Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#11

Post by bradleyland » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 10:40 PM UTC

philfreo wrote: post #3

Off-topic, but their analytics for email conversion rates are going to be way off due to this post on HN: utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Maker+Shed+Jul+21+2011

Yes and no. Advertisers want to know how well a particular program performs, even if it's by referral. When examining their performance in Google Analytics, and noticing that their conversion rate is atypical, they'll likely end up looking for traffic sources. Once they do that, they'll see the high number of visitors from news.ycombinator.com, and the mystery will be solved.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#12

Post by st3fan » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 10:41 PM UTC

mad_snowman wrote: post #10

So does anyone know if there's a conversion chip in there or whether the standard iPhone connector has a serial pin on it. I seem to remember someone hooking up a GPS to the iPhone 2 and plugging serial straight on. There are already a number of breakout plugs out there, so I'd be surprised if this opens up radical new innovation. As a side note, other people have used the audio jack for I/O, like the iPhly Remote Co…

It has serial on the connector. It is 3.3V TTL level so you will need a converter to turn it into 'real' serial.

If you jailbreak a device you can access this port without any problems and do cool stuff.

Just be sure to properly buffer and convert the signals. You don't want to kill your device.

Sparkfun sells connectors in a breakout board. So does DealExtreme I think.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#13

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 10:43 PM UTC

ScotterC wrote: post #2

Congrats to these guys. I tried working in the Made for iPod (MFI) program to build hardware devices and it's a really tough process to get Apple to open up a little. This might open the pipeline for a lot of innovation.

[deleted]

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#14

Post by KeithMajhor » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 10:43 PM UTC

Why is this better than Bluetooth? All the iOS devices have it and there are breakout boards with RS232. There are even some that are cheaper than this cable...

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#15

Post by st3fan » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 10:45 PM UTC

mad_snowman wrote: post #4

This is the most preposterous breakout cable I've ever seen. $59 for the two connectors and a cable?

You pay the Apple tax if you make a device like this. You will also need to license a chip from Apple that does some crypto to validate your device and you will have to buy the connector from a specific vendor that is blessed by Apple.

It all adds up.

I love how Google is letting the market go crazy with their recently announced external accessory APIs. That is what Apple should have done. Of course it is highly incompaitble with their tight control on anything iOS related :-/

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#16

Post by st3fan » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 10:49 PM UTC

kylek wrote: post #8

> Supports communication at speeds up to 57.6 Kbps. Is that a technical limitation or typo? Many devices use 115.2 Kbps if I'm not mistaken

If I remember correctly, your device does not actually get full serial port access. Instead Apple provides a protocol made up of data packets that you can send to and from your device.

These packets must be signed by a little crypto chip that you have to license from Apple.

Yes, very tight control.

A device like this is not simply a cable. It actually contains a little micro-controller that reads and writes Apple's serial packets on one end and turns it into real RS232 serial on the other end.

So there is overhead. Enough for the speed to drop down considerably.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#17

Post by seanp2k » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 10:59 PM UTC

fscking $60 for a damn serial cable? WTF? It's not even the awesome "it-breaks-when-my-cat-chews-it-too-much" white cable with the "it-breaks-when-you-look-at-it-funny" excuse for a strain relief that Apple industrial design insisted on.

All that aside, I think Apple has a ways to go if they want to catch up to the DIY capabilities of Android: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/usb/adk.html

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#18

Post by marvin » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 11:02 PM UTC

KeithMajhor wrote: post #14

Why is this better than Bluetooth? All the iOS devices have it and there are breakout boards with RS232. There are even some that are cheaper than this cable...

Forgive me if this is an ignorant reply, but I thought the point of this was to give developers the ability to make official, Apple-approved apps that interface with devices that communicate across serial. Things like industrial machinery, GPS loggers etc. I've actually been looking around for something like this in order to make an iPhone application to use as a flight computer with gliders, since all glider-approved GPS loggers (which are MUCH more accurate than the iPhone's built-in GPS) communicate via a serial connection. If I understand correctly, until now you would have to use a jailbroken iPhone in order to do this?

Is there an easy way you can use Bluetooth to solve the same problem? Please correct me if I'm missing something here.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#19

Post by panacea » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 11:03 PM UTC

bradleyland wrote: post #11

philfreo wrote: post #3

Off-topic, but their analytics for email conversion rates are going to be way off due to this post on HN: utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Maker+Shed+Jul+21+2011

Yes and no. Advertisers want to know how well a particular program performs, even if it's by referral. When examining their performance in Google Analytics, and noticing that their conversion rate is atypical, they'll likely end up looking for traffic sources. Once they do that, they'll see the high number of visitors from news.ycombinator.com, and the mystery will be solved.

...or someone in the chain will benefit from saying "see how well our email campaign worked?".

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#20

Post by geoka9 » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 11:04 PM UTC

st3fan wrote: post #15

mad_snowman wrote: post #4

This is the most preposterous breakout cable I've ever seen. $59 for the two connectors and a cable?

You pay the Apple tax if you make a device like this. You will also need to license a chip from Apple that does some crypto to validate your device and you will have to buy the connector from a specific vendor that is blessed by Apple. It all adds up. I love how Google is letting the market go crazy with their recently announced external accessory APIs. That is what Apple should have done. Of course it is highly inco…

You would think that at least geeks would be appalled by Apple and avoid their products because of this. But every geek I know (save one or two) is raving about their Apple gadgets.