Debugging an iOS app with an external accessory connected via Dock

Question

Am I missing something glaringly obvious or is there no way to debug an iOS app which uses an external accessory that's connected via the 30-pin dock without using a bucket load of logs etc. I want to be able to use things such as breakpoints and Instruments.

Is there a way to remote debug perhaps, over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth?

Note: Yes, I asked this very recently and I deleted it because I thought I found the answer.. but the answer was only Instruments has support over Wi-Fi.. not Xcode debugging. So the question still remains...

And so...: Given that I've had no real luck finding the answer, and no one has given me an answer as yet - I take it that it is a big fat NO. :(

Makes me wonder are we just expected to magically guess where bugs occur, or log the crap out of everything while wearing out our dock connectors by continuously moving it back and forth between the device and accessory?

Time to file a bug report I guess.

Answer 1

At CES today, I talked to a developer from Wahoo Fitness that makes an ANT+ accessory for iPhone. They had this same problem, but found a solution.

They found a pass-through dock extender that has a mini-USB port. They used the mini-USB port for debugging while the accessory was connected.

The product they were using is http://www.cablejive.com/products/dockStubz.html

This blog talks about remote debugging iOS with a dock accessory attached

Answer 2

You could connect the external accessory to another iOS device (not the one tethered to the Mac running the Xcode debugger). Then tunnel all your EA framework messages from the accessory connected device to the device running the app being debugged over a pair of wifi sockets. Look at the code for tunneling accelerometer messages from a device to the iOS Simulator (a common trick for debugging game code on the Simulator) for one example of how this could be done.