Author: Support

Beacon Settings Retention When There’s a Loss of Power

A beacon has many settings such as the mode (iBeacon, Eddystone), transmission (ids or URL), power and advertising period. These settings are set via the manufacture app. However, what happens if the beacon is switched off via a button on the side of the button? What happens if the battery is removed? What happens to the settings?

First of all, if you turn off a beacon via a side switch beacons don’t power down but instead go into a very low power sleep mode.

All beacons have a portion of non-volatile flash memory that can be used to save values even when the power is removed by taking out the battery or removing from a USB slot. This means for almost all beacons, removing the power doesn’t cause the beacon to lose its settings. We say ‘almost all’ because we have found one exception to be Sky beacons that while they retain settings when the side switch is pressed on/off, they don’t retain settings if the battery is removed. This is because the firmware (code) in the beacon isn’t saving settings to non-volatile memory.

One thing to be aware of is that the non-volatile memory can only be updated so many times before it stops working. The number of times is very large and isn’t of consequence unless you have your own app that is frequently programatically changing settings. However, for some specialist beacons, for example mesh beacons, internally saved data can and will change more often thus introducing the possibly that beacons can become ‘worn out’ if the software isn’t designed to reduce the frequency of changed saved data.

Beacon Waterproofing Insight

Some of the beacons we sell are waterproof. When most people think about waterproofing electronics they think about protection from splashes or submersion. However, there are some scenarios where waterproofing might not seem to be needed but is actually is required.

One such example is in vehicles. While the inside of a vehicle might seem dry, it can have long periods of high humidity. This can cause the metal parts of the beacon and/or the battery to rust leading to failure of the beacon. Waterproofing also keeps humidity out. So, also think about potential humidity when specifying your beacon.

Indianapolis Colts Lose First Round In Battle Over Beacon ‘Eavesdropping’ App

There’s an article on DigitalNewsDaily about the Indianapolis Colts where a federal judge has ruled that the basketball team must face a lawsuit alleging that the team’s mobile app eavesdropped on fans.

“The app activates phones’ microphones in order to listen to Lisnr’s beacons”

To be clear, these aren’t Bluetooth beacons. Instead, Lisnr uses beacons emitting audio to trigger events in an app:

“LISNR is an ultrasonic audio technology — a communication protocol that uses inaudible sound, called Smart Tones™, to transmit information.”

Unlike with Bluetooth beacons, this necessarily uses the smartphones’ microphone to detect the audio beacons. Had the Colts used Bluetooth Beacons, there would have been no issue over whether microphone listening was being used for nefarious purposes.

Bluetooth SIG Mesh Rationale

If you take a look at the recently announced Bluetooth SIG mesh, it’s described by three specifications with around 1000 pages! It took three years to create. So what’s the rationale that caused it to be so complex?

For some answers, take a look at Szymon Slupik’s personal blog. Szymon is the Chair Mesh Working Group at Bluetooth SIG and his posts give a fascinating insight into the thinking behind the Bluetooth SIG mesh.

Start with the post on Bluetooth Mesh – The Launch and then read about The Packet, Depth, Flexibility and Scalability.

You can also follow Szymon on Twitter.

Read more about Bluetooth mesh on our web site.

Catch Rodents with the Help of Beacons

There’s an interesting Video on YouTube by Marcus Rangell who has used a RuvviTag to get a notification when a mousetrap has been triggered:

Using a RuuviTag is probably over-engineering the solution. Any beacon that provides motion triggered broadcast would be suitable. Also, it’s simpler to use gateways to scan the beacons.

While this scenario might seem frivolous, the problem is real and some US companies already implement trap activation detection. There are many warehouses, food factories and food storage facilities that have rodent problems. The usual mouse and rat traps are ok but they need checking regularly as decaying rodents also aren’t desirable. Triggered traps also need re-arming as they are the ones most likely to catch more rodents. Doing the checking manually across many sites can be a full time job for many people. Trigger detection can be automated such that only triggered traps have to be visited and the resultant data can be used to automate the creation of simple reports of the most troublesome sites/areas.

One Beacon App – Many Uses

Many existing or new mobile apps can be made more immersive and hence improve retention through the use of beacons. Sometimes, app authors add beacon detection and suddenly realise their app is also useful to totally different usecases.

One such app is Tourist Chat which started out as a travel app to allow tourists to connect. The author recently started using the same app and server side to support exhibition events.  Many beacon apps are essentially the same. They detect beacons and match this up to information in a server-side CMS. The ‘use’ or scenario can be many things: for example travel, exhibitions, hotels, retail, galleries and museums.

If you are creating a beacon-driven app, take a moment to think how it might also be re-purposed for other types of user. You might find a new market and revenue stream with relatively little effort.

Bleah Linux Bluetooth Utility

There’s a new command line Python-based utility for Linux called Bleah that describes itself as a “BLE scanner for smart devices hacking”. Don’t let the ‘hacking’ part put you off – all it does is scan for devices and enumerate/use Bluetooth GATT Service much like the many apps for iOS and Android like Nordic nRF Connect. Nevertheless, it’s useful should you need to do these things from Linux rather than mobile apps.

If you use this utility (or mobile apps) you need to be aware that most Beacons are not connectable by default and most have password protected Bluetooth Services preventing you writing to them without having written the password to a specific Service. You will need to read the documentation for the beacon to determine how to make it connectable and to ascertain the default password.

Motorola Radios and iBeacons

Motorola manufacture the MOTOTRBO range of digital radios that can detect iBeacons.

Used together with the TRBOnet PLUS (pdf) control room software, the location of people with digital radios can be plotted onto maps:

Supported handsets currently include:

  • MOTOTRBO DP4000e Series
  • MOTOTRBO SL4000e Series
  • MOTOTRBO DP3441e
  • MOTOTRBO DP3661e

Motorola handsets work with any iBeacons. We recently supplied beacons to a power station for lone worker monitoring using TRBOnet PLUS. Buy from our wide range of iBeacons.

Are you an established 2-way radio company?
Contact us for advice on which beacons we have supplied for use with TRBOnet.

Beacons and The 4th Industrial Revolution

We previously wrote about how beacons are part of Industry 4.0 and how implementations need to achieve a return on investment. Industry 4.0 is also being called ‘The 4th Industrial Revolution’ (4IR).

Oracle and the EEF have an excellent free, recent, paper (registration NOT required) on The 4th Industrial Revolution: A Primer for Manufacturers. It concludes 4IR isn’t hype and should be taken seriously. Here’s how manufacturers themselves see 4IR:

Manufacturing is undergoing a transformation. The report says it’s all about data connectivity. However, the report falls short on explaining how data can be sensed and captured. Sensor beacons, gateways and beacon platforms such as our BeaconRTLS are one such solution that helps fill that gap.

Read more about beacons and the IoT