Is Serial Port Profile (SPP) supported on iOS 7 over Bluetooth Low Energy (v4.0)?

Question

Can I use Serial Port Profile (SPP) to communicate with iOS devices over Bluetooth Low Energy (v4.0) without the need for MFi Chip?

Gunwale

See this link for the official list of iOS supported profiles: support.apple.com/kb/HT3647 – Pronominal

The Laird BL600 module is not discontinued and we have no plans to EOL the BL600 at this time. Please visit lairdtech.com/Products/Embedded-Wireless-Solutions/… for more information. – Vinylidene

Answer 1

If you're designing something from scratch (rather than trying to interface to an existing SPP-enabled device), there is a possible solution.

Laird Technologies make a Bluetooth Low Energy Module (BL600), which can be loaded with a virtual serial port application. This creates a service which is similar to the SPP; at the remote end it can just be treated as a plain serial port (albeit rather low speed). You could roll your own service to do something similar on other devices.

It's not the most elegant solution, but seems to work okay, and far easier than trying to get MFi certification.

Canicula

Answer 2

1. If you cannot control the peripheral's protocol choice:

   • The Serial Port Profile (SPP) is still supported by Bluetooth 4.0. However, Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy uses different pysical and link layer protocols that are not backwards compatible with older Bluetooth standards. Current iOS and Android devices use "dual mode" interfaces that support the backward compatible part of BT 4.0 and the Low Energy standard.

   • Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy does not support SPP whereas regular Bluetooth 4.0 does!

   • I found a Cordova/Phonegap Plugin on GitHub that might serve as a source of inspiration for you. They advertise to support SPP on iOS and Android alike.

2. If you are in control of the peripheral, i.e. you implement the peripheral's software:

   • Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy communication makes use of the Generic ATTribute Protocol. Based on GATT there exist a number of profiles but no serial port profile.
   • The good news is that implementing your own proprietary serial port profile on iOS, Android and your device is fairly simple. The API instructions for your BTLE module/SoC should provide some examples for existing profiles.
   • As soon as you see how simple implementing your own profile is, you will probably choose to go for a more use case specific profile which will save you lots of power on your (battery powered?) peripheral.

Vasomotor

Answer 3

Just to clear up John Parsons comment from Feb 16th - the BL600 is definitely not discontinued whatsoever.

vSP works well for a low level, low throughput data connectivity using BLE for iOS devices, as well as Android. Video showing the solution working to an iPad are at this link and full source code is available for the iOS application as well http://www.lairdtech.com/Support-Center/Technical-Library/Videos/VSP-Bridge-Command/#.UwYvzGJ_s1w

There are no MFi requirements for BLE connectivity on iOS.

MFi is only relevant to Classic Bluetooth data connections to / from iOS devices, where you need to use Apple's iAP protocol, be a MFi licensee, use an external Apple Authentication IC and pay a royalty to Apple.

Oxus

Answer 4

NO,you can't. BLE not support SPP.

Winnebago

simple but true, if sad – Harberd

Answer 5

No, you can't. In general, it's important to remember that any Bluetooth Classic profile isn't necessarily applicable for Bluetooth Low Energy. With BLE however, you can easily create your own custom service/profile, specially tailored towards your particular application. As far as I know, all BLE communication with iOS is currently allowed without participating in the MFi. You can also take a look at this page for further information on SPP and BLE.

Hymn

Answer 6

I'm searching for SPP for iOS myself and found a German supplier, lintech.de, that has products for "Bluetooth meets Apple" claiming to support/emulate SSP, apparently using their own embedded software layer combined with iAP. "BlueMFI software communicate with APPLE devices using the iAP (iPod Accessory Protocol) and manage the data communication with the Apple authentication chip...BlueMFI software is designed to run on a variety of hardware platforms (Bluetooth modules), and interested users can obtain the relevant evaluation kits. LinTech’s Bluetooth modules with BlueMFI software not only support the APPLE iAP protocol via Bluetooth, but they are also able to communicate with standard Bluetooth devices." Haven't tried this yet, just exploring and sharing.

Stinger

Answer 7

I won't say SPP is directly supported under iOS 7, Apple says no. Won't argue :)

But...

I use connectblue modules OBS421 and OBS425 on a data collection project. BLE modules have SPP profile enabled and I transmit data from my sensors to the iOS devices using BTLE module in SPP mode. Works pretty fine under iOS 6 and 7

That said, I was having trouble with MFi bluetooth devices under iPhone 5S, that's why I moved to BTLE.

Drawback with BTLE, it's limited to 20 bytes at a time. I had to adjust hardware and software, but was easy.

Manes

Hi, Have you a link to provide to increase MTU of 20bytes? – Yorgo

@Fogia: no, I'm just sending data cut in slices with a sequence number in first byte. – Manes

Ok thank you, it was because i try to increase the bandwidth of the BLE, I need to transfer 500kb/s. I turned to a bluetooth classic but MFI program, is not helping :( – Yorgo

Answer 8

You have programmable chips such as Bluegiga BL112 that are doing the job. It is the cable replacement code.

I'm integrating it actually for both iOS and Android 4.3. It works at least on the demo board.

Naldo