The iPhone Supports Bluetooth Proximity Detection

[archie]

Nothing short of 15 letters and emails to Palm trying to get proximity detection on any of the 3 Treos I had purchased over the years.

The iPhone can do it. What's wrong Palm.

Anyway; for those interested, you can download Proximity and pick from any of the included scripts that come with Mac OS X or write your own scripts.

http://reduxcomputing.com/proximity.php

Easy to set up.

1. Turn on Bluetooth on the iPhone.

2. On the Mac, go to System Preferences > Bluetooth and then click "Set Up New Device...". Just go through the 3 screens of the Bluetooth Setup Assistant. You will see that it recognizes and pairs up with your iPhone. You can probably hit the Remove From Favorites button at this point because this is not needed.

3. At this point you can also exit the Bluetooth screen of the iPhone because if you stay on this screen it keeps reinitiating the connection. This is unnecessary and wastes battery life.

4. Start Proximity (note that it shows up as a Menu Bar Icon Item). Under the Device tab, enter a number for the "Upon finding the device out of range, check ___ more time(s) to help prevent false positives". Here I put 3 times because I only get a range of about 30 feet on the built in Bluetooth of the Mac mini that I am using this for. This keeps it from prematurely triggering my scripts if I am wondering around the house out of range. For some, depending on how you want to use this, you may want to set it to a smaller OR larger number.

5. Now go to the Scripts tab and Pick or write your own (series of) script to run when iPhone goes out of range and/or when the iPhone comes into range.

Pretty much done at this point. You can tailor the various other settings you see along the way as you see fit. You can of course go to System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items to add Proximity as a Startup item so it is always available.

At this point, with the limited Bluetooth range of my Mac mini the uses are restricted but I am checking into getting a Bluetooth range extender so that when I pull up in the driveway, I can set up a Mac (a different Mac since I can pair the iPhone up to more than one) that will be able to provide me different functionality; namely setting up two X10 home automation units to have a couple sets of lights turned on as I enter so I don't have to reach for the switch while my hands are full of whatever it is I am carrying in the house. Maybe later I can add Airtunes zones that get switched back and forth depending on wether I am upstairs or downstairs; although realistically I don't see myself taking the time to do this it would be kind of coo... well... OK, probably more nerdy than anything.

 

[Dieter Bohn]

Nothing short of 15 letters and emails to Palm trying to get proximity detection on any of the 3 Treos I had purchased over the years.

The iPhone can do it. What's wrong Palm.

...Treos have been able to do this with 3rd party software and a set of scripts on the computer, sort of like how you've described here. Salling Clicker lets you run scripts based on proximity:

http://reference-man.com/projects.html#clicker



There's nothing wrong with Palm - they just figured that proximity stuff takes up battery life, is beyond the average user, and takes desktop support that they, frankly, don't have the time or wherewithal to deal with.

I do hope that apple, since they can control both the desktop and the iPhone, can find a neat way to fix this. Heck - it doesn't even have to be bluetooth. A simple "unlock screensaver with iphone dock" would be cool. Super cool.

 

[archie]

...Treos have been able to do this with 3rd party software and a set of scripts on the computer, sort of like how you've described here.

Not until I got rid of my Third Treo after a frustrating 5 or 6 years (don't really remember exactly, it was all to painful to try and recall). Figures. Oh well. I could care less at this point.

Palm still refuses to let computers establish Bluetooth connections to their devices even though every other manufacturer on Earth did allow for it.