Author: Support

Beacons in Shopping Malls

Mr Beacon has an informative new video interview with Janette Smrcka, Information Technology Director at Mall of America. They use beacons to allow visitors to navigate across 520 stores on 5 levels, spanning 4.3 miles and over 5.6 million square feet.

Watch the video to learn about WiFi vs Bluetooth wayfinding and the advantages of mains as opposed to battery powered beacons. You will also learn how Mall of America’s beacon network might eventually be used to track mall assets and for location-based site maintenance.

iGS02E without PoE

We now have the INGICS iGS02E Bluetooth to Ethernet gateway (without PoE) in stock.

This small device looks for Bluetooth LE devices and sends their advertising on to a server via TCP, HTTP(S) or MQTT including AWS IoT. If you use with sensor beacons, this provides a quick and easy way to provide for IoT sensing.

Compatible with BeaconServer™ and BeaconRTLS™.

We also stock the INGICS PoE splitter.

New Rugged Industrial Sensor Beacons in Stock

We have some early samples of the new INGICS iBS03 range of beacons in stock. They are functionally similar to the iBS01 range except are waterproof to IP67 and have a more robust case with 2m drop protection.

We stock three variants:
iBS03T – Temperature sensor
iBS03G – Motion (starting/moving/stopped) and fall detection
iBS03RG – Accelerometer for raw xyz

Google to Stop Serving Android Nearby Notifications

Google announced yesterday that they are discontinuing support for Android Nearby Notifications. This is due to:

“a significant increase in locally irrelevant and spammy notifications that were leading to a poor user experience”

This means that anything mentioning the Physical Web, Eddystone-URL or Nearby notifications will no longer work. While beacons can still send out URLs, you will need an app to see the URL and you might as well use Eddystone-UID or iBeacon instead.

It’s disappointing that this mechanism will be turned off on December 6th, 2018. Unfortunately, it attracted use for more nefarious purposes and also resulted in some subscription schemes of dubious value. It’s especially bad news for those people using Nearby notifications legitimately and those companies that have built up platforms and businesses around Nearby notifications.

The Nearby API still works for apps and Google still supports the Proximity beacon API.  With or without this API, it’s still possible to create beacon triggered notifications in iOS and Android apps using the Bluetooth APIs. What’s no longer possible is unsolicited, app-less notifications.

We will be updating BeaconZone documents, blog posts and articles over the next few days. EddystoneCMS will be retired.

Manufacturer Apps

We have been doing a survey of app store reviews of manufacturer apps used to configure beacons. Not just for beacons we sell, but for the whole industry. It’s interesting to note that there are no apps with consistently high ratings scores, on iOS nor Android. Over time, most apps seem to to gravitate towards a mediocre rating. Why?

The problems are that a) Bluetooth is wireless and hence can’t guarantee 100% reliability, all the time b) People have different technical aptitudes and some blame the software when the real cause is that they didn’t understand (or read!) c) Some phones have bugs in their Bluetooth stacks (in-built Bluetooth software).

Hence, no matter how good the app, it will end up having a number of negative reviews.

Beacon Network Effects

It’s often the case that rolling out beacons for a particular purpose allows them to be put to other unrelated uses. Take, for example, one of our customers, a hospital, who wanted to roll out a network of beacons to allow wayfinding by patients.

Beyond this initial remit, having beacons placed along corridors allowed them to be re-used for asset tracking. Also, the data from both will allow people and asset movement to be monitored to work out choke points as well as ‘wasted’ areas where nothing happens.

If you think wider than your initial requirement it’s often possible to find extra usecases and identify extra stakeholders who might even be able to help cross-fund the initial requirement.

Update: Just after we wrote this, we became aware, via Mr Beacon, that SNCF have a competition to make best use of their beacon network.

New Minew E2 PA in Stock

We have the new Minew E2 PA in stock. It’s a waterproof beacon advertising iBeacon and Eddystone.

What’s special about this beacon is the 10+ year battery life that comes through using the power efficient Nordic nRF52 SoC and 4 AA batteries. The in-use battery life will depend on settings.

This beacon also has a power amplifier that provides for an exceptional range of up to 500m. However, as with any long range beacon, the maximum range is achieved only when there’s line of sight.

New Waterproof S1 Sensor Beacon in Stock

We have the new Minew S1 in stock. It’s a sensor beacon with accelerometer, temperature and humidity as well as iBeacon/Eddystone. Unusually for a temperature/humidity beacon it is waterproof to IP65 making it suitable for use outdoors. Sensor beacons like this usually have the sensor on the PCB and a hole in the case to pass through ambient temperature and humidity. Instead, the sensor is outside the beacon:

This beacon takes 2 AAA batteries and uses a newer, more efficient Nordic nRF52 System on a Chip (SoC) for a long 3 year battery life.

Partnerships & Ecosystems for Industrial IoT

There’s a useful new post on the Nordic blog on Partnerships & Ecosystems for Industrial IoT. Nordic is the manufacturer of the System-on-a Chip (SoC) in most beacons and Lorenzo is one of their Business Development Managers.

The blog post makes the case for companies not to try to go it alone. The newness and complexity of technologies is such that it’s unlikely you have the skills in-house. What’s more, you

“won’t know what you don’t know”

We have found that it’s often the case with organisations taking up our consultancy, that they ask particular questions when their real problems are somewhere else. They are oblivious to the unknown unknowns.

Another common situation we come across is companies setting off in the wrong direction, doing lots of work and realising it doesn’t work. They contact us for quick fix but sometimes one doesn’t exist. Once you get in deep, it can be hard to pull out and even when things partially work you can end up with long term problems due to poor initial decisions.

The Nordic blog post advocates finding partners. One thing we have found is not to partner with anyone and everyone, at any cost. Only partner when there’s a clear synergy. Be clear whether you really will be a partner or customer. Although there can be some overlap, some unscrupulous companies use partnership as a guise for selling.