Author: Support

Beacons For Bees

There’s an interesting new project on GitHub that uses Eddystone-URL beacons to tag wild and domestic beehives.

“There are many reasons to geo-tag wild and domestic Beehives, one is simply to raise awareness of HoneyBee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and the state of health of local Beehives; another would be to alert those that might be susceptible to anaphylactic shock that they should be mindful of their surroundings. (i.e. Don’t climb that lovely tree with the huge wild Beehive in it…)”

It’s questionable whether Eddystone-URL is the best solution in this particular scenario. Eddystone-URL will only show up when users are interacting with their devices (when the screen is on). People avoiding beehives due to possible anaphylactic shock would want to be alerted even when not using their phones. This requires use of an app and iBeacon if background notification is required on iOS.

Nevertheless, Eddystone-URL does provide an inexpensive, easy to create solution for educational and awareness (PR) purposes.

Crowd Analysis Using Beacons

With so many uses of beacons centred around notifications to users, it’s interesting to see Queen Mary University of London doing something different. Research by Kleomenis Katevas, Laurissa Tokarchuk, Hamed Haddadi and Richard G. Clegg of the Department of Computing of Imperial College looks into detecting group (crowd) formations using iBeacon (pdf).

They used beacon RSSI and phone motion together with algorithms based on graph theory to predict interactions inside the crowd. They verified their finding using using video footage as ground truth.

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The paper has some particularly interesting observations from testing RSSI in an EMC screened anechoic chamber and also has some information on distance estimation models.

Bluetooth Beacon Ecosystem Profit and Risks

There’s an interesting article by Stephen Statler at StreetFightMag on Bringing Brands Into the Fold, inMarket Touts Its ‘Three-Sided’ Beacon Network. The article is based on an interview with Todd DiPaola, CEO of inMarket on How to build a profitable Beacon enabled advertising network for brands, apps and venues.

The article questions how to make money with beacons and says Todd:

joked that many of his competitors behave like “non-profits,” given the rate they are burning through cash

There are many, perhaps hundreds of, businesses in the beacon ecosystem that aren’t sustainable and are dependent on initial bootstrap funding. This raises two questions 1) What risk does this pose to their customers? and 2) How can companies in the beacon ecosystem actually make money?

As we mentioned in our article on Trigger Data and Beacon Servers, probably the largest consideration is whether some of these startups will continue to be around as long as your solution. Many retail-targeted solutions are struggling to sell beacons to retailers. Also, no one solution or beacon is good for all usecases, especially if move outside retail.

On risks, think about choosing and using platforms and beacons in such a way so they can be easily swapped out should your supplier significantly raise prices or go out of business. Have a second-sourcing strategy even if it’s only in your head.

On profit, take the lead from Todd DiPaola’s inMarket (the interviewee) or even ourselves. Avoid trying to make profits from beacons, make money from something else that uses them. InMarket make money by selling innovative contextual-based (advertising) services, that sometimes uses beacons, to brands. We make money from beacon software development. Beacons are a way of strengthening existing business models to produce more profit. It’s much more difficult to have beacons support a profitable business model in they own right.

Wearable Tech for Dementia Patients

Dexigner has a new article on how Mettle and their use of beacons to monitor Dementia Patients. When the patient wanders out of sight the signal is lost and the app alerts the carer by notification and vibration.

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While it’s an interesting piece of design, the companion app is very similar to the usual beacon-based ‘lost luggage’ type of app. In fact, many standard beacons are wearable.

There are also many more health applications waiting to be discovered that make use of the accelerometer, temperature sensor and the buzzer found in some beacons.

Using Beacons with Gamification

We have previously written about trying to achieve ‘want-in’ rather ‘opt-in’ for beacon apps. One way to achieve this is to use a technique called gamification that is often used in non-beacon apps to encourage greater engagement and retention:

“The application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.”

There’s a recent paper by the University of Cambridge Museums consortium, a group of eight museums within the University, working in partnership also with the University’s Botanic Garden and other University collections written by Tommy Nilsson, Alan F. Blackwell, Carl Hogsden and David Scruton. The paper, ‘Ghosts! A Location-Based Bluetooth LE Mobile Game for Museum Exploration’ (pdf) examines the challenges and opportunities introduced by the introduction of a beacons into museum scenarios.

They found that the nature of the museum interior with large shelves and artefacts scattered throughout the space, contributed to unpredictable signal coverage. Instead of trying to implement traditional location finding, they instead used gamification to have ‘ghosts’ popping up on the screen of the mobile device explaining to the player that they are lost and need help finding their way back to their home artefacts. The unpredictable signal coverage became part of the challenge and game. They describe the result as a:

“Museum guide masking itself as a hide and seek game”

One of their conclusions is that:

“BLE can thus play a significant role in advancing the internet of things from a mere futuristic vision to a mainstream level of use”

More Silicon Manufacturers Eyeing Bluetooth LE

Following Toshiba, silicon manufacturers are becoming more active in the Bluetooth LE space. STMicroelectronics have announced their Latest SoC, the BlueNRG-1 and Fujitsu have announced the FWM7BLZ20 module.

The BlueNRG-1 has a SPI interface to communicate with an application processor suggesting use within other larger hardware systems while the Fujitsu FWM7BLZ20 is a pre-certified module with integrated antenna, based on the Nordic nRF52832, allowing you to get to market quicker.

While these new products are suitable for beacon related products, their use is more likely to be targeted at Bluetooth LE IoT applications.

Transport Information System Learnings

There’s a recent article on ZDNet on Smartphones, Bluetooth beacons: The pairing that could help the blind catch the right bus. After weeks of testing, the city of Strasbourg in France is now ready to rollout a smartphone-based transport information system. 1,400 beacons at libraries, tourist spots and bus stops allow users to interact with city locations on their smartphones.

Two interesting issues with the initial trial were:

  • Slow detection time meant users at bus stops were being notified too late
  • Placing beacons behind the windscreens of busses, the 80m range wasn’t sufficient

While the article doesn’t explain how the slow detection time was solved we suspect it had something to do with the app having to connect to get information. This information might have been bus information or something to do with the beacon platform. Caching information or turning off advanced functionality that required the app to connect will have solved the problem. Alternatively, it could have been that the time between beacon advertising was too long preventing it from being picked up quickly by the app.

The 80m range was solved by configuring the beacons to be more powerful and transmit to 160 meters. Unless the beacon was already transmitting at less than normal (0dBm) power it wouldn’t have been possible to double the range by re-configuring the power. Most beacons go up to +4dBm which, while providing over double the power, wouldn’t have doubled the range. It’s more likely they had to use a different beacon with integrated power amplifier such as those in our Ultra Long Range.

White Key Fob Beacon in Stock

We have had a small number of a white version of the Apple MFi certified PC061 key fob beacon come into stock. This beacon supports one of iBeacon, Eddystone-UID, Eddystone-URL at any one time, the mode being changed by quickly double clicking the button. Clicking the button once turns it on and off. It remembers the last used mode.

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This beacon is waterproof and weighs only 11g. It comes with a special metal tool for opening the case and replacing the battery. The battery should last 6-12 months depending on the advertising rate.

New ASensor Beacon

We have the new ASensor beacon in stock. This is our smallest sensor beacon measuring only 37.3mm x 37.3mm x 7mm and it uses the power efficient Dialog DA14580 that gives up to 1.5 years from a CR2025 battery.

The beacon supports iBeacon, Eddystone or sensor advertising. For sensor mode, the temperature, acceleration and battery level are in the advertising data.

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