Beacons, IoT and Transport Monitoring

Beacons are often mentioned as being IoT devices. IoT devices tend to measure and monitor performance and store data in some Big Data way. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and Technical University of Denmark have a paper on Combining Smartphone and iBeacon Technologies in a Transit Quality Survey.

Their proof of concept shows how, what looks like a transport end-user survey, can be additionally used to track service data and monitor performance on transit trips.

The paper has a few insights into the use of beacons. They found that the RSSI and proximity accuracy were affected by the number of people in the surrounding environment such that it was best to place the beacons at high positions at bus stops. They also found they needed to explictly ask users to manually enable Bluetooth on their phones.

They also consider problems that will be experienced if the proof of concept were to be scaled, in particular the dependency on having a wide set of beacon-equipped stops.

If the ultimate vision is to develop a platform for a city’s entire bus network, it may be impractical to install and maintain iBeacons at every bus stop.

There’s also mention of the need for more effective incentives to sustain participation, such as offering reward points or fare discounts.

Powering Bluetooth Sensor Beacons via Micro-Energy Harvesting

Recent research A Comprehensive Study on the Internet of Things (IoT) and Micro-Energy Harvesting from Ambient Sources, from researchers in Spain, discusses the potential of micro-energy harvesting (MEH) as a sustainable power source for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, specifically Bluetooth sensors.

Micro-Energy Harvesting (MEH) is a technology that captures and converts small amounts of environmental energy such as like light, heat, or motion into electrical energy, which can power small electronic devices. The study suggests that MEH could be a sustainable solution for powering Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including Bluetooth sensors, due to their low power requirements.

The benefits of MEH include reducing the need for costly and environmentally harmful battery replacements and enabling the deployment of IoT devices in remote or hard-to-reach areas. The study also points out challenges, such as the small and variable amount of energy that can be harvested, which may not provide a reliable power supply for devices that need a steady source of energy. However, even with small temperature gradients between the environment and the cold side of the thermoelectric generator, it wass possible to make several communications per hour.

Sensor Beacons

Integrating Beacons into Existing Systems

There are three main ways beacons can be integrated into existing systems:

1. Using Smartphone Apps

Beacons are usually stationary. Apps on users’ smartphone use the standard Bluetooth iOS and Android APIs to detect beacons and send information to your cloud or servers, typically via HTTP(S).

2. Using Ethernet/WiFi Gateways

Beacons are using moving. Gateways in fixed positions detect beacons and send information to your cloud or servers, typically via HTTP(S) or MQTT.

3. Using an Intermediate Platform Such as a Real Time Location System (RTLS)

This is a variant on #2 in that gateways send information to a system such as BeaconRTLS™ or PrecisionRTLS™. These systems have HTTP(S) APIs that can be used by your cloud or servers.

More information:
What are beacons?
Beacons for the Internet of Things (IoT)

If you need more project specific help we also offer consultancy and feasibility studies.

Reducing Bluetooth WiFi Gateway Connections

When a Bluetooth WiFi Gateway sends data to a server via HTTP, the gateway has to connect to the server to start a connection and then use that connection to send the data. The connection part starts a new TCP connection with handshaking. Starting a new connection every time data needs to be sent to the server uses network data and creates work for the server.

iGS01S

Some gateways such as the IGS01s have a ‘keep-alive’ setting that allows the connection to be re-used across HTTP requests. This reduces the amount of data used on metered networks such as cellular, reduces possibly metered data throughput at the server and also reduces server loading thus improving performance.

Having said all this, you should consider MQTT if you are really concerned about efficiency and performance.

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INGICS Example Server Side Platform

INGICS, supplier of Bluetooth WiFi gateways and sensor beacons, has a new open source example. The BeaconLair code is implemented using Docker to simplify setup. Internally it uses Golang, Eclipse Mosquitto, InfluxDB and Grafana. The platform receives data from INGICS iGS03 BLE gateways and data from iBS sensor beacons.

The dashboard, using Grafana, provides gateways remote control, viewing of beacons and beacon sensor values.

INGICSLair

It can be used to remotely control gateways including device OTA upgrade, changing of the RSSI filters and provides configuration using all supported telnet commands.

View INGICS products

How to Read the AnkhMaway Sensor Data?

Since we have been selling the AKMW-iB003N-SHT  and AKMW-iB004N PLUS SHT we have been getting a few questions regarding accessing the temperature and humidity data.

You should first read the manufacturer’s SHT20 User Guide (username and password supplied with your beacon).

If you are connecting via GATT to read the sensor data then you will need to set the beacon to be always connectable. The way to do this is (for some strange reason) only shown in the iB001M user guide:

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So if you wish to transmit iBeacon and remain connectable, set the value to 0x82. Note that if you subsequently set the beacon ‘on’ or ‘off’ in the ‘simple’ configuration screen, accessed via the spanner icon (Android) or Configure option (on iOS), then this will overwrite your set value.

However, you might instead consider reading the sensor data from the advertising data which a) is much easier to program and b) uses much less beacon battery power and c) allows multiple apps to see the data at the same time.

There’s also an iOS example app in the BeaconZone AnkhMaway technical area.

MQTT vs HTTP for Bluetooth WiFi Gateways?

