What is the Beacon With the Shortest Range?

A short-range beacon is useful in scenarios where precise proximity detection is crucial. For instance, in retail environments, it can trigger notifications when a customer is near a till or near a specific product. In museums, it can provide detailed information about an exhibit when a visitor is directly in front of it. Short-range beacons are also valuable for security purposes, ensuring access control in restricted areas by detecting when someone is within a specific, confined space.

The range of a beacon can be adjusted by altering its transmission power, known as Tx Power. Tx Power determines the strength of the signal the beacon emits. By reducing the Tx Power, any beacon’s signal strength can be decreased, effectively shortening its range.

Lowering the Tx Power to reduce the beacon’s range significantly improves battery life. Since the beacon is emitting a weaker signal, it consumes less power. This efficiency is beneficial for maintaining the beacon’s operation over longer periods without frequent battery replacements or recharges.

Beacons can generally achieve a minimum range of 2 to 3 metres. However, it’s important to note that the range can fluctuate over time due to the nature of radio signals, which can be affected by environmental factors such as walls, interference from other electronic devices and physical obstructions.

In addition to adjusting the Tx Power, the range can be fine-tuned by using the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) at the receiving end. RSSI measures the power level of the received signal, allowing devices such as smartphones (iOS and Android) or computers (like Raspberry Pi) to determine how close they are to the beacon. By setting thresholds for RSSI values in the receiving program code, you can define more precise proximity zones, ensuring that actions are triggered only when the device is within the desired range.

What is the Best Beacon Compatible With Our HR System?

The answer to this question is similar to Which Beacons are the Most Compatible (with iOS and Android)? All beacons transmit to Bluetooth standards and use similar, certified, components which means there are no problems with compatibility or ‘best’ beacon for compatibility with an HR system.

Instead, we find the challenges usually lie in setup and getting the HR system to recognise the beacon UUID. Most systems use iBeacon advertising that uses a UUID, major and minor to uniquely identify the beacon. The UUID looks something like 3ce2ef69-4414-469d-9d55-3ec7fcc38520. Some HR systems use upper case for the hexadecimal digits that are letters, some use lower case. Some omit the dashes (-) and some use colons instead. Read your HR user guide to determine the exact format otherwise the beacon won’t be recognised.

Google Find My Device

Google’s “Find My Device” network is a feature designed to help users locate their Android devices and other items using a network of over a billion Android devices. It uses Bluetooth to detect nearby devices and securely send their locations to the Find My Device network.

This network is end-to-end encrypted, meaning that while Google processes location data, it does not have access to the specific locations, which are only visible to the owner of the lost device.

The Find My Device network is only compatible with Bluetooth beacons which are specifically built for this network and have compatible firmware. These tags can help locate everyday items like keys, wallets, or luggage.

Bluetooth beacons from brands like Chipolo and Pebblebee are compatible with Find My Device and beacons from other brands will be available soon.

Sensor Beacon List Updated

We offer a range of sensor beacons but what each beacon actually senses or detects is buried deep in the respective beacon descriptions.

As we have recently added new sensor beacons, we have updated our downloadable pdf showing what each beacon can detect.

If you want to know how you might use these beacons, take a look at our articles on Beacon Proximity and Sensing for the Internet of Things (IoT), Using Bluetooth LE and Using Bluetooth LE Sensors.

Turn Your iPhone into an iBeacon

If you into Beacon-enabled apps, there’s a new free iOS app now allows your iPhone to function as an iBeacon. This tool is particularly useful for developers looking to test their applications without the need for additional hardware. This eliminates the need for purchasing a physical beacon.

However, there are a few things to keep in mind. One notable downside is that using your iPhone as a beacon will drain your battery much faster. If you use this app, make sure the iPhone remains on charge.

Although this app is designed to mimic iBeacon functionality, neither the app description on the App Store nor the interface within the app mentions ‘iBeacon’. Instead, the term ‘Beacon’ is used. This is not an oversight but a deliberate choice, as Apple prohibits the use of the term ‘iBeacon’ by third-party developers. It’s a strange, pedantic restriction, but one that developers must navigate.

If you are serious about Beacon technology, investing in a physical beacon might still be the better route in the long run. They are relatively inexpensive and offer the advantage of not impacting your phone’s battery life.

CliqTags App for Marketing Using Beacons

In the early days of Bluetooth beacons, many businesses were excited about the prospect of sending unsolicited messages directly to people’s phones as they walked by. This was once possible through the Google Nearby service, a feature that allowed notifications to be sent to users without the need for an app. However, in 2018, Google shut down the Nearby service, effectively ending unsolicited beacon messaging. Since then, the way we interact with Bluetooth beacons has evolved significantly.

Today, if you want to notify users through a beacon, you need an app. This app must be capable of detecting nearby beacons and presenting relevant information to the user. For businesses and developers, this means you have a few options. You could modify an existing app to detect beacons, create a new app from scratch, or use a third-party app specifically designed for this purpose such as CliqTags.

