Bluetooth app that works on multiple platforms

Question

I am prototyping a bluetooth microcontroller. I need to be able to connect and read data from the bluetooth microcontroller with a pc, mac, iphone and android. I it possible to write one app that will work on all of these platforms instead of having to write four different apps. Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You're looking for something like PhoneGap. Phonegap allows you to use HTML, CSS, and Javascript to program your application and then deploy it to virtually any mobile device or desktop OS.

Answer 2

The answer depends on the communication interfaces that your microcontroller has and how powerful it is.

The bluetooth microcontrollers that I am familiar with have barely enough power to support the bluetooth stack itself and only support serial communication with the outside world.
If your external devices need to communicate directly with such a microcontroller, you do not really have a choice other than to different apps for each platform (although a lot of the logic in the apps can be re-used. It is mostly the UI and serial interface that are platform specific).

On the other hand, if your bluetooth microcontroller is paired with a more powerful CPU in an embedded device, it should be possible to write a 'gateway' application to run on the CPU that offers an interface to the bluetooth chip that is easier to access from outside (for example, with a lightweight webserver).

Answer 3

Not directly.

However...

You might be able to use a cross platform suite (such a Mono) to write one piece of code that works across all platforms (because the suite has substituted the required libraries / APIs for each platform).

If this app has any sort of UI (beyond the trivial) and / or it's for use by the general public, it's generally recommended to tailor a version of the UI for each platform (so that it's not the "worst of all worlds" for all users)