I was just wondering that how to connect with an iPhone, iPod and iPad. The outcome of my research is there are three ways:
 | Dock |
 | Bluetooth |
 | WiFi |
An interesting fact is that the antenna for WiFi and Bluetooth is same. To communicate with external accessories there is a ExternalAccessoryFramework.
The architecture of EAF is quite simple, it have a EAProtocol and each span of communication is known as EASession. NSStream helps to carry payload and for input there is NSInputStream and for output there is NSOutputStream
Other core level frameworks like CoreAudio, CoreLocation etc, are also helpful while communicating with an external accessory because they get notification of route change. While we connect or disconnect iOS via dock, EAAccessory notify the app by NSNotificationCenter
Things to keep in mind
The architecture of EAF is quite simple, it have a EAProtocol and each span of communication is known as EASession. NSStream helps to carry payload and for input there is NSInputStream and for output there is NSOutputStream
Other core level frameworks like CoreAudio, CoreLocation etc, are also helpful while communicating with an external accessory because they get notification of route change. While we connect or disconnect iOS via dock, EAAccessory notify the app by NSNotificationCenter
- EAAccessoryDidConnectNotification
- EAAccessoryDidDisconnectNotification
Things to keep in mind
- There are no EA events in background we should keep track of application did enter background
- Close your EA session as soon as your work is completed
- Antenna arbitration is there
- Use accessory change notification generously and be prepared for connectivity loss