We receive many enquiries for complete solutions that don’t yet exist. While we have a solutions directory, most current solutions tend to require solving a particular problem in a particular industry. In most cases the people enquiring don’t have the budget for a one-off custom solution.
There’s plenty of scope for new innovative solutions based on beacons for re-selling to others. However, creating new systems based predominantly on beacons is costly and risky. Instead, it’s often better to beacon-enable existing systems that have been tried and tested.
The systems we are finding doing this at the moment are mainly security related. However, there’s a large number of enterprise systems that could benefit from extra features provided by beacons. Doing so is less risky and more likely to be successful as it builds on something that’s already being used. Another observation is that when companies do this, they sometimes realise they have actually implemented their first IoT system.
When choosing a beacon with an accelerometer, care needs to be taken that it supports the anticipated use. In some cases the accelerometer can control the functionality within the beacon while in other’s it provides raw data that can be used by other Bluetooth devices such as smartphones, gateways and single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi.
The most common use of an accelerometer is to provide for motion triggered broadcast. This is when the beacon only advertises when the beacon is moving so as to improve battery life and lessen the redundant processing needed by observing devices. Beacons supporting motion triggering include the M52-SA Plus, F1, K15, and the H1 Wristband.
A few beacons such as the iBS01G and iBS03G interpret the movement as starting, stopping and falling with a consequent change in Bluetooth advertising.
Some people come to us, having set up their beacons, saying “It doesn’t work”. Most scenarios involve a beacon, an app and a phone. Solving most problems involves breaking the problem down by swapping out each of the beacon, app and phone until it works.
If you have more than one beacon, you can swap out the beacon. Having said this, it’s rare for beacons to fail and if the problem is with the beacon, it’s more likely to be the beacon settings that are incorrect.
While you can’t swap out the manufacturer configuration app, you can use another app such as Nordic’s nRF Connect (on iOS and Android) to scan for a beacon, see if it’s advertising and if so, what type of advertising it is sending.
It’s common for individual phones to have have problems. First, make sure you have Location and Bluetooth on. Anyone working with beacons will usually need to have both Android and iOS devices to diagnose problems. Run the app (and nRF Connect) on multiple phones of different platform type (iOS/Android) to help narrow down problems.
If you still can’t get it working, send us a support ticket. Please don’t just say “It doesn’t work” and instead describe what you have done and at what stage it doesn’t work with any error messages.
The iB005N-SMA is no longer manufactured and has been replaced with the S1-SMA.
S1-SMA
The S1 USB doesn’t use batteries and instead uses USB for power. The USB isn’t used to set up the beacon and the manufacturer smartphone app, via Bluetooth, is used instead. The ‘SMA’ means it has an external rather than PCB antenna which moves the antenna away from the device supplying the USB power thus providing better Bluetooth radio signal and longer range. The S1 is also available without an external antenna.
We have a few iB005N-SMA remaining in stock of you particularly need that model.
Researchers in Japan have been using iBeacons with children with PIMD/SMID’s expressive behaviours. These are children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities or severe motor and intellectual disabilities who can only communicate through movements, vocalizations, body postures, muscle tensions or facial expressions.
The researchers created a system to interpret the expressive behaviours. The system uses the ChildSIDE in app to collect behaviours of children and sends the location and environmental data to a database. The beacons allow the location to be known so that displays or interfaces can be automatically changed depending on the context. For example, a specific situation (e.g. class or playtime), location (e.g. classroom, playground, home) or time (e.g. morning, lunch breaks, evening) can be determined.
ChildSIDE provides an effective method of collecting children’s expressive behaviours with a high accuracy rate in detecting and transmitting environmental and location data.
While we stock a very large range of beacons, it’s occasionally the case that beacons needs to be customised to better suit the project. There are different types of customisation with corresponding complexity and cost. There are also different minimum quantities at which the different forms of customisation become financially viable.
The most basic customisation is setting of the settings at the factory at time of manufacture. This saves lots of time at rollout because each beacon doesn’t have to be configured using the smartphone app. If configured at the factory, beacons can still be subsequently updated if there’s a change of some sort.
