Using Bluetooth Sensor Beacons for AI Machine Learning

Sensor beacons provide a quick and easy way to obtain data for AI machine learning. They provide a way of measuring physical processes to provide for detection and prediction.

Beacon Temperature Sensor

Beacons detect movement (accelerometer), movement (started/stopped moving), button press, temperature, humidity, air pressure, light level, open/closed (magnetic hall effect), proximity (PIR), proximity (cm range), fall detection, smoke and natural gas. The open/closed (magnetic hall effect) is particularly useful as it can be used on a multitude of physical things for scenarios that require digitising counts, presence and physical status.

The data is sent via Bluetooth rather than via cables which means there’s no soldering or physical construction. The Bluetooth data can be read by smartphones, gateways or any devices that have Bluetooth LE. From there it can be stored in files for reading into machine learning.

Such data is often complex and it’s difficult for a human to devise a conventional programming algorithm to extract insights. This is where AI machine learning excels. In simple terms, it reads in recorded data to find patterns in the data. The result of this learning is a model. The model is then used during inference to classify or predict situations based on new incoming data.

The above shows some output from accelerometer data fed into one of our models. The numbers are distinct features found over the time series as opposed to a single x,y,z sample. For example ’54’ might be a peak and ’61’ a trough. More complex features are also detectable such as ‘120’ being the movement of the acceleration sensor in a circle. This is the basis for machine learning classification and detection.

It’s also possible to perform prediction. Performing additional machine learning (yes, machine learning on machine learning!) on the features to produce a new model tells us what usually happens after what. When we feed in new data to this model we can predict what is about to happen.

The problem with sensor data is there can be a lot of it. It’s inefficient and slow to detect events when this processing at the server. We create so called Edge solutions that do this processing closer to the place of detection.

Read more about SensorCognition

New Rugged Bluetooth 5 iBeacon

We have a new rugged, UV-resistant, waterproof (IP68) sensor beacon, the AC-BLE-T110G in stock.

This is the first beacon we know of that supports Bluetooth 5 Long Range Coded PHY. While many beacons mention Bluetooth 5 in their specification and a Bluetooth 5 SDK has been used in their development, they only transmit Bluetooth 4.2 advertising. This beacon is the first to support Bluetooth 5 Long Range Coded PHY to achieve a range up to 200m with compatible gateways and smartphones.

Advertising modes

This beacon can also be set to detect motion with a user defined threshold (mg) and duration (ms) which sends an alternative iBeacon id, a configurable number of times, instead of normal advertising.

View Sensor Beacons

Improving iBeacon Location Accuracy

There are lots of ways of processing Bluetooth signal strength (RSSI) to determine location. Being based on radio, RSSI suffers from fluctuations, over time, even when the sender and receiver don’t move.

The College of Surveying and GeoInformatics, Tongji University, Shanghai , China has new research on iBeacon-based method by integrating a trilateration algorithm with a specific fingerprinting method to resist RSS fluctuations.

Trilateration and fingerprinting are common techniques to improve location accuracy based on RSSI. The paper improves on these by using analysis based on Kalman filtering of segments delimited by turns. This is used to derive locations based on pedestrian dead reckoning.

The researchers achieved a positioning accuracy of 2.75m.

Read about Determining Location Using Bluetooth Beacons

Read about Using Beacons, iBeacons for Real-time Locating Systems (RTLS)

Understanding Bluetooth LE UUIDs

When connecting to Bluetooth devices such as beacons via GATT, APIs are used to connect to specific Bluetooth Services and Bluetooth Characteristics. Services and Characteristics are identified by 128-bit UUID values written as 00000000-0000-1000-0000-000000000000 where each digit is a hexadecimal number. For example, an app might connect to a Service with id D35B1000-E01C-9FAC-BA8D-7CE20BDBA0C6 and then read and write to a Characteristic with id D35B1001-E01C-9FAC-BA8D-7CE20BDBA0C6.

In practice, an interface usually uses similar UUIDs that only change in the xxxx part of the UUID: D35Bxxxx-E01C-9FAC-BA8D-7CE20BDBA0C6. There’s usually a base UUID such as D35B0000-E01C-9FAC-BA8D-7CE20BDBA0C6 and only 16-bits values are provided in the interface documented description.

Here’s an example from the Meeblue beacon documentation:

The Meeblue base UUID is D35B0000-E01C-9FAC-BA8D-7CE20BDBA0C6. When it’s said the UUID is 0x1000, the actual UUID is D35B1000-E01C-9FAC-BA8D-7CE20BDBA0C6.

