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Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

makershed.com

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Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#31

Post by mortenjorck »

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...

If you want to get an app into the App Store, you can't really use Bluetooth apart from audio and iphone-to-iphone gaming. You have frameworks for those at your disposal, but the actual Bluetooth stack isn't open.

As far as I understand this breakout cable, it should free you up a lot: You can use public frameworks to interface with the dock connector and simply send whatever you want over it to whatever you want on the other end.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#32

Post by tlrobinson »

KeithMajhor wrote: post #28
sebastianavina wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's easier, and cheaper, and more accesible to play around with a RS-232 cable... I've like 4 USB-RS232 adapters, and it's very easy to implement the protocol even on the dirtiest and cheaper chips...

Here is a Bluetooth breakout like I described: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10559 It's cheaper than the cable. You don't need to implement any protocols.

You're comparing one component to a complete product.

At a minimum you'd need to add a TTL-to-RS232 converter, wiring, connectors, and I believe a proprietary "MFi" chip from Apple is required to use protocols other than the ones blessed by Apple (and surprise, the serial port profile isn't one of them)

Plus the prices I'm seeing right now show the cable is $59.00 and the Bluetooth chip is $59.95.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#33

Post by jimktrains2 »

panacea wrote: post #19
bradleyland wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?".

But it did, didn't it? By sending that email that got x people to look at the page.

If it were a store having a sale, they would consider it a win if people shared the sale flyer and enticed more people to come.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#34

Post by storborg »

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…

As well as the enormous "Maker Shed" tax. My company made a product that was sold there, and Make wanted a >60% margin.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#35

Post by tlrobinson »

tlrobinson wrote: post #22
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

Hopefully they're smart enough to check the Referer header.

It appears Google Analytics isn't, by default at least: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/analytics-help-basic...

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#37

Post by pittsburgh »

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...

Who said it was better than Bluetooth?

There are a lot of existing hardware devices that have RS232 connections but don't support Bluetooth. For those devices this is "better" than Bluetooth in the sense that Bluetooth isn't an option at all.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#38

Post by Bud »

geoka9 wrote: post #20
st3fan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most Apple products, of course, are not $59 DB-9 cables. They're a bit more functional and have a bit more design appeal than that, to be fair. I'm sure you agree.

Re: Serial cable for iPod approved by Apple

#40

Post by blhack »

geoka9 wrote: post #20
st3fan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can make that three geeks.

I got pretty upset earlier this week. I wanted to do a site-survey of the wireless network that covers my company's campus.

The iPad is a wonderful tool for this, you'd think. It has a wifi chip, and a GPS. What I wanted was to drive around and pair signal strengths with GPS locations.

Except I can't do this on my iPad because Apple doesn't want me to. The API for getting wifi signal strength is off limits, and utilizing it will keep you out of the app store, which is the only legitimate pathway to getting applications onto the device. They've built the tricorder from star trek...but they've locked it inside of a box and won't let anybody use it.

This is absurd to me. Here apple has this really wonderful piece of hardware that is packed full of all kinds of sensors and things, and they're telling me that I can only use them for playing silly games? What the hell is that?

I ended up still doing the site survey, I even used apple hardware to do it, but the amount of hoops I had to jump through[1] was stupid.

[1]: I wrote a few lines of javascript that pulled GPS data from the geolocation api, and then called an ajax script to log this info into a mysql database with a timestamp.

I then ran a script on my laptop that polled System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport, and parsed the output for signal strength.

This got logged into another file, with a timestamp.

It was a simple matter to mesh these files together, and generate a KML file for google earth.

Now...this is all accessible to me because I'm a hacker; it should be accessible to everybody, and it shouldn't require that amount of duct tape and chicken wire.

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