

Is this possible at all? Are there better ways of accomplishing this?

Is anyone familiar with Bluetooth hardware able to comment on the technical complexity of the hardware itself ?

Thanks!

You can definitely do that - as long as you are able to have your app running on the phone. What you can’t do is cause an app to start and perform some activity with bluetooth activity, sorry.

Thanks for the response! What you describe is actually what I had in mind unfortunately.

I want my app to connect to the sensor automatically when it is in proximity, and to notify the user when a certain sensor value is received. I would like the user to have almost nothing to do but receive notifications.

For this to work, does the app need to be running in foreground? Or could the user start the app once and let it run in background?

Yes, I think what you want to do is possible - you need to look into the bluetooth-central background mode. Probably the only risk is that your app might get killed if other apps are in use and there is memory pressure. Then it would not work again without some user interaction.

Whether or not you intend this to be on the app store is one of the factors in how much you can do. If you do want it to be on the store then you need to read the Bluetooth Programming Guide carefully and be sure you’re following the rules.