iBeacon, Eddystone, Bluetooth, IoT sensor beacons, apps, platforms
BeaconZone will be exhibiting at the Industry 4.0 Summit Expo in Manchester on 28th March and 1st of April. We will have our beacons on show and visitors can view our BeaconRTLS platform.
We will on stand F30.
All beacons are currently based on System on a Chip devices that are essentially small computers. While they are low power, it’s possible to create Bluetooth transmitters that are just electronics with no computing element and thus significantly reduce development effort (for the beacon manufacturer) and save substantial battery power for the end user.
Asahi Kasei Microdevices Corporation has announced the AK1594, a new Bluetooth® Low Energy Transmission IC. As there’s nothing to connect to via GATT, settings are configured via EEPROM programming and external switching rather than via an app. It consumes only 9.1uA when transmitting 0dBm every 1 sec.
Asahi Kasei Microdevices Corporation also mention a new beacon, from Houwa System Design, the Beacon Tag BLEAD® Series that will use the new chip and will be available from May 2018.
9.1uA is very low current for a beacon and is the order of magnitude a normal beacon uses when it isn’t advertising. This low power requirement will allow beacons to operate for effectively the physical rather than electrical life of the battery that’s probably of the order of a decade. It also allows new types of beacon to be created that use RF or solar energy harvesting.
Setup via EEPROM programming isn’t that easy or possible for end users and we expect initial beacons based on this technology will have fixed iBeacon advertising with only settings like power and advertising period set via switches.
It’s nearly a year since we wrote about Bluetooth 5 Beacon Implementation Tradeoffs.
Since then, the Samsung S8, iPhone 8/X, and Google Pixel 2 have been released that support Bluetooth 5. However, while these support the LE 2M high speed PHY they don’t support the longer range PHYs. There are currently no smartphones that can take advantage of Bluetooth 5’s longer range.
There are few true Bluetooth 5 beacons. Most that say they are Bluetooth 5 ‘ready’ or ‘compatible’ are only compatible to the extent that their firmware can be upgraded in the future.
An exception is SNCF, the French train company, who are manufacturing their own beacons in order to start experimenting with Bluetooth 5. As mentioned in the Mr Beacon video, SNCF are looking to Bluetooth 5 to provide for (up to x4) better beacon battery life. How is this possible, especially as the SoC chips themselves (usually nRF52 or TI CC2640) are the same whether they run Bluetooth 4 or 5? The battery current is actually the same. Bluetooth LE devices consume most power when actually transmitting and negligible power inbetween transmissions. The faster data rate allows the Bluetooth device to transmit the same data over less time thus using less battery power.
We now have the iB004N PLUS in stock that detects light levels. It also detects temperature and humidity.
The sensor values can be read via a Bluetooth GATT connection or can be set up to appear in the advertising data.
Read about Beacon Proximity and Sensing for the Internet of Things (IoT)
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
