I'm trying to find a cross-platform indoor wifi positioning solution. We have investigated Apple's CoreLocation. Apple has surveyed our site and we have a working prototype that works fairly well. However, Apple's solution is Apple only and not cross platform. Since roughly 50% of our users use Android phones, we need a solution that is cross platform.
Using Apple's indoor CoreLocation for Apple devices and Google's Geolocation for Android devices is not really feasible since we have over 2000 sites.
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/
Google's Geolocation service WOULD be cross-platform if we had a way on iOS to get the access point MAC Address and signal strength. Unfortunately I see no AppStore approved method of doing this. Have I missed something in the Apple Apis?
I'm also open to alternative solutions. iBeacons would be cost prohibitive -- at least for version 1. Location sensing LED lights are out too.
You could check out IndoorAtlas (http://www.indooratlas.com) as their magnetic field based solution has SDKs for both iOS and Android and it is software only.
Related
Is it possible to retrieve raw ECG signals programmatically from QardioCore via bluetooth?
I only have an Android device, and as the Android Qardio app doesn't work for QardioCore, I wanted to know if anyone already tried to write an own app for usage with Android, and if it worked?
The manufacturer wrote me in an email:
Qardio Core will be compatible with iOS only and we are focused on providing
a smooth experience on Apple devices that use iOS 10.0 or later.
[...] there are no immediate plans to bring QardioCore to the Android
platform [...]
This apparently means that there are no SDKs as well.
I have also emailed the manufacturer and got a similar answer:
[...]
Qardio Core will only be compatible with iOS for the foreseeable
future. We strive to provide the best experience and have not been
able to guarantee flawless operation on the multitude of Android
devices.
An SDK is also not available at this time.
[...]
I am currently developing an application that exchanges small chunks of data between iOS devices. Eventually, my plan is to release an Android version of the application. It seems as if it may be overkill to use Google Play Game Services on iOS for data exchange with Multipeer Connectivity available however it may be necessary to achieve multi-platform data exchange. Am I better off implementing completely separate iterations of the iOS and Android applications using Multipeer Connectivity and Google Game Services respectively or should I use Google Game Services for both? Also, it would be appreciated if someone could detail the performance differences between the two frameworks.
Multipeer is an iOS technology that allows for direct communication between nearby iOS devices. This can use Adhoc/Direct WiFi, Bluetooth or connect two devices which are on the same WiFi router.
Google Play Games Services allows for communication between devices across the internet.
The two technologies are not really comparable because they solve different problems. If you need communication across the internet on iOS, then perhaps you need to be evaluating Game Center instead of Multipeer. If you need local communication, then perhaps you should investigate Android's bluetooth and WiFi Direct capabilities.
There are more options than using MPC or GPGS. As Columbo said, you can use Bluetooth and WiFi Direct directly on Android. It's a long and bumpy way because it's not as stable on Android as it is on iOS. There are also other frameworks out there that try to mitigate the issues.
Disclaimer: I work for Uepaa, developing p2pkit for Android and iOS.
Well I'm working on this app to send data between android and iOS and I got it to work between iOS devices with Apple's Multipeer Connectivity framework, but I am currently wondering how do you achieve it between both platforms? even if you are willing to write it from scratch.
How come Firechat is able to do it? As I remember, you can exchange data between both platforms with their app.
Edit: https://www.opengarden.com/meshkit.html It seems the MeshKit SDK used in Firechat is now available (for large organisations).
I am very interested in this subject as well and I came across these links
AllJoyn
AllJoyn® is a collaborative open-source software framework that makes
it easy for developers to write applications that can discover nearby
devices, and communicate with each other directly regardless of
brands, categories, transports, and OSes without the need of the cloud
Source: https://github.com/alljoyn/alljoyn.github.com/wiki
OpenPeer SDK
Open Peer is an open P2P signalling protocol
Source: http://openpeer.org/open-peer-sdk-for-ios/
Microsoft's Project Rome
"Project Rome" is a project code name for Microsoft's cross-device
experiences platform using the Microsoft Graph. Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/launch-resume/communicate-with-a-remote-app-service
Mutipeer connectivity cannot connect iOS and Android devices. Firechat is using its own implementation.
More information here:
A couple of weeks after its iOS launch, FireChat made its debut on Android. Since Android doesn’t support Apple’s Multipeer Connectivity Framework, developer Open Garden had to build its own mesh networking technology to enable off-the-grid messaging across Android devices.
However, FireChat messaging hasn’t been possible between iOS and Android. That is, until now.