CliqTags offers two versatile app, CliqTags Nearby and CliqTags Spotter, that help businesses use the power of Bluetooth beacons:

CliqTags Nearby: Simple, Seamless, and Independent

CliqTags Nearby is an app that uses the Eddystone-URL advertising format to detect beacons and display site information directly to users. Unlike Google’s old Nearby implementation, CliqTags Nearby fetches information directly from the site, making it a seamless and independent experience. Users can click the button to visit the site directly, without relying on any external services, not even CliqTags. The app is available for free on both Google Play and the Apple App Store, and it can be private-branded and customised to meet specific business needs.

CliqTags Spotter: Advanced Functionality with iBeacon Technology

CliqTags Spotter takes things a step further by using iBeacon technology. When an iBeacon is detected, the app communicates with the CliqTags server to translate the iBeacon ID into a corresponding website. One of the standout features of CliqTags Spotter is its ability to reconfigure beacon IDs over time, allowing different content to be associated with the same beacon. This flexibility extends to geofencing, providing a level of control that businesses can manage via the CliqTags server. Due to its complexity and customisability, CliqTags Spotter isn’t available in app stores. Instead, it’s offered as a private-branded solution tailored to the specific needs of businesses.

New KKM Wireless Tilt Sensor K9AT

Our partner and supplier, KKM, has a new K9AT Wireless Tilt Sensor The K9AT Tilt Sensor is designed to convert accelerometer measurements into precise tilt angle detections. What makes it stand out is its ability to trigger advertisements once it detects an inclination beyond a pre-set value.

The sensor has an IP67 rating, ensuring it is both water-resistant and dustproof. One of the most impressive aspects of the K9AT Tilt Sensor is its longevity. Powered by an industrial-grade ER14505 battery, it offers an extended battery life of up to 8 years.

The applications of the K9AT are vast and varied. From construction and agriculture to automotive and shipping, this sensor can play a critical role in improving operational efficiency and safety. Its ability to provide real-time alerts on angle changes makes it an invaluable tool for monitoring equipment, cargo, and even structural integrity.

For more information or to discuss how it can benefit your business, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Disguise Your Beacons!

Our customers often tell use that beacons go missing early after installation. People will steal beacons even if they are password protected and can’t be re-used. They don’t know they are useless and steal them anyway.

We once had a strange request from the UK Transport Police to supply our “ugliest beacons”. In some situations, the requirement is for beacons that will blend into the environment rather than advertise their presence visually. While high visibility, attractive beacons might be great for proof of concepts and demos, in the real world beacons that blend into their environment work best.

There’s often a temptation to hide beacons behind things. However, beware of blocking the radio signal and hence reducing the range. We had a client use beacons in a stadium and they painted them to camouflage them from view. Hide your beacons, but don’t block the signal.

Improving RSSI Using Relabelling

Researchers from Japan have a new Relabelling Approach to Signal Patterns for Beacon-based Indoor Localization in Nursing Care Facility. Bluetooth beacons were used in a nursing care facility to enhance the tracking and location estimation of caregivers. These beacons were strategically placed throughout the facility, particularly outside patient rooms and in common areas. The caregivers carried smartphones with a mobile application called FonLog installed, which recorded the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) readings from the beacons and logged location labels.

The beacons were set to a frequency of 10 Hz with a coverage range of up to five meters. The main challenge addressed in this study was the signal loss and limited data, which affected the accuracy of indoor localisation. To improve the data quality, a relabelling approach was applied. This involved observing the signal patterns in different rooms and using these patterns to augment the training data by relabelling RSSI values from one location as samples for another location with low data samples.

This approach aimed to increase the dataset and improve the model’s accuracy in recognising the caregivers’ locations. By doing so, the accuracy of the indoor localisation model improved, achieving an accuracy of 74%, which was a 5% improvement over the original data. The use of Random Forest for location recognition further enhanced the performance, demonstrating the effectiveness of combining relabelling with machine learning techniques for indoor localisation in a healthcare setting.

New Nordic Semiconductor Wireless Quarter

Nordic Semiconductor, the leading manufacturer of System on a Chip (SoC) used in most beacons and the top supplier of SoCs for Bluetooth LE solutions, has released the latest PDF edition of Wireless Quarter Magazine. This issue highlights the diverse applications of Nordic’s SoCs.

The latest issue of the magazine highlights the increasing use of the Nordic SoCs in health. There are details on a smart ring that delivers non-invasive diabetic risk assessment and a Bluetooth LE hybrid smartwatch that delivers accurate health data.

There are also in-depth articles on how Bluetooth is transforming the industrial Internet of Things, the smart home and precision air quality monitoring. There’s also news that the nRF Connect SDK now supports Google’s Find My Device network.