Author: Support

Proof of Concept for Beacon Projects

It’s easy to buy into an idea and commit significant resources only to find very late on that a project is overly difficult or impossible to implement. We see too many companies only come to us after they have gone a long way down a particular road only to discover they made a big mistake early on. It might be, for example, they have heavily committed to the wrong beacon, wrong platform or have assumed something on one of the mobile platforms. They didn’t do their research. Often we can help them get on the right track but sometimes not.

We always recommend organisations research upfront. Test risky areas. Create a low cost proof of concept exercising risky areas. A proof of concept is the implementation of a small subset of the whole system to prove implementing the whole thing is possible. Good candidates for functionality for proof of concepts are specific usecases, scenarios or user stories. Choose specific usecases to exercise what you think might be the most difficult or unknown parts of the system.

Proof of concepts provide a feel for the development effort that will be required to develop the complete system thus giving an indication of the project’s cost and the financial viability of the project.

It’s also possible to create proof of concepts that include business goals. Think ‘proof of value’ rather than ‘proof of concept’. Proving a project has value to stakeholders can help unlock realistic funding for development of the complete project.

Read about consultancy

Read about feasibility studies

Bluetooth Positioning on Ships

There’s new research from College of Information Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, China on BSSH: Bluetooth Indoor Positioning Strategy for Ship Cabin Based on Hierarchical Area.

The locating and monitoring of ship crew is an important part of ship safety when it comes to adherence to duty regulations. The paper shows how Bluetooth works within the complex electromagnetic and spatial structure of a ship.

The research proposes a BSSH positioning system using fingerprinting that divides the ship up into hierarchical areas.

The BSSH system eliminates the affect of distant beacons on the location results thus reducing the computational effort and improving accuracy.

The system demonstrated better results than a traditional KNN positioning algorithm. It had higher positioning accuracy, better stability and an accuracy rate of more than 80%.

View iBeacons

Bluetooth Market Update

The Bluetooth SIG, who manage the Bluetooth specifications, have a new market update that provides information on the Bluetooth ecosystem. The most interesting and pertinent segment for our customers is location services:

Location service device shipments are expected to have 25% compound annual growth over the next five years according to ABI Research:

Commercial RTLS are being driven by recent inventory and logistic challenges:

‘Retail and Services’ at 62% is surprising as we would have expected ‘Warehouse and Logistics’ to be the larger segment.

Read about BeaconRTLS™

Using Beacons in Zoos

Marwell Zoo has a new app, with support for beacons, that allows visitors to plan their day, locate animals and stay informed about the zoo’s latest news.

The app provides an interactive map and contextual messages to the 140-acre park’s 500,000 visitors a year. The app uses the attractions.io platform who have an article on how to add value to a visitors’ experiences through the use of contextual messages and having a better understanding of guests.

Read about Beacons in Visitor Spaces

View iBeacons

Processing iBeacon RSSI Using AI Machine Learning

There’s new research from China on Regional Double-Layer, High-Precision Indoor Positioning System Based on iBeacon Network.

The project used extended Gaussian filtering to delete and filter significant abnormal data values caused by multipath radio noise indoors. A deep neural network was also used to fingerprint data.

The system resulted in a maximum error positional error of only 1.02m.

Bluetooth for Locating

The Bluetooth SIG, the organisation that produces Bluetooth standards, has a recent post The Myths & Facts About Bluetooth Technology as a Positioning Radio. It talks about the location services in general and how they have evolved over time. It explains how Bluetooth helps solve key enterprise pain points to save tens to hundreds of billions of dollars globally through enhanced operational efficiencies, increased worker safety, and loss prevention.

In manufacturing facilities, billions of dollars are lost through unplanned downtime thanks to being unable to locate assets, tools, and equipment. In warehouses, RTLS can help automate the tracking of assets, such as pallets, which is becoming more essential with the ever-increasing size, complexity, and amount of assets stored

Despite the gains thus far, this only represents as small proportion of the opportunity because only a very small percentage of the potential addressable market in the enterprise is using RTLS.

The article continues with a summary of the myths we covered in a previous post.

ABI Research expects that will be a 2.5x increase in total Bluetooth RTLS deployments over the next five years, with the fastest growing segments being healthcare, warehouse and logistics, manufacturing and smart building.