Read Using Bluetooth Low Energy (LE)

New Beacon Usecases

When we started BeaconZone, our aim was to encourage new scenarios beyond the over-hyped and under-successful retail marketing scenarios. 

One of the issues with retail marketing with beacons is that it requires opt-in through the installation of an app. This is a large barrier if you are considering users who are ambivalent about using specific apps and beacons. The only way it’s usually viable is if you are a large brand who already has an app on customers’ smartphones.

The more interesting and successful uses of beacons involve scenarios that are ‘want-in’ or B2B rather than consumer ‘opt-in’. Here are just a few examples of where our beacons are being used:

  • Policing. There’s a move to what’s called evidence-based policing requiring proof of which police have visited which locations. Trials are taking place to replace paper based reporting with beacon-based automation.
  • Tours. Beacons have been purchased for use on guided walks and with museum information kiosks.
  • The Elderly. Several of our our customers are using beacons to keep track of elderly people in care homes and hospitals.
  • Smart Offices. Several of our customers are using beacons to enable the whereabouts of workers and equipment in smart offices including read time monitoring of room occupancy. We also have clients using beacons with checkin/out type applications.
  • Asset Tracking. We have two large-instrument manufacturer are using beacons for tracking assets. We also have a customer using beacons and gateways to track bicycles. Our beacons are also being used extensively at many sites that track location using Motorola TRBOnet two-way radio.
  • Events. Our long range beacons are being used outside for tracking BMX bike trials and power efficient beacons inside large arena events.
  • Gaming. Ingress players use our beacons.
  • Automotive. A large UK car manufacturer is using our beacons. Another customer, an undertaker, is using beacons with a car driving monitor app to log the time spent driving.
  • Security. Our beacons are being used in security systems at several sites including lone worker SOS scenarios.
  • Utilities. One of the largest UK water authorities is investigating the use of sensor beacons.
  • Insurance. We have customers using beacons for in-car presence detection.
  • Health. Our beacons are being used in apps/systems that help visibly impaired people find their way around buildings. Sensor beacons are being used in hospitals to monitor the temperature of refrigerated medicines.
  • Research. Our beacons have also been purchased by Google, Mozilla and many UK universities for use on their research projects.

Beacons have a multitude of further real uses waiting to be explored and exploited.

What are Beacons?

Ways to Use Beacons

New Python Library

Most use of Bluetooth LE and beacons only looks at the transmitted advertising containing identification and sensor information. More advanced use requires connection to the device using GATT to write, read and be notified of changes in values (Bluetooth Service Characteristics). The most common use for connecting is to set configurable settings as in the case of device manufacturer smartphone apps.

Some solutions need to manipulate Bluetooth Service Characteristics programmatically. Barry Byford has a new Pyton library BLE-GATT for Linux based devices. It’s based on the BlueZ D-Bus API, features a small number of dependencies and can be easily installed without sudo privileges.

Mobile Forms for Eddystone and iBeacons

We recently came across TracerPlus, a system that allows you to scan and collect Eddystone and iBeacon data into forms on iOS and Android.

A desktop application builder is used to design the forms:

The system can be used to efficiently take inventory and capture additional data from beacons for example, unique identifiers for items, battery life, temperature and URL information.

TracerPlus provides semi-custom mobile applications at a fraction of the cost of custom software.

Using Bluetooth Beacons for Epidemic Risk Mitigation

There’s innovative new research by Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy on Listening to Bluetooth Beacons for Epidemic Risk Mitigation.

Solutions usually detect and store contact events between Bluetooth devices that has poor interoperability when applied to smartphones. Adoption rates are also low due to privacy concerns and resultant systems depend on subsequent manual contact tracing.

Instead, a new architecture is used that comprises standard beacons carried by users and detectors placed in strategic locations where infection clusters are most likely to originate. [This is similar to the architecture used for IoT sensing using gateways.]

The system helps control disease spread at lower adoption rates. It also provides significantly higher sensitivity and specificity than existing app-based systems.

Read about Beacons for Workplace Social Distancing and Contact Tracing

Where Can I Find a Beacon Solution that Does xyz?

We get lots of enquiries along the lines of:

“Where Can I Find a Beacon Solution that Does xyz?”

Where xyz could be one of many things. Unfortunately, we don’t have a full knowledge of what’s out there, particularly because it’s continually changing.

We maintain a BeaconZone Solutions Directory where we list solutions we have found in the categories of marketing/retail, industry/logistics, buildings/staff, visitor spaces, transportation, education and personal.

If you can’t find a solution, we also create custom solutions.