Bluetooth Detection Range

The BBC has an article on Coronavirus: Why are there doubts over contact-tracing apps? It says:

But critics warn this kind of system would be imprecise since some phones detect signals from up to 30m (98ft) away without being able to determine the distance.

The BBC took this from information in a Wired article that says:

… but with Bluetooth being able to ping other phones within a 30-metre range, without precision, there’s an increased chance of the app alerting you to false positives of people who have never even come into contact with you

This isn’t correct and misunderstands how the Bluetooth signal is being used. Receiving devices, such as smartphones, don’t just see the beacon signal but also have a received signal strength (RSSI) that can be used to infer distance. Our post on testing if a beacon is working explains and shows this value in the nRF Connect app running on Android.

While not fake news, the BBC and Wired are providing incorrect information. In these times, in the rush and panic, too many things are being written that aren’t thoroughly researched.

Startups, COVID-19 and Venture Capital

Many companies we work with are startups. A very recent survey by NfX shows founders are very worried, the main issues being venture capital drying up and sales declining:

Apart from cost saving actions, it’s interesting many founders are pivoting their product:

Talking to customers, we have seen an increase in the use of beacon technology in health (e.g. calling for help) and logistics (e.g. supermarket asset tracking). The use of technology and IT has the potential to reduce human effort, minimise human to human contact and provide for SOS solutions. Read our recent post on SOS type applications.

Founders are finding many VCs (41.9%) are taking much longer to respond and 15.5% of VC have gone ‘dark’:

All is not lost. Kanso have an Investor COVID19 spreadsheet that lists investors the status of European investors. Many are still accepting pitches and investing.

Bluetooth Market Update

The Bluetooth SIG has recently released a 2020 Bluetooth® Market Update identifying new trends and forecasts from ABI Research and other analyst firms.

The use of Bluetooth for location is expected to achieve 32% compound annual growth (CAGR):

Obviously, these and other numbers in the report were analysed prior to the coronavirus crisis.

For Bluetooth Mesh, 90% of end-product Bluetooth® mesh qualifications are lighting focused. As with the introduction of iBeacon, which initially focused on marketing messages, the wider capabilities and opportunities are initially not being fully exploited. Part of the problem is that the standard models that come with Bluetooth Mesh are more lighting focused because the standard was driven by individuals from the lighting industry.

New W2-P5202D3 Wristband Beacon

We have the new W2-P5202D3 Wristband Beacon in stock.

It advertises iBeacon, Eddystone and acceleration. Rechargeable via USB. Supports always, button triggered (for SOS) and motion triggered advertising.

The app allows you to configure up to 6 advertising slots that can include iBeacon, Eddystone (UID, URL and TLM), acceleration and information (device name, MAC address, battery level).

New Feasycom FSC-BP103

We have a new beacon, the Feasycom FSC-BP103 in stock. It’s a small beacon that transmits up to 10 channels simultaneously that can be Eddystone-UID, Eddystone-URL, iBeacon or AltBeacon.

This beacon uses the newer Texas Instruments CC2640R2F System on a Chip (SoC) that provides a longer battery life. Also, it can be set to advertise at +5dBm that provides a 100m+ range that’s unusual for a small battery beacon.

New Demonstration Video

We have a new demonstration video showing iBeacon and accelerometer sensor beacons, manufacturer setting apps and the raw Bluetooth advertising data in the Nordic nRF Connect app (Nordic is the manufacturer of the main chip in most beacons). The video also shows a Bluetooth-WiFi gateway, it’s setup and sending of advertising data to a server.

Best viewed full screen.

How Do You Build Your Own iBeacon?

To build your own iBeacon from scratch you need electronics and software skills. You start by choosing an SoC manufacturer and using their prototypes boards and SDKs. When you have working design, you move it to your own printed circuit board and case. You then need to get CE or FCC approval. Read our inside a beacon series of posts for more details.

In practice, it’s less expensive to find a manufacturer who has something as close as possible and ask them to modify for your needs. Many organisations come to us having failed to source custom beacons themselves directly from manufacturers. Unless you have an existing relationship with a manufacturer, you will usually find your enquiries either aren’t taken seriously, aren’t answered, are misunderstood or the purchased beacons aren’t as expected. Sometimes organisations make the costly mistake of dealing with disreputable Alibaba middle-men rather than the end manufacturer.

For large custom orders we usually work on a consultancy fee basis. We are the best connected and experienced company in the industry when it comes to dealing with the beacon manufacturers. Manufacturers trust us. We help you choose the right beacons. We jump start purchasing through knowing which manufacturers are open to doing the various types of customisation. We know the pertinent questions to ask of manufacturers, contact the right people for you, sidestep known problems and negotiate the best price for you as we know what is a sensible price. You end up buying direct from the manufacturer but with the assurance of advice and direction from ourselves.

We provide:

  • Consultancy related to using beacons with your idea.
  • Refining of your beacon specification based on your needs, including regulatory certification.
  • Working with our technical contacts at suitable manufacturers to work through a solution and price (this usually takes 5 to 8 weeks). We take no commission from the manufacturer.
  • Advice on initial settings to be programmed at the factory to save you considerable configuration time.
  • Advice on software integration.

We charge a fixed upfront fee for this service.

Contact Us

Android Apps Not Scanning

As more and more devices are being shipped with Android 10 we are increasing getting reports of problems with beacon apps built for previous versions of Android. We mentioned this issue back in October last year.

To compound the problem, many popular Chinese manufacturers such as Oppo, Huawei and Xiaomi also now using Android 10 in their forked versions of Android. Not only are these manufacturers inheriting the Android 10 problem but their devices also suffer from problems running services, such as Bluetooth scanning, in background. The problem is that these manufacturers also add their own additional background throttling (and killing) mechanisms into the OS that make Bluetooth unreliable. The site dontkillmyapp documents the known problems and some workarounds for various forks of Android.

If you think you might be a victim of these issues, try using another, perhaps older, Android smartphone to isolate the problem.

Concurrent Transmission (CT) Bluetooth

There’s new research BlueFlood: Concurrent Transmissions for Multi-Hop
Bluetooth 5 — Modeling and Evaluation (pdf) that looks into using concurrent transmissions (CT) with Bluetooth.

Today’s Bluetooth devices use advertising, GATT connection and mesh. Advertising occurs over three channels to reduce the affects of wireless interference. When more than one device advertises at the same time, the data is lost. However, advertising takes of the order of 1ms so the chance of collision is usually small.

In contrast, BlueFlood uses concurrent transmissions (CT) that purposely synchronise transmissions such that if colliding packets are tightly synchronised and have the same contents, the resulting signal might be distorted, but highly probable that they do not destruct each other. This is used with the Glossy flooding protocol and 40 rather than 3 advertising channels.

CT-based protocols achieve enormous performance gains in terms of end-to-end reliability, latency and energy consumption even under harsh interference conditions

Concurrent transmissions are challenging using Bluetooth because transmissions need to be synchronised down to 250ns. Nevertheless, the researchers show this is possible using standard Bluetooth PHY and commercial Nordic SoCs. They achieved an end-to-end loss rate below 1% and managed to receive the signals on a standard smartphone. While the mechanism was fragile it was found to be viable.