Using an iPhone audio dongle to transmit data

Question

I've just started working at a biomedical company and we need to communicate data from a device we are making to an iPhone. Obviously using the made for iPhone program would suffice, but for prototyping and for a simpler solution I was wondering if we could use an existing bluetooth audio transmitter, such as (http://www.buy.com/prod/bluetooth-a2dp-audio-hifi-dongle-adapter-transmitter-for-iphone-3g-ipod/q/loc/111/211900047.html?adid=17662) but instead of streaming audio, program it to stream data. I'm not so good with the hardware side, and wouldn't be designing the hardware on our end, only the software, so just wondering if with the current SDK, we can send data through an audio streaming device?

Any help is greatly appreciated :)

Answer 1

I've been looking into it, and found FSK a suitable solution. I have a few links you could check out (most involve the Arduino, but you can ignore that).

• http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1274970878 (blog post on arduino forums that is helpful)

• http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fjp.blog.reinforce-lab.com%2F (japanese description of FSK from iPhone to Arduino)

• http://code.google.com/p/arms22/downloads/list (software libraries)

• http://sree.cc/electronics/arduino-as-an-fsk-modem

• http://www.perceptdev.com/labs/iphonehacks (old iphone hack that creates a FSK modem with the iPhone)

• http://www.progical.com/ (company that sells such dongles, but wouldn't reply to me)

• http://eecs.umich.edu/%7Eprabal/projects/hijack/ (awesome project)

If you really want a realiable solution, look into serial data (jailbreaking might be required, but awesome for prototyping):

• http://www.ohscope.com/2009/02/24/serial-port-on-iphone-with-minicom/

• http://hcgilje.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/iphone-serial-communication/

UPDATE: Thinking outside of the box, if you want a really reliable solution; I bought this recently. http://redpark.com/c2db9.html