Increases in Prices

The semiconductor shortage has caused beacon and gateway prices to increase, on average, by about 10%. We are now seeing prices increase even further. The resurgence of the Covid pandemic in China and lockdown of cities is now squeezing production and transportation capacity. We have already experienced some ridiculously large manufacturer transportation charges.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has halted half the World’s supply of Neon, used for semiconductor manufacture, so it’s expected there will also be further semiconductor price rises and maybe even shortages of components.

At Beaconzone we only increase prices when we have to re-stock at a higher price. If you are starting a new project, we recommend you purchase as soon as possible to lock-in costs.

Using iBeacon for Team Management

There’s useful research by Sindhumol S of Cochin University of Science and Technology, India on Implementation and Analysis of a Smart Team Management System using iOS Devices as iBeacon.

The system provides location-based task monitoring and presence detection. Task details and announcements are available when a team member enters the range of an iBeacon broadcast. The system also provides typical project management facilities such as task allocation, notification, instant chat, status reports and employee logs.

From a technical perspective, the paper describes setting the beacon measure power, the affect of distance change on accuracy and the change in accuracy/RSSI depending on obstacle blocking.

View iBeacons

Finding the Nearest Beacon

There’s new research from Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, Slovenia on Improved Bluetooth Low Energy Sensor Detection for Indoor Localization Services.

While there has been lots of research into server-side processing to improve location accuracy, this research instead looks into improving accuracy locally, in terms of finding the nearest beacon. This kind of processing is often needed where smartphone apps provide users with contextual information based on their location, for example, in museums.

It’s not possible to use the raw received signal strength (RSSI) because it changes frequently due to changes in blocking and reflection in a room. Any errors in determining the correct transmitter can cause errors in displaying relevant information which, in turn, leads to a poor visitor user experience.

The study involved use of iBeacons detected by Android smartphones, both in a controlled room with three obstacles and a real-world setting Expo Museum.

The proposed algorithm stabilised the RSSI by considering previous measurements to filter out sudden fluctuation of the RSSI signal or the rapid movement of the mobile device. The smartphone’s accelerometer was also used dynamically change the scan interval based on the user’s movement.

In the controlled room, the proposed algorithm had a 14.29% better success rate than a standard algorithm using the raw RSSI values. It performed particularly (20%) better in spaces having medium or high density of physical obstacles. It also performed better in the real-world Expo environment with a success rate of 95% compared to 87% with a standard algorithm.

Inventory Management vs Asset Tracking Using RTLS

Real Time Locating Systems (RTLS) can be used for both inventory management and asset tracking. Here, we explore the differences between inventory and assets and the respective benefits of using a RTLS.

Inventory is stock, parts, materials and products that move through the company while assets are equipment, fixtures and furniture the company needs to do work. Inventory tends to be sold quickly to customers and leave the company while assets tend to be be kept longer term. It’s not just companies that have inventory and stock. Organisations such as government and health agencies consume rather than sell inventory and use assets to provide services.

While there are many systems that can be used to track the quantities of inventory and assets, very few track location. Knowing you have something but not knowing where it is leads to significant inefficiencies, especially in large organisations.

Managing both inventory, assets levels and location is important to avoid shortages and the need to over-stock so as to mitigate not being able to find items. In some cases items can spoil, due to expiry dates, which makes locating them more time sensitive. RTLS provides an automatic real-time view of inventory and assets so that quantities are known when items get stolen, thrown away or otherwise leave the site.

Inventory management provides better accuracy as it’s known what is in stock so the correct quantity can be ordered to meet anticipated demand. It makes it less likely products will be oversold, when not in stock, preventing end-customer disappointment. Having optimal stock saves money. Excess stock costs money until sold that can include overheads such as storage, handling fees and insurance. Excess standing stock is also is also presents the risk of loss by theft, obsolescence and unexpected damage. A better, real-time view of stock allows demand to be analysed and optimised. Having the correct stock ultimately keeps end-customers loyal due to a better customer experience.

Asset management ensures that assets don’t have to be over-purchased to compensate for inefficiencies in finding items. Knowing you have item(s) prevents unnecessary duplicate purchases. As the RTLS is real-time there’s no need for manual audits. The automatic auditing of assets also highlights items that have become lost or stolen. Knowing where assets are ultimately reduces labour costs because employees spend less time searching.

Read about BeaconRTLS