iBeacon, Eddystone, Bluetooth, IoT sensor beacons, apps, platforms
Yes, provided the phones use Windows Phone 10 or later. Prior versions don’t have the necessary APIs to scan for beacons.
There’s also a 3rd party library that abstracts away some of the complications of interpreting the different kinds of advertising (iBeacon, Eddystone). There’s alsoa sample app.
Google have quietly cut much of the usefulness of using Nearby with Beacons. The Google Beacon Tools app previously allowed you to register beacons that advertise an id (not URL), even iBeacon, associating the beacon with either a URL or an app so that Android users receive a notification when they come across a beacon.
The Android Google Beacon Tools app that is used to register Nearby beacons has had some updates. Google have removed the capability to register iBeacons and the app now goes into a provisioning state to connect to the beacon being provisioned:
The Android Beacon Tools app can now only connect to and provision Eddystone GATT service Eddystone-UID and Eddystone-EID beacons otherwise it then shows “Eddystone configuration service not supported by this beacon”:
The majority of beacons, not just ours, don’t support Eddystone GATT service. This severely cuts down the types of beacon that can now be registered with the Beacon Tools app (in our case only 7 beacons).
The Nearby programming API, that you can use to register Nearby beacons in your app, still declares it supports iBeacon so it’s still currently possible to register non Eddystone GATT service beacons but not so easily.
This is going to be a problem for organisations who have used Nearby as an alternative to Eddystone-URL. If they have been relying on the Beacon Tools app rather than using their API via their own app, they won’t be able to register more beacons. This puts them into the difficult position of needing to either purchase Eddystone-GATT Service beacons or write an app that uses the API. However, there must have been some reason to restrict Beacon Tools to only Eddystone Standard GATT beacons and this might, one day, also apply to the API.
To be clear, this doesn’t affect Eddystone-URL. Eddystone-URL never, and still doesn’t need, registration at Google.
Together with the recent removal of Eddystone-URL detection from Chrome for iOS, this sees Google distancing Eddystone from iOS and iBeacon from Android OS. Organisations can still write apps that scan for iBeacon or Android and Eddystone on iOS. However, for some unknown reason Google no longer wants to support this in their own apps and tools.
There’s an interesting recent post at twocanoes on how beacons can be used to detect which room a person is in, to then run the correct AR interaction:
“While ARKit is aware of the geometry of the room the phone is in, it doesn’t know what room it is in”
Beacons solve this problem. In fact, beacons are a useful addition to many apps. The more interesting usecases are often an ancillary use rather than the main use of an app or service.
As mentioned yesterday, in the Mr Beacon interview with Ajay Malik, beacon positioning and sensor data will be increasingly used as input for AI machine learning (ML). Beacons are a great way of providing the large amounts of data required of ML.
At BeaconZone, we have recently started using beacon data in machine learning. This has been a natural progression of use of our BeaconRTLS to collect large data sets. We have a new subsidiary Sensor Cognition that provides services to extract and use intelligence from sensor data. Unlike most other ML companies, we aren’t interested in computer vision, speech and language recognition, even though the first two could be inferred to be from sensor data. Instead, we specialise in extracting intelligence from industry time series position and sensor data.
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Mr Beacon has a new interview with Ajay Malik, the author of RTLS for Dummies.
It starts with a discussion that tries to define what’s a Real Time Location System (RTLS) in terms of the technologies that can be used. Ajay explains how he ended up working with RTLS and writing the book.
There’s discussion on business drivers and how RTLS relates to machine to machine (M2M) and IoT. Usecases mentioned include promotional marketing, asset tracking and autonomous navigation. There’s a useful explanation of trilateration, triangulation, angle of arrival, time of arrival and time distance of arrival.
Ajay sees asset tracking as currently the most important application. However, going forward, RTLS will feed more into AI to provide context.
Got lots of beacons around and having trouble isolating your particular test beacon? While some beacons can be physically turned off, many others can only be set to stop advertising via changing their settings. Moving between tests can be time consuming. A solution is to use a faraday bag to hide beacons you want to ignore for now. The bag is also useful for forcing iBeacons to go out of range (for about 30 secs) so they will trigger again on iOS.
We stock a small and large version.
The bag has an internal wire mesh that keeps Bluetooth signals inside the bag. One thing to beware of is you need to keep the bag closed at the top to stop signals escaping. Fold over the top and close the bag against itself along the line of the velcro.
BeaconZone founder, Simon Judge has a new article on LinkedIn on Discovering The Value of Data.
Take a fresh look at the data created by beacons and how this can lead to insights generated via AI machine learning.
Mouser has a free ezine called ‘Methods’ (pdf) that has in-depth articles on the latest advances in Bluetooth.
Steven Hegenderfer, Director of Developer Programs at Bluetooth SIG explains how Bluetooth 5 will enable design engineers to pioneer innovative solutions. Steven Keeping shows how Bluetooth has evolved and Barry Manz explains Bluetooth Mesh Networking and beacons.
Read more about Bluetooth mesh on our web site.
Beacons are small computers with a complete System on a Chip (SoC). There are four main companies that manufacturer SoCs: TI, Dialog, NXP and Nordic. Nordic is the most popular SoC for use in beacons, mainly because of the lower (tool) license cost and ease for beacon manufacturers developing the software (actually called firmware) that runs in the beacons.
Nordic has a new free Wireless Quarter Magazine that showcases uses of Nordic SoCs in many types of device, not just beacons.
The magazine also has articles on how Nordic is the first to launch a Bluetooth mesh Software Development Kit, how Mesh strengthens Bluetooth wireless’ IoT credentials and explains Bluetooth 5’s advertising extensions. The article says of Bluetooth 5’s advertising extensions:
“Advertising extensions, periodic advertisements, and connectionless broadcast will have a major impact on beacons”
However, the article says:
“This won’t happen overnight because few current smartphones incorporate Bluetooth 5, but expect beacons to proliferate over the next several years as new smartphones are rolled out”
Our Beaconzone Ltd founder, Simon Judge has a new article on LinkedIn on IoT Digital Twins, Sensing and Bluetooth Sensors.
Learn about Digital Twins and how Bluetooth sensor beacons can be used to provide data to drive models of systems, mirroring real-time status to improve operational efficiency.