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IoT Projects with Bluetooth Low Energy

Our article on Beacon Proximity and Sensing for the Internet of Things (IoT) provides short summary how to use Bluetooth for IoT.

If you need a more rigorous description take a look at the book IoT Projects with Bluetooth Low Energy. It covers the fundamental aspects of Bluetooth Low Energy scanning, services, and characteristics. It goes on to describe examples of how to monitor health data, perform indoor navigation and use the Raspberry Pi for Bluetooth solutions. The book’s code is also available on GitHub.

View Sensor Beacons

ESP32 iBeacon Advertising

There’s recent example code for the M5StickC, usable on almost any ESP32 device, that shows how to advertise iBeacon. The nice thing about this example is that it also shows the iBeacon parameters on the OLED display.

While adding iBeacon advertising to an ESP32 project can make sense, it’s often not the best choice if you only want advertising functionality. Stand alone beacons are more physically robust, use much less power and settings are configurable via ready-made apps rather than fixed in code.

Bluetooth Buttons for Lone Worker and SOS

Some beacons can be used to detect a button press. This is useful for lone worker, SOS or paging type applications. There are two main mechanisms:

Keypress Shown in Advertising

Depending on the beacon, this can be setup either to only advertise when the key is pressed (button triggered) or advertising all the time and the advertising changes. The former is better for longer battery life while the latter is better when you need to continuously know the beacon is working.

Advertising can be detected:

  • In apps using standard Apple and Android Bluetooth APIs
  • On single board computers such as Raspberry Pi
  • Using Bluetooth to WiFi/Ethernet gateways that send the advertising to a server
  • On Macs and PCs using built in Bluetooth (on laptops) or using a Bluetooth dongle
  • On any devices that have a USB connection, using a scanning dongle

Keypress Detected via a GATT Connection

A few beacons allow a keypress to be notified to a connected application. Apps on iOS and Android, applications on single board computers and desktops/laptops can connect to a Bluetooth Service Characteristic to be notified when there’s a key press. Connection suspends advertising and prevents the button device from being seen/connected to from other devices.

Beacons

Beacons via
Advertising 		GATT
Connection 		Notes
iBS01, iBS04, iBS01G, iBS01H, iBS01RG,iBS01T, iBS03G, iBS03RG, iBS03TYesNoButton press is in the advertising data.
iBS02M2YesNoCan connect your own button.
M52 Plus, M52_SA Plus, M52-PA, U1, UL1 ThinYesNoButton triggered broadcast.
S1, i7, D15N, E2, B10, P1 Plus, B7YesNoSet any of the advertising types to trigger on a button double or triple press
F6 Tracker BeaconNoYesvia SDK
MWL01YesNoAoA beacon. Button press is in the advertising data.
STiE10, STiE9NoYesLong pressing OFF does not cause the beacon to turn off but instead puts the beacon into ‘SOS’ mode where the configured advertising is stopped and the ‘SOS’ can be detected in the configuration app or your custom app and the ‘SOS’ state cancelled.
W2-P5202D3YesNoButton triggered advertising.
FSC-BP103YesNoAdvertises more often.
F1, B1 SOS Button, B2 Button, W7, K11, K21, K3YesNoAdvertises differently when button pressed.

We offer consultancy if you need more project specific advice.

How Many Connections Can an iBeacon Support?

We sometimes get asked how many connections an iBeacon can support? The answer is ‘1’ but it’s often the right answer to the wrong intended question. The intended question is usually “How many receivers can see a beacon?”

Beacons don’t usually connect. They just advertise and can be seen by an infinite number of receivers that include phones, gateways or single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi.

The receivers only usually connect once, during setup via an app, to set the initial iBeacon parameters. When connected, the beacon doesn’t advertise which prevents extra receivers from connecting. Once set up, the app disconnects and the beacon starts advertising again.