Bluetooth WiFi gateways offer MQTT and/or HTTP for sending data to servers/cloud services. We are often asked which should be used. HTTP is what’s used by your web browser to fetch and send data to web servers. In very high level terms, MQTT accomplishes a similar thing but is better optimised for mobile devices and the Internet of Things.

HTTP is very ‘chatty’ which means it’s more complex, code wise, to implement at the sending end and wastes a lot of data and processing power getting information from sender to receiver. You can think of HTTP as wrapping the data within lots other data that gets sent backwards and forwards. MQ Telemetry Transport Protocol (MQTT) came out of IBM, is now an ISO standard and uses lightweight publish/subscribe messaging. It requires a smaller code footprint at the sender and uses less network bandwidth. This matters most when you are trying to get the maximum transactions per second or are being billed for data use.

Bluetooth WiFi gateways are powered via USB and have reasonably powerful microcontrollers so MQTT’s efficient processing doesn’t matter that much. The more efficient processing is more applicable to apps running on mobile devices. For example, Facebook uses MQTT which saves battery life.

However, being lightweight, MQTT offers faster response times and lower data use than HTTP that, while not necessarily being of much of an advantantage for the BLE WiFi gateway, benefits the communications medium and server side. The communications medium, that can sometimes be cellular or be data constrained, uses (and possibly bills) less data. More crucially, the server can process more requests in less time. MQTT tends to be better when connectivity is intermittent, bandwidth is at a premium and throughput is critical.

In summary, MQTT has lower latency and is more efficient. Whether these are required advantages depends on your actual project. If you need more help, consider our development services.

Beacons, IoT and Platforms

Our article on Beacon Proximity and Sensing for the Internet of Things (IoT) explains how beacons can become part of the Internet of Things. Most implementations need to use a server or cloud IoT platform. However, in working with clients we have seen many problems with most of today’s commercial IoT platforms:

Cost – Many aren’t financially scalable in that costs escalate once the number of sensors and/or sensor reporting frequency is increased. Future costs are also unknown and unpredictable which is unacceptable for many organisations.

Continued Existence – It’s still early days for IoT and it’s not known if today’s platforms will be around for as long as the project. Some early beacon-specific platforms have already closed. Others have been taken over by large companies that have other agendas.

Security – Many projects, particularly those with sensitive data, can’t be run on or through shared public servers, services or platforms.

Control – For some organisations, aspects such availability and reliability need to be controlled in-house.

Functionality – IoT is a nebulous concept covering many specialist areas and industries. It’s difficult for a given IoT platform to cater for all needs. It’s usually necessary to compromise on your required functionality. Many IoT platforms have limited alerts, analytics and dashboards because they have cater for the lowest common denominator and not provide industry specific features.

A solution to these kinds of problem is the use of open source IoT platforms. The current and future costs are known, there’s full control and you are free to extend in any way you wish.

Platforms such as ThingsBoard offer data collection, processing, visualisation, and device management. In the case of ThingsBoard it offers a secure, scalable solution that uses a Cassandra database that’s well suited for storage and querying of time-series data while providing high availability and fault-tolerance.

Thingboard Dashboard Showing Sensor Beacons

If you need more help, consider our development services.

Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) for The Fourth Industrial Revolution

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as 4IR and Industry 4.0, improves manufacturing through the use of technology. The end-aims are to significantly improve productivity, reduce production delays and, for example, avoid penalties or future lost orders due to delayed work.

A key part of The Fourth Industrial Revolution is asset tracking that provides faster and more accurate stock control, item picking, job tracking, capacity measurement, demand analysis and product protection through sensing and automatic auditing.

It’s important that asset tracking is continuous because merely scanning things in/out using barcodes is open to human error and location is otherwise only as good as the last scan. Historical data is also important because it identifies blockages allowing processes to be refined.

When evaluating asset tracking systems consider:

  • Scalability and Performance – How many things do you need to track today and into the future?
  • Flexibility – Many of our customers initially buy an RTLS for one urgent purpose but later end up use the system system for additional needs.
  • Security – Where is your data stored and where does it go?

Look for a stand-alone solution rather than SAAS for greater performance, flexibility and longevity. While SAAS based systems can be a quick way into RTLS, they soon become limiting because you are sharing a platform with other customers. SAAS platforms usually don’t scale well technically and financially and don’t have efficient, direct access to the data for efficient ad-hoc reporting. They also pose potential security and reliability risks as you don’t own your data. The ultimate limitation comes when the SAAS provider, usually a startup, eventually increases costs, get’s bought out by its largest customer or goes out of business.

BeaconRTLS


Beacons in Industry and the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR)

Read about BeaconRTLS

Read about BluetoothLocationEngine™

IoT Projects with Bluetooth Low Energy

Our article on Beacon Proximity and Sensing for the Internet of Things (IoT) provides short summary how to use Bluetooth for IoT.

If you need a more rigorous description take a look at the book IoT Projects with Bluetooth Low Energy. It covers the fundamental aspects of Bluetooth Low Energy scanning, services, and characteristics. It goes on to describe examples of how to monitor health data, perform indoor navigation and use the Raspberry Pi for Bluetooth solutions. The book’s code is also available on GitHub.

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