SameSystem is a retail workforce management system. It prevents unnecessary costs due to overstaffing while ensuring sufficient staff during busy times.
The problem with retail is that there are many different shifts and staff frequently come and go so recording who is in or out can be difficult. SameSystem minimises manual clocking in and out by using iBeacons. Everything is automatic with the SameSystem knowing when staff arrive, leave or go on breaks. This allows stores to validate work hours and fine tune retail operations.
WhosOnLocation is a system that monitors the movement of people through buildings and work sites. It allows you to track visitors, contractors and employees providing for the security and safety of sites.
The system can use Bluetooth iBeacons to automatically sign people in and out:
View the WhosOnLocation help desk article for more information how to set up beacons.
Wake Up Radio (WUR) uses a very low power device that senses a radio signal to switch other devices, in this case a Bluetooth LE transmitter. A AS3930 WUR senses a signal in the range 110-150 kHz and switches a Texas Instruments Bluetooth CC2640R2 LaunchPad board.
The idea is that usually Bluetooth LE advertises every say 100ms to 1000ms and this is wasteful on battery power if the advertising is only needed for short periods of time. The paper assesses the feasibility of using WUR to turn advertising on and off to save battery power. While this is in in the context of wearables, the authors don’t mention much more regarding what might switch the beacons to advertise, other than:
The transmitter of this wake-up signal, which is usually a less restricted device, might be integrated with the communication infrastructure or deployed as an independent system element
The authors later mention healthcare so perhaps wearable beacons might only transmit when needed in particular areas.
It’s also mentioned that WUR can mitigate against the problem of interference when many Bluetooth devices advertise at the same time. This problem is rare and requires a very large number of devices. The authors later mention healthcare but this is unlikely to be a problem. A warehouse with thousands of assets might be a more realistic scenario. In this case, you could envisage wanting a Bluetooth beacon only transmitting when invited to do so.
The paper has some useful charts showing usual Bluetooth power use over time (without WUR):
You can see the periodic advertising which isn’t regular due to the 10ms long pseudo-random delay between advertisements. This is the part of the Bluetooth standard that helps ensure two device that collide usually don’t do so the next time they advertise. In between advertising, the power use a very low 0.3 µW.
The paper shows that energy consumption of the system as a function of the number of wake-ups in a period of time and the maximum application-level latency:
The paper concludes that the WUR approach can be more energy efficient when the desired latency for data delivery is below 2.11s. Even though the consumption of the WUR is low, it unfortunately exceeds the level of a BLE only system sleep mode by almost two orders of magnitude.
In our opinion the researchers are trying to improve on something that is already very low power. In between advertising, power use is extremely low. A CR2477 battery in a Bluetooth wearable can advertise periodically for up to 3 years. Also, for the wearable scenario, it’s more normal to use a low power accelerometer to only have the wearable transmit when moving. This way the battery lasts an extremely long time that’s limited more by the physical lifetime of the battery (5 to 10 years) rather than battery consumption.
The paper describes an IoT-based smart traceability and farm management system that calibrates irrigation and fertilisation based on crop typology, growth phase, soil and environment parameters and weather information.
The system uses a custom built Bluetooth LE sensor tag that’s fixed to containers agri-food products collected from the fields, being processed or stores. The sensor monitors gas, temperature and humidity that indicates whether the foods are spoiling over time or along the supply chain. The tag also supports traceability. A mobile application monitors the tracked information and condition of the agri-food products.
The sensor tag uses a HM-10 BLE module and CCS811 (gas) and BMP280 (temperature and humidity) sensors that were chosen to provide reliable markers of the freshness status of vegetables, meat and fish. The gas sensor measures Total Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOCs) and equivalent CO2 (eCO2) concentrations for air quality monitoring applications.
The developed system schedules irrigation and fertilisation according to the crops’ need reducing under or over watering thus minimising plants’ stress.
Smart farming allows farmers to control, in real time, the growth and harvest of cultivated crops. It allows agricultural companies to increase yields, nutritional quality and improve safety. It reduces production costs and the negative impacts on the environment for economic, environmental and social sustainability. View Sensor Beacons View Gateways
AllHours is a time & attendance solution that works across terminals, mobile and web. It provides clock in/out data for presence reporting, payroll, absence management, time clocks and audit trails.
There’s an overview and instructions how to set up a Bluetooth beacon. It’s possible to use several beacons to cover wider areas or several rooms.
Rust is a young programming language that has a low overhead like c/c++ without the associated memory management complexities. It’s cross platform and compiles for Linux, macOS and Windows. Rust is compiled rather than interpreted so achieves c/c++ like performance and is ideal for use with IoT on resource constrained devices.
Rust was originally came out of Mozilla Research and very recently became independent though it’s own non-profit foundation, the Rust Foundation.
Given that rust is ideal for IoT, it’s also suitable for use in projects interfacing with Bluetooth LE. Rust extensions are provided by Cargo, the Rust package manager that downloads crates from crates.io. There are many creates for Bluetooth including rumble, blurz and an amalgamation of libraries btleplug.
The paper explains how BLE beacons are a promising solution for many smart city applications. It describes BLE beacons, protocols, competing wireless technologies and the types of applications.
The paper covers some applications such as proximity marketing, indoor navigation and location based services.
Security and privacy issues are also mentioned such as cracking, spoofing and piggybacking.
The Bluetooth SIG has an infographic that depicts eight location-based usecases where Bluetooth can be used to create better visitor experiences and improve operational efficiency. It explains how smartphones are helping to drive rapid adoption of Bluetooth due to their inherent compatibility.
The usecases demonstrate some of the kinds of solutions we create at Beaconzone.
There’s a new app Bluetooth Sleuth by Sean McNeil for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
The app scans for advertising devices, optionally with a specific CoreBluetooth UUID, and displays them including RSSI (signal strength). It can connect to devices that are connectable and then browse device the Bluetooth Services and Characteristics. For iBeacons, it’s also possible to observe region updates for specified beacons.
The app monitors and graphs recent RSSI values. You can also set up your device to advertise iBeacon or custom services with custom Bluetooth Characteristics.