Setting Up Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE

Many gadgets and IoT devices need to connect to the Internet via WiFi. The problem is getting the WiFi credentials to the device when it isn’t connected yet. It’s a ‘chicken and egg‘ situation in that you need to connect to the device in order to set the WiFi settings but you can’t connect because you aren’t WiFi connected.

The usual, but complex, way to solve this is for the device itself to initially act as a WiFi router in ‘station mode’ while the user on a phone, laptop or desktop connects and uses a web interface to set the WiFi settings and then reboot. After rebooting, it’s not in station mode and instead connects to the assigned access point. The assigned local network DHCP IP address isn’t known to the user so they have to examine router settings or use some other contrived method to work out the URL to further administer the device.

None of this is simple for most users so alternative mechanisms are preferable. We previously mentioned Android WiFi Direct via Bluetooth and now there’s a new open standard, Improv, for setting up Wi-Fi via Bluetooth LE.

For Improv, the client (web or mobile) application sends the Wi-Fi credentials to the gadget via a defined Bluetooth LE Service (00467768-6228-2272-4663-277478268000). The device connects to the WiFi and returns a URL on the network that can be used to further administer the device.

How it works

Under the hood, a Bluetooth Characteristic is used to send a RPC Command to set up the Wi-Fi settings.

The code area of the Improv site has an SDK for JavaScript using Web Bluetooth and an SDK for Android. There’s also a device side library for ESP32 devices.

Capacitor Plugin for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)

There’s a new Capacitor plugin for Bluetooth LE. Capacitor is new way to build web apps. Capacitor’s native plugin APIs allow easy access to common functionality, such as Bluetooth, across multiple platforms.

The plugin supports the web, Android and iOS. It allows scanning, GATT connecting, reading, writing and notifications. The source code is available on GitHub.

New M52 Variants in Stock

We have some new variants of the Meeblue M52 available.

  • The M52-PIR is a sensor beacon with built in passive infrared (PIR) sensor. It can be used to detect room occupancy.
  • The M52-PA is a long range version of the M52 Plus. It uses an extra Bluetooth output amplifier to achieve a range up up to 170m.
  • The M52-SA Plus Waterproof is an IP68 version of the M52-SA Plus sensor beacon providing temperature, humidity (SHT20) and acceleration (LIS3DHTR) sensors. The humidity sensor obviously isn’t useful when the beacon is waterproof.

View MeeBlue Beacons

View Sensor Beacons

View Using Bluetooth Wireless Sensors

Mr Beacon Podcast with Minew

There’s a new Mr Beacon podcast with Eason Huang of Minew. It describes how Minew focus mainly on hardware rather than full solutions and how they provide re-branded hardware for many platforms and beacon providers. Steve Statler (Mr Beacon) provides the insight that many of those platforms don’t really want to sell hardware and they are often focussing on software their customers might not necessarily want.

The conversation turns to the growth and challenges of IoT. The main challenges are lack of clarity of return on investiment (ROI), proof of concepts (POC) taking too long and end results not being scalable. Eason identifies that better preparation is required before starting. Steve suggests projects should initially bring in consultants to provide expert and neutral advice.

The podcast resonates with what we do at Beaconzone. We set up Beaconzone because we identified the reliance on subscription-based cloud platforms and beacons locked to platforms was limiting the available information, products and solutions. We set up BeaconZone in 2015 to provide for standalone solutions, using original manufacture beacons, not locked to subscriptions. We use and stock Minew and tens of other manufacturers’ beacons and gateways.

The issues of IoT projects also resonates with what we have seen through providing consultancy. Too many people come to us, too late, with projects that shouldn’t have been started because they had obvious technical limitations or have been developed in a direction that makes them technically or financially non-viable. A small amount of expert advice, early on, can make a huge difference and reduce risk.

Even when organisations know they should seek initial help and contact us, we sometimes find they are reticent about investing what is a relatively small amount of money compared to a failed POC cost. The reason is that these organisations have no experience of using Bluetooth for IoT so don’t know the unknown unknowns. Everything looks feasible until they are deep into the POC. It’s for these situations that we also offer quick, low priced Micro Consultancy.