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Access to the ANT Wireless and GPS receiver modules in iPhone/iPod Touch


I'm an iPhone/iPod-touch newbie, and would like to write an iPhone application utilizing the built-in ANT wireless radio. As I found out both the iPhone and iPod Touch have an ANT wireless module, that is used in the Nike+iPod Sport Kit to connect the Nike sensor with the iPhone/iPod.

After some googleing, I didn't find much (one article was interesting, but not what I'm looking for).

So my questions:

  • Is it possible to access the built-in ANT Wireless device in iPhone/iPod Touch?
  • Is it possible to access the built-in GPS module in iPhone?
  • Are there some APIs or SDKs that provide access to the ANT or the GPS module?

I can imagine that Apple is not eager opening the access to all of the iPhone features. But at least the GPS module should be accessible.


Solution

  • The GPS radio is only accessible through the Core Location API, which will give you a latitude and longitude fix to your desired level of accuracy, but does not provide any low-level access to the radio. The ANT radio is not available using public APIs, although it may be possible to talk to it on a jailbroken phone. Any such application could not be distributed through the App Store, however.