iBeacon, Eddystone, Bluetooth, IoT sensor beacons, apps, platforms
There’s an interesting recent post at twocanoes on how beacons can be used to detect which room a person is in, to then run the correct AR interaction:
“While ARKit is aware of the geometry of the room the phone is in, it doesn’t know what room it is in”
Beacons solve this problem. In fact, beacons are a useful addition to many apps. The more interesting usecases are often an ancillary use rather than the main use of an app or service.
As mentioned yesterday, in the Mr Beacon interview with Ajay Malik, beacon positioning and sensor data will be increasingly used as input for AI machine learning (ML). Beacons are a great way of providing the large amounts of data required of ML.
At BeaconZone, we have recently started using beacon data in machine learning. This has been a natural progression of use of our BeaconRTLS to collect large data sets. We have a new subsidiary Sensor Cognition that provides services to extract and use intelligence from sensor data. Unlike most other ML companies, we aren’t interested in computer vision, speech and language recognition, even though the first two could be inferred to be from sensor data. Instead, we specialise in extracting intelligence from industry time series position and sensor data.
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Mr Beacon has a new interview with Ajay Malik, the author of RTLS for Dummies.
It starts with a discussion that tries to define what’s a Real Time Location System (RTLS) in terms of the technologies that can be used. Ajay explains how he ended up working with RTLS and writing the book.
There’s discussion on business drivers and how RTLS relates to machine to machine (M2M) and IoT. Usecases mentioned include promotional marketing, asset tracking and autonomous navigation. There’s a useful explanation of trilateration, triangulation, angle of arrival, time of arrival and time distance of arrival.
Ajay sees asset tracking as currently the most important application. However, going forward, RTLS will feed more into AI to provide context.
Got lots of beacons around and having trouble isolating your particular test beacon? While some beacons can be physically turned off, many others can only be set to stop advertising via changing their settings. Moving between tests can be time consuming. A solution is to use a faraday bag to hide beacons you want to ignore for now. The bag is also useful for forcing iBeacons to go out of range (for about 30 secs) so they will trigger again on iOS.
We stock a small and large version.
The bag has an internal wire mesh that keeps Bluetooth signals inside the bag. One thing to beware of is you need to keep the bag closed at the top to stop signals escaping. Fold over the top and close the bag against itself along the line of the velcro.
BeaconZone founder, Simon Judge has a new article on LinkedIn on Discovering The Value of Data.
Take a fresh look at the data created by beacons and how this can lead to insights generated via AI machine learning.
Mouser has a free ezine called ‘Methods’ (pdf) that has in-depth articles on the latest advances in Bluetooth.
Steven Hegenderfer, Director of Developer Programs at Bluetooth SIG explains how Bluetooth 5 will enable design engineers to pioneer innovative solutions. Steven Keeping shows how Bluetooth has evolved and Barry Manz explains Bluetooth Mesh Networking and beacons.
Read more about Bluetooth mesh on our web site.
Beacons are small computers with a complete System on a Chip (SoC). There are four main companies that manufacturer SoCs: TI, Dialog, NXP and Nordic. Nordic is the most popular SoC for use in beacons, mainly because of the lower (tool) license cost and ease for beacon manufacturers developing the software (actually called firmware) that runs in the beacons.
Nordic has a new free Wireless Quarter Magazine that showcases uses of Nordic SoCs in many types of device, not just beacons.
The magazine also has articles on how Nordic is the first to launch a Bluetooth mesh Software Development Kit, how Mesh strengthens Bluetooth wireless’ IoT credentials and explains Bluetooth 5’s advertising extensions. The article says of Bluetooth 5’s advertising extensions:
“Advertising extensions, periodic advertisements, and connectionless broadcast will have a major impact on beacons”
However, the article says:
“This won’t happen overnight because few current smartphones incorporate Bluetooth 5, but expect beacons to proliferate over the next several years as new smartphones are rolled out”
Our Beaconzone Ltd founder, Simon Judge has a new article on LinkedIn on IoT Digital Twins, Sensing and Bluetooth Sensors.
Learn about Digital Twins and how Bluetooth sensor beacons can be used to provide data to drive models of systems, mirroring real-time status to improve operational efficiency.
Mr Beacon has a new video interview with Dieter Fenkart-Fröschlt, COO of the San Diego Museum of Art. The video explains why the San Diego Museum of Art adopted apps and beacons and explains some of the challenges they have faced.
The museum has about 360,000 visitors per year, 18,000 works of art with 700 to 800 works of art on display at any one time. Apps and beacons became part of their strategic planning to change how people interact with the museum and bring enquiry based learning, more typical of natural history and science museums, to an art museum.
Apps and beacons are the solution to delivering more content than can be shown on walls. They provide the stories behind the art. While the initial aim was to engage more younger audiences, it turned out the apps are used by all ages. It’s interesting that people have “fallen in love” with the museum experience, not just the art itself.
One of the largest lessons learned was that “build it they will come” doesn’t apply. Rollout needed to be holistic. Frontline staff had to be trained and visitors reminded that the app is free and part of their admission fee. There’s also marketing at conferences, events, on business cards and obviously next to the artwork itself.
One of the incidental yet profound gains had been insights through data. The museum now knows how long people spend at the museum and at each exhibit. They know the most liked and most viewed art that helps work out what kinds of art are popular (or not!). This feeds into making the museum more popular through people returning, again something that can now be measured.
The museum has about 120 beacons and the functionality of the app changes depending on whether the user is in the museum or not. Visitors can access related videos, introductions to artists and other objects in the museum related to given art. The app also displays images, for example showing how the art has changed, through conservation, over time. There are also app scavenger hunts for kids.
The main initial challenges were physical : How to fix the beacons to to walls and blend them into the colour of the wall.
View the Video to discover more
BeaconZone’s very first beacon apps were related to tagging artwork at the Folkstone Triennial, Frieze London, Saatchi Gallery and the Fine Art Society . The Mr beacon video doesn’t mention any of the technical challenges of using beacons in visitor spaces. For example, there can be problems relying on connectivity indoors that requires solutions such as intelligent caching. Care also has to be taken to prevent excessive triggering, something that becomes more complex when adjacent beacons transmission overlap. If you need more help, consider a Feasibility Study.
If you are sending data from Bluetooth WiFi Gateways via MQTT then you might want to look at using Apache NiFi on the server to get data into your systems. Apache NiFi is:
“An easy to use, powerful, and reliable system to process and distribute data”
It has over 135 different processors to easily consume data and send it on to other systems.
NiFi has processors to Get and Put data to an MQTT broker. An example of re-publishing can be found at hortonworks.com.
NiFi provides a web-based user interface to manage dataflows in real time. The project was originally open-sourced by the United States National Security Agency (NSA).