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...
Is there an easy way you can use Bluetooth to solve the same problem? Please correct me if I'm missing something here.
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.
It's cheaper than the cable. You don't need to implement any protocols.
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.
at the end, you'll have to implement RS-232 on your microcontroller to get access from that bluetooth chip...
> Fully configurable UART > Press the 'A' character from a terminal program on your computer and an 'A' will be pushed out the TX pin of the Bluetooth module.
Yes, they are talking about THAT terminal and THAT TX pin...
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.