using iPhone like a picaxe (microcontroller)

Question

In school year 11 electronics we have started working with Picaxes (a simple type of microcontroller) and I was wondering how I could develop an iPhone app that could be plugged into a dock like connecter and have a simple program that did very simple things like make some lights turn on or off.

Picaxe uses basic, for example if a light is at 1 then

 high 1

would turn on the light. This is the type of functionality I'm looking for. I'm aware of the MFI program but I've no idea where to buy any hardware or open source hardware dev code.

Answer 1

Since you know about MFi I can make a long story short: If you don't own a reasonable sized company you won't get into MFi. They don't approve everyone like they do with the iPhone developer program.
If you want hardware (authentication chips are mandatory to communicate with the dock connector) or documentation you have to be a member of MFi.

You could use an arduino board with a WiFi-shield (e.g. WiShield 2.0)
WiFi Communication is probably the only thing that's possible. For bluetooth you would need an authentication chip too.
Check your requirements and see if you can get away with WiFi. If you really want to build a home automation controller that makes more sense anyway.

---

PS: I doubt that you are interested in android development. But for Android you could get the Arduino ADK which can connect directly (i.e. via cable) to your android device.