Android Question About bluetooth and BLE

[mauro vicamini]

Hi Everyone,
I've two questions:
1) it's possible to use a tablet BLE enabled to connect a bluetooth 2.0 device and act at the same time as an iBeacon for being discovered (only discoverd not connected ) by iOS devices and Android devices (and if the discovering could be done by B4I and B4A).
2) like the first question but with the difference that I'd like to transmit a string from the iOS and the Android devices to the BLE tablet without the need of tedious pairing procedure for the users.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Erel]

Are you asking about an iOS tablet (iPad) ?

 

[mauro vicamini]

Sorry I've posted in the wrong forum. It must be posted on the Android forum.

 

[Erel]

Very few Android devices support BLE peripheral mode (mainly Nexus 5X+). Only in this mode the tablet can imitate an iBeacon or transmit any other data that can be intercepted by other BLE devices.

 

[mauro vicamini]

Thanks Erel for the fast answer.
Than if I use a standard iBeacon device i could detect it by Android and iOS devices using B4A and B4I and than I can connect my tablet from the Android device using Blutooth 2.0 (even if the tablet is already connected with bluetooth with another hardware device) and from the iOS device using BLE? Or maybe for the iOS device is better to act as an iBeacon and than the tablet connect it by BLE and the device than send the string?

 

[Erel]

Bluetooth 2.0 is only supported on Android.

You cannot connect an iOS device to the tablet over BLE.

An iOS device can act as an iBeacon. Currently this feature is not supported in B4i. Also note that most tablets do not support BLE at all.

 

[mauro vicamini]

Thanks Erel,
you are always clear!
Only the last question: with B4I and B4A can i detect standard iBeacon device and understand if the Android and iOS device is near (under 1 meter) the iBeacon device?

 

[Erel]

Currently you can only detect iBeacons with B4A. It is done with this module: [IoT] BeaconParser - Discover iBeacons and Eddystone beacons

This module is also compatible with B4i, however iOS handles iBeacons internally so the data for iBeacons is not exposed by this module. It will work with Eddystone beacons.

Note that the distance measured is inaccurate.

I do plan to add support for iBeacons in B4i.