iBeacon, Eddystone, Bluetooth, IoT sensor beacons, apps, platforms
We have the AB BLE Gateway in stock. This improves on the original AB Wireless Gateway in that it provides double the throughput, detecting 50 beacons/sec.
Gateways are the glue that makes beacons part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and enable real time positioning and sensing.
Read more about:
Beacon Proximity and Sensing for the Internet of Things (IoT)
We just received the 210L ultra-long 200m range beacon into stock.
Most beacons tend to have a range of 30m, 50m or 100m. The normal output is 0dBm but they can be boosted to +4dBm to achieve the maximum ranges. Read our article on Choosing the Transmitted Power for more information.
The 210L beacon transmits at +10dBM which is the maximum allowable for this class of Bluetooth 4 device. This is just over 3x the power of a beacon transmitting at 0dBm. Hence, there’s respective reduction in battery life.
We now stock the BlueUp BlueBeacon Sensor. This is one of the most capable sensor beacons we know of with up to 8 advertising slots. It detects temperature, humidity and air pressure. It also supports Quuppa and Eddystone GATT Service.
The two AA batteries (included) last 3.5 years with default settings.
Beacons can be used to detect if things or people are in a zone by either putting beacons on the moving things or having the beacons static in a zone.
For the beacons on things/people approach, a gateway or other scanning device looks for beacons in the vicinity and triggers actions. For the static beacons case, an app on peoples’ phone can detect beacon(s) in a zone and trigger actions.
We have some new beacons in stock that now provide a third way of detecting proximity. They use IR and PIR to detect the proximity of any item coming within range. For IR that’s <50cm and for PIR < 5m. These beacons transmit the current state via Bluetooth that can be picked up by an app or gateway.
It’s expected these beacons will be more suitable for IoT and Industrial scenarios.
We have the Feasycom FSC-BP109 long range beacon back in stock.
This Bluetooth Class 1, CE RED certified beacon transmits, iBeacon and Eddystone, between 1000m and 4000m depending on the receiving device.
There are new iOS and Android apps that allow up to 10 channels that can transmit anything: Eddystone-UID, Eddystone-URL, iBeacon or AltBeacon. You can still set up by sending AT commands through the laptop/desktop USB com port opening up the possibility of the advertising changing programmatically over time, for scenarios such as changing media displays.
This beacon is especially suitable for large open areas such as stadiums where it can replace 10s or 100s of beacons with shorter range.
We have some new and updated Minew beacons in stock. We have the updated i7 and new E7 that have new firmware that supports up to 6 advertising slots that can include iBeacon, Eddystone UID, Eddystone URL, Eddystone TLM, device info and in the case of the new E7, acceleration data. These beacons also use the new Nordic nRF52 for improved battery life.
E7
We also have a version of the E7 with standard Minew iBeacon firmware.
There’s also the new small, light C4 that’s suitable for wearing or on a use on a keyring:
C4
There’s an interesting new article on the Nordic Blogs on Bluetooth 5 Advertising Extensions . It explains how the number of channels is increasing, from 3 in Bluetooth 4.0, allowing larger advertising payloads in one of the 37 other data channels. A single advertising packet can hold up to 255 bytes of data, up from 37 in Bluetooth 4.0. The chaining of packets allows for larger payloads up to 1650 bytes.
As the article mentions, we have to wait until tablets and smartphones support Bluetooth 5. Also, we have to wait for new Beacons with Bluetooth 5.
We have some new documentation for our AnkhMaway customers*. In the Ankhmaway Technical Area we have two new Android examples on:
We also have a new user guide for the iB001W rechargeable wrist beacon.
* Password protected – only available to customers who have purchased products.
Renaud Lifchitz, a security consultant, has some great new slides on Security review of proximity technologies: beacons and physical web.
He mainly concludes that:
The spoofing issue is well known and is a necessary consequence of a broadcast, non-connectable, type mechanism. Fortunately, people mainly only use these things for nefarious purposes when there’s a profit motive. Spoofing beacons rarely benefits anyone.
The beacon passwords thing sometimes happens when beacons are set up using the manufacturer app. This is usually a one-off event, when the beacon is first set up, when the user is usually control who in their surroundings. Hence, it’s very unlikely other people will ‘sniff’ the beacon password.
For Web Bluetooth, GATT communications without a known password is benign. You can’t do much by just connecting to a beacon or Bluetooth device. You usually need a password to change or view security sensitive data.
While it’s good to know these things, it’s very unlikely any of these security observations will ever be a problem. Beacons don’t tend to be used in critical or valuable scenarios so the risk of things being subverted is low. There are much easier, more valuable and higher profile targets for hackers in the shape of servers, desktops, laptops and apps. Even if one of the mechanisms mentioned in the slides were used one day, the consequences, for most scenarios, would be minimal.
There’s a recent story at LA Times on how Newport Beach will monitor drivers’ Bluetooth data to analyze traffic, congestion.
It’s a traffic monitoring system that receives signals from Bluetooth-enabled equipment such as cellphones and in-car hands-free devices, building a real-time picture of motorists’ routes and travel times.
This is a simple example of a real time locating system using Bluetooth devices that are already out there as opposed to, more focused, Bluetooth beacons that are specifically being tracked.