Open Garden has just updated FireChat to allow for off-the-grid messaging even between iOS and Android devices.
While it declines to reveal the exact details of how it managed to make Apple’s multi-peer framework and its Android mesh network connect with each other, Open Garden has told TechCrunch that its cross-platform capability uses peer-to-peer Wi-Fi and Bluetooth personal area networking.
Source: http://appadvice.com/appnn/2014/06/firechat-now-supports-off-the-grid-messaging-between-ios-and-android
Something like text chat can be done over BLE, which is open on both platforms. Sending images would be slow, though, since it doesn't have the throughput of Bluetooth Classic.
You'll want to look into iotivity. https://iotivity.org/ This is the new upcoming inter-device library that the Open Connectivity Foundation is focusing on.
AllJoyn is only being maintained now, and has some significant underlying threading problems that will never be fixed, making call-response type workflows between devices prone to crashing and deadlocking the application code. I don't recommend using it.
So I'm trying to build an app that uses iOS 7 Multipeer Connectivity framework on the iPhone, but I'm now trying to connect the iPhone to an Android device using the same technology. Is this possible?
Is there something like Apple's multipeer connectivity framework for Android, or is there any way of connecting an iPhone to an Android device without using internet or mobile services, but using Wifi and bluetooth only?
Maybe a bit delayed, but technologies have evolved since so there is certainly new info around.
As iOS has yet to open up an API for WiFi Direct and Multipeer Connectivity is iOS only, I believe the best way to approach this is to use BLE, which is supported by both platforms (some better than others).
On iOS a device can act both as a BLE Central and BLE Peripheral at the same time, on Android the situation is more complex as not all devices support the BLE Peripheral state. Also the Android BLE stack is very unstable (to date).
If your use case is feature driven, I would suggest to look at Frameworks and Libraries that can do cross platform p2p for you, without you needing to build it up from scratch.
For example: p2pkit.io or google nearby
Disclaimer: I work for Uepaa, developing p2pkit.io for Android and iOS.
There is currently no way to connect with android over bluetooth, but you can connect with wifi using the Multipeer framework I believe. I know the developer of spaceteam accomplished this with his game. I'm not sure how exactly but it is possible.
Mutipeer connectivity cannot connect iOS and Android devices. Firechat & Spaceteam are using their own implementation.
More information here:
A couple of weeks after its iOS launch, FireChat made its debut on Android. Since Android doesn’t support Apple’s Multipeer Connectivity Framework, developer Open Garden had to build its own mesh networking technology to enable off-the-grid messaging across Android devices. However, FireChat messaging hasn’t been possible between iOS and Android. That is, until now. Open Garden has just updated FireChat to allow for off-the-grid messaging even between iOS and Android devices. While it declines to reveal the exact details of how it managed to make Apple’s multi-peer framework and its Android mesh network connect with each other, Open Garden has told TechCrunch that its cross-platform capability uses peer-to-peer Wi-Fi and Bluetooth personal area networking.
Source: http://appadvice.com/appnn/2014/06/firechat-now-supports-off-the-grid-messaging-between-ios-and-android
Google Nearby can do it. To cross platform, Google Nearby Message Api can do it.
I am currently thinking about the best multi-platform language to build a multiplayer app with, and I was just wondering if anyone knows if AIR supports multiplayer locally between devices i.e over a LAN or bluetooth? Would I need to run some aspects of the game via a server?
Not to give too much away (of the game idea) but it would be similar to a "Simon" type game, with the only info being passed to each device either a score/amount of moves to beat or other simple piece of data.
Thanks
Adobe AIR supports the ServerSocket class so yes it's more than possible.
Edit
As #davivid accurately pointed out, ServerSocket doesn't seem to be implemented on mobile devices. You're not SOL here though, you can use Native Extensions or AIR and still accomplish your end goal. See this official adobe page for more info and a ton of downloadable examples.
Multiplayer on devices connected to the same local network is supported in Adobe AIR including iOS and Android. You use NetConnection.connect().
Example with source code.
If you are developing on iOS. It is best to use GameKit that came with iOS. GameKit is also connected to GameCenter. So, players can challenge their friends close to them or play against someone over the Internet. This is all handled for you by the API, so you don't need to worry about matchmaking or even low level socket communications.
AIR doesn't support GameKit out of the box, but there are some Native Extensions that support Multiplayer Gameplay. The one I use is at: http://airextensions.net/shop/extensions/game-kit-by-vitapoly/