Author: Support

Is There a Beacon That Works Without Bluetooth On?

We sometimes get asked if it’s possible that smartphones can detect beacons without Bluetooth being on. All beacons are based on Bluetooth LE that, in turn, relies on Bluetooth being switched on in the phone to scan for beacons. There’s no magic underling operating system mechanism on iOS nor Android that allows you to use Bluetooth without the user having Bluetooth on.

More users are leaving their Bluetooth on due to the proliferation of connecting with other devices such as cars, Bluetooth headphones and smart speakers. If you are writing an app you should take steps to detect if Bluetooth is on and prompt the user appropriately.

The phone and beacon industries need to better educate users that Bluetooth is no longer the heavy battery drainer it was in the early days of smartphones.

Passive Human Sensing Using Bluetooth

There’s new research from University of Catania, Italy on A Perspective on Passive Human Sensing with Bluetooth. The research identifies and discusses the factors and operating conditions that can result in varying accuracy.

The paper explains the advantages of Bluetooth over WiFi for passive human sensing. It also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of RFID, VLC, LoRa and LTE. The paper seeks to address the lack of search papers on considering Bluetooth as opposed to WiFi for detecting human presence.

The paper describes how human presence can influence a wireless signal and covers Bluetooth Direction Finding. It explains how Bluetooth is better suited for human detection because it is less subject to electromagnetic noise.

It’s mentioned how signals received on different Bluetooth different channels have different noise and attenuation characteristics:

“Another issue often highlighted in the literature is the impossibility of independently extracting the RSSI signal values from each advertising channel of the BLE beacons. The BLE beacons need to be modified at the hardware or firmware level in order to transmit on a certain preset channel and to allow the researcher to discriminate the variation in the signal due to the presence of a human body from other fading effects.”

What isn’t mentioned in the paper is that Bluetooth Direction Finding requires analysis of the IQ data rather than RSSI. This IQ data also varies depending on the Bluetooth channel. Direction finding receivers can (and must) independently extract and process the channel specific data.

Faraday Bags for Bluetooth

One of the most useful tools when deploying beacons is the Faraday Bag. A Faraday bag allows you purposely block beacons you haven’t yet placed so that they don’t affect testing. During development, it also allows you to simulate beacons or scanning devices going out of range without you even moving.

Faraday bags work by having a very thin gauze layer that block radio signals. Not all types of Faraday bag are the same. For BeaconZone Faraday bags, we had the manufacturer use two layers of gauze to block even the strongest Bluetooth beacons.

For any Faraday bag, the radio signal can leak through any larger holes in the gauze. This includes the opening that should be folded over and attached onto itself using the hook and loop fastening.

Faraday Bags

Detecting Moving Beacons

There’s a new question at GrindSkills on Can Bluetooth beacon be detected while it’s in motion? This deals with similar issues to our previous post on Using Bluetooth to Measure Travel Time.

Both scenarios don’t consider the scanning and advertising periods. Our previous post on Why Bluetooth LE Scanning Doesn’t Always See Devices (the First Time) explains the relationship between these timings.

In order to reliably detect moving beacons it’s necessary to scan more often and have smaller gaps between scanning. Also, if you have control over the advertising device, more frequent advertising will make detection more reliable.

BeaconZone Consultancy

Forest Modelling Using Beacons

Researchers from the University of Manouba, Tunisia have been looking into the analysis of individual forest trees to monitor the state of the forest. This is needed for forestry tasks such as characterisation, inventory, management of forest and fire behaviour modelling.

Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) derived methods were applied for individual tree detection (ITD) based on a canopy height model (CHM). A Bluetooth beacon was used to collect trees coordinates.

View iBeacons

Bluetooth Aiding Accessibility

We recently came across RightHear, an app that assists people with orientation difficulties or vision impairments. It provides navigation information in indoor and outdoor settings.

The app acts as a virtual directory for users, directing them through locations with audio cues (such as ‘reception is 20 feet ahead to the left’ or ‘exit is 50 feet ahead’). Users can point their phone in a specific direction to learn what’s in front of them.

For companies, the app improves accessibility compliance, aids corporate responsibility and improves a brand’s narrative regarding inclusion. It works using Bluetooth beacons that are picked up by the app. The app creates auditory descriptions and notifications. There’s also a dashboard for companies/admin to control and track the solution.

View Bluetooth Beacons

Beacons with Location-Based Games

We often go out to a local park to test the range of beacons. As we are regularly looking at our phones and moving about, people sometimes ask us if we are playing some sort of location-based game.

Location based games involve solving puzzles and finding clues via a location-enabled smartphone app. Examples include Ingress Prime, Minecraft Earth and Pokemon Go. While most only use GPS, beacons allow greater precision and use indoors. The user’s location and sometimes the location of other players is commonly shown on a map or plan. It’s also possible to use beacons with Augmented Reality (AR) to show the location of people or things on top of the camera image.

Location-based gaming isn’t restricted to pure gaming but can also be used to gamify other situations such as visitor spaces. The principles are the same except that simpler information is usually displayed, with clues and directions, rather than use from a gaming engine. Retailers such as Macy’s have also used gamification in retail.

View iBeacons

Using Bluetooth to Measure Travel Time

There’s recent research from Thailand on Evaluation of Bluetooth Detectors in Travel Time Estimation. The researchers looked into the feasibility of using detected Bluetooth devices to estimate travel time and assess the affect of vehicle speed on Bluetooth detection performance.

Bluetooth provides a compelling method because it’s already transmitting from smartphones, car stereo speakers, wireless headphones and other devices such that dedicated transmitters are not required. Bluetooth devices are also non-intrusive and more affordable compared to other types of traffic sensors and don’t suffer from low light and inclement weather as with the case with automatic license-plate recognition.

A 28 km toll section in Bangkok was used for the study. Bluetooth detectors and microwave radar devices, for comparison, were installed to collect traffic data. The data for 20-days, with 2 million Bluetooth trips, was processed in 5 ways to estimate the travel time.

The resulting Bluetooth trip data was compared with the traffic counts recorded by microwave sensors. For inbound traffic, the detection rates for the study area were in the range of 50–90 percent during the day and 20–50 percent during the night. Slower traffic during peak periods made it more likely for the Bluetooth detectors to detect MAC addresses.