iBeacon, Eddystone, Bluetooth, IoT sensor beacons, apps, platforms
When testing beacons and Bluetooth LE, nRF Connect is usually sufficient. However, if you need deeper analysis of Bluetooth you need to use a packet sniffer.
NCC Group has a new open source sniffer for Bluetooth 5 that also works with Bluetooth 4.x. You need to run the software on a Texas Instruments (TI) CC26x2 board.
The source code and instructions are available on GitHub.
We have been involved in writing some articles for a new magazine site Industry 4.0 SME.
The site is targeted at CEOs, COOs, CTOs and innovation managers in Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs). It provides high level articles on the opportunities, strategies and technologies involved in Industry 4.0. It’s updated daily with the latest Industry 4.0 news.
Bluetooth Framework is a library for using Bluetooth on Windows. There are editions for .NET, c++ and VCL. While the framework has many features, those of particular interest to Bluetooth LE developers are:
There’s a useful recent research paper by Basem AL-Madani, Farid Orujov, Rytis Maskeliūnas, Robertas Damaševičius,and Algimantas Venčkauskas on Fuzzy Logic Type-2 Based Wireless Indoor Localization System for Navigation of Visually Impaired People in Buildings.
The paper explores indoor location algorithms and implements a fingerprinting system using RSSI that achieves an average error of 0.43m.
The authors’ ‘fuzzy logic type-2’ system allows for complex environments such as buildings with glass/metal corridors. They comment that fingerprinting requires pre-configuration which is one of the main disadvantages of this method.
There’s a new video that shows beacons being used with AR to provide up to x10 extra accuracy:
The software being used is ViewAR which provides a platform-independent Augmented Reality system and SDK supporting systems such as ARKit, ARCore, and Wikitude. Contact ViewAR for early beta access.
If you are developing a beacon solution it can be tricky to set up physical scenarios where beacons come and go. Peter Alt of Philadelphia Museum of Art has a useful iOS app called BeaconWalker that simulates a sequence of iBeacons with custom durations per beacon.
The Swift source code is also available on GitHub. While you are there also take a look at the museum’s mobile framework, a collection of utilities for caching data, iBeacon ranging and indoor navigation. There’s also framework demo that explains how the framework features work.
Nordic, the manufacturer of the System on a Chip (SoC) in many beacons, has the latest issue of Wireless Quarter Magazine. It showcases the many uses of Nordic SoCs.
News from the world of beacons includes:
There’s a new in-depth article at PC Mag on how Carnival use beacons, based on Bluetooth and NFC, on cruise ships. As the article says, “it provides an excellent case study in how to use technology to enhance your customer’s experience”.
The beacons are branded as ‘OceanMedallion’ and allow:
7,000 sensors throughout each ship detect the beacons and 4000 interactive portals provide information for guests. A mobile app can also be used that can help navigate about the ship and find fellow passengers.
Beacons provide a way to eliminate friction in the passenger experience. The software system uses edge devices to perform operations close to where the user has been detected so as to reduce latency and network traffic. Nevertheless, the system attempts to centralise data so as not to replicate information.
The system provides Carnival with lots of useful data on guest preferences, transactions (for billing) and preferred areas of the ship. Aggregated information might be used to determine heavily used areas (for maintenance), pinch points and redundant areas of the ship to feed into improvements to the ship.
Read about Beacons in Hospitality
Read about Beacons in Visitor Spaces
Since our original post on power measurement in 2016, we have been occasionally providing power measurement services as part of consultancy. Last week we started offering it as separate service orderable via our web store.
We take a beacon the same as yours, or one you send to us, and measure the actual power use with your specific settings.
Note, however, that if you will be using batteries that have been included with beacons, those batteries will have been used for an indeterminate time in the factory for soak testing the beacon. You will need to use new batteries to obtain the maximum battery life.
ez enRoute uses iBeacons to provide a student and bus tracking system with push notifications, mapping and driver SOS.
Read about using beacons for transportation and education.
ez enRoute has been added to the BeaconZone Solutions Directory.