Beacons with custom settings and labelled
The settings typically include setting the beacon id, power and advertising period. Labels are also usually attached to the beacons so they they can be visually identified. Configuration at the factory implies they are manufactured to order which typically takes 4-6 weeks depending on the factory and time of year. The minimum quantity is usually about 200 to 300 units. We also manually configure smaller quantities for clients but this is much more expensive per unit.
The next level of customisation is changing the colour of the case and/or branding the beacon with a logo. Again, the minimum quantity is usually of the order of 200 to 300 units.
Custom logo for Malvern Instruments
Some customers need the case to be a specific size, shape or to be, for example, more rugged. It’s also possible to re-specify some of the inside components to improve ruggedness, particularly when beacons are to be used under vibration.
Custom cases are much more time consuming and can take 3-6 months. The beacon usually has to be re-certified that’s also time consuming and expensive. Case modifications are usually only financially viable for tens of thousands of beacons.
Custom case for AddMobile
The final type of customisation is to have non-standard software. This might include new sensors or use existing sensors in innovative ways. This usually takes of the order of 3-6 months software development. Software can be flashed manually onto small numbers of devices but the software image is usually eventually sent to the factory for putting into the beacon at the time of manufacture. Because of the software development cost, this is usually only financially viable for tens of thousands of beacons.
Custom beacon programming
For all customisations, it’s possible to have samples but the factory always needs payment upfront for the full shipment. For very large custom orders we can work on a consultancy basis. We use our skills and expertise to effectively communicate with suitable manufacturers and tie down your specification after which we hand over to you to purchase direct to save costs.
We have been involved in a few projects where there have been 100s of Bluetooth beacons in one place at the same time as opposed to, the more normal, 10s at a time. We have found detection times to be significantly longer. Until now, we have found it difficult to quantify this behaviour.
We have found some research, funded by Samsung, on the Analysis of Latency Performance of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Networks. The research contains lots of theoretical predictions backed up with experimental data that show how the time to detect varies with the number of scanners, number of advertisers, the scan window size, the advertisement period and the advertising interval:
The research concludes that when the number of Bluetooth devices increases, delays in device discovery show an exponential growth even when using multiple advertising channels and small frame sizes.
The authors say:
“We find that the inappropriate parameter settings considerably impair the efficiency of BLE devices, and the wide range of BLE parameters provides high flexibility for BLE devices to be customized for different applications.”
So what typical parameter settings might affect the detection time? What’s really going on? If you look at beacon advertising it transmits for about a millisecond every configurable advertising period (typically 100ms to 1 sec):
In simple terms, if two beacons happen to transmit on the same channel, at a similar time, then the transmissions will collide and receiving device will see corrupted data. The receiver will have to wait for its next scan to possibly see the beacon(s) and this increases the detection time. The chances of collision increase as the number of devices increase and decrease as the beacon advertising period increases.
Note that if two beacons collide and have the same advertising interval, it doesn’t mean they will collide next time. The advertising interval has a small amount of randomisation added to make this less likely to happen.
The solution works on the premise that people who get lost generally go to places where there are other people. A Bluetooth beacon-based device is detected by an app installed by 23,400 ‘dementia angels’. They receive an alert when someone is lost and are asked to turn on Bluetooth and location. When the lost person is detected the location is anonymously sent to a cloud server and then to the caregiver to aid with searching.
The beacon comes in several forms including suitable for putting into a wallet or attached to a walking stick. In 45 out of 131 lost episodes, the caregivers were able to use the technology to help search for their relatives with dementia.
87% of caregivers thought that the iBeacon was easy to carry for the people with dementia and 82% observed that their relatives with dementia were willing to carry the iBeacon. 79% of caregivers were satisfied with the durability of the iBeacon and 75% thought that the designated mobile app was easy to use. In addition, 74% of caregivers trusted data security. The overall programme satisfaction rate was 85%, revealing that they held a positive view of using this technology in their daily lives to prevent getting lost.
There’s new research into a home people tracking system to detect people who are isolated at home. The context is home isolation due to Covid but this could equally be used for people with limited mobility who need to stay indoors.
The idea is to use Bluetooth rather than visual, camera-based monitoring. Smart bracelets are used that can also monitor position, blood oxygen and heart rate.
The system can also send early warning signals to organisations or relatives through instant messaging software.
The system is implemented using ESP32 single board computers and a Raspberry Pi for data collection.
