Author: Support

Faraday RF-Shield Bags Back in Stock

Our large Faraday Radio Frequency RF shield nylon bags are back in stock.

Faraday bags can be very useful during development when you want to bring beacons in and out of range or need to hide development beacons. They are also useful during setup when you want to shield uncomissioned beacons temporarily.

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These bags were originally designed for military, intelligence and police agencies to prevent seized devices from being remotely altered. They shield WiFi, Bluetooth and phone signals up to 70dBm. They can also be used with phones and tablets for personal anti-radiation health reasons, preventing tracking or avoiding communication when you don’t want to be interrupted.

Bluetooth Beacons in Factories, IoT and Industry 4.0

McKinsey has a useful chart where they assess the potential impact of the IoT by segment:

It can be seen that ‘Factory’ has the greatest potential. This links with ‘Industry 4.0‘, the current trend for more automation and data exchange in manufacturing with the aim of significantly improving efficiency. But what does this mean in practice and what are challenges? Can these be solved with Bluetooth beacons?

We have learnt that while just about every industry client has different needs, all solutions involve context and location. Context is sensing, while location is where the sensing occurs.

Requirements we have experienced range from being able to pick up documents for particular machinery through to actual sensing such as detecting vibration is within (safety) bounds for ‘aggressive’ equipment. We have also seen the requirement for matching workers with workstations and jobs as well as the tracking of workers, tools, pallets, parts and fabrications. There’s also the need for real-time overviews for short term safety and efficiency management, the same longer term data also being used for process improvement and planning.

So why beacons?

  1. Low power. Sensors need to have a long life because replacing them or their batteries requires human effort and they are sometimes placed in normally inaccessible and dangerous areas. Beacons are ideal for this because some have up to 5+ years battery life and others can be permanently powered.
  2. Sensing. Various off the shelf sensor beacons are available. Custom variants are possible to sense industry specific metrics.
  3. Connectivity. Several gateways are available to connect to WiFi. Alternatively, it’s possible to use smartphones or small single board computers as gateways. There’s a trend for ‘Fog’ or ‘Edge’ gateways that only send pertinent data on to the cloud and can provide direct alerts quicker than being dependent on the latency of the cloud.
  4. Cloud management. Software such as our BeaconRTLS platform allows for the management and visualisation of sensors.
  5. Security. Beacon devices are password protected and the gateway to cloud communication is protected using standard Internet protocols.
  6. IoT needs to be made easy. This is BeaconZone’s role. As we mentioned, with the IoT every client has different needs. We bring together ready-made hardware and software components so that they can be dovetailed to create solutions.

Read about using Beacons in Industry and the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR)

Read about BluetoothLocationEngine™

Choosing an iBeacon Developer

We are sometimes approached by companies after their initial choice of developer has let them down. The usual pattern is failure to meet deadlines after which the developer gives excuses why they can’t continue on the project. iBeacon projects introduce extra complexities that, if not experienced previously, can slow or stall projects. In the worst of cases this can cause developers to drop out wasting valuable time and in some cases loss of money that can’t be recovered.

A resultant problem is that it’s difficult to take on others’ code. The only time this is usually possible is when the developer has left for a good reason and is still around for a short time to answer questions. Noone wants to take on abandoned code as as it’s usually poorly implemented and documented.

Organisations are generally too casual about how and who they take on for development, concentrating on cost and speed at the expense of risk. Do some checking so you reduce some of the risks.

Ask who (yes a person, not a company) will be actually doing the work. How long have they been with the company? Try to assess whether they are likely to see your project through to the end. Try to get a reference for work done by the person. Ask the reference about quality and whether the work was completed on time. The better developers provide weekly or even daily builds for you to review. This allows you to evaluate progress and provide feedback. Think about how much pre-sales feedback has been received. For most projects, developers ask things and provide initial advice. If it’s all ‘can do’ or ‘yes’ then suspect something is amiss.

Successful development is a long term relationship and a random approach to choosing one is more likely to land you in trouble. It’s sometimes the case that there’s more work to be done on amendments, enhancements, solving end-user problems and creating variants than on the original development. Think longer term.

Read about our development services.

Using Beacons in Retail

We get many queries from retailers asking how to use beacons. As we have previously written, Beacons aren’t much good for unsolicated marketing (nor are Eddystone beacons) and instead you need to think about offering useful information on top of which you can then provide offers.

There’s a Twitter post by Joaquim Bretcha today that shows how Tesco Lotus use iBeacons in Thailand:

You can see that their app does a lot more than push offers. It gently prompts the user at the appropriate times through notifications, in-app messages and sms messages. The aim is to have “Constant exposure to Tesco media”, not push offers.

Adding Beacon Functionalty

Since beacons became available there has been an emphasis on new companies creating new systems that use beacons. Now that beacons are maturing we are starting to see existing apps and systems add beacon-triggered functionality.

A very recent example is the FileMaker platform that has added iBeacon geofencing. Two other examples are car mileage logging apps that turn on/off in response to beacons and the Motorola MOTOTRBO range of two-way radios that include beacon detection so that they can support indoor positioning.

These scenarios are very different and therein lies the opportunity. Many existing systems, apps, services and products can be extended to provide for features based on location. Instead of looking for new things, that might experience difficulty gaining traction, think about what you (or your partners) already have and work out if beacons can provide added value.

Car Trip Logging Using iBeacons

We recently came a cross driversnote, an app for iOS and Android that keeps car trip logs. While the app obviously uses GPS for logging routes, an iBeacon can also be used to cause the app to start logging when you get in your car.

One tip for users of car trip apps is to make sure you use a waterproof beacon. The humidity and dampness in cars has been known to cause beacon batteries and battery contacts to corrode over time.

Cow Positioning with iBeacon Technology

There’s a video at YouTube on the installation of Raspberry Pi based beacon detectors in a cow shed to detect the position of cows.

Beacon detectors

Beacon on a cow

Beacons can, in fact, do a lot more than just determine location. For example, it’s possible to track extra things such as temperature, humidity and unexpected movement. In the cow shed case, hall effect beacon sensors can be put on gates to alert when gates are open/closed when they shouldn’t be. The location data can be used to provide geofencing to alert when things, people or animals enter or leave specific areas.

Read more about Real-Time Locating Systems (RTLS) using beacons.

Beacons in Times Square

If you are thinking about using beacons for hospitality/events then you might like to take a look at Mr Beacon’s latest video interview with Kyle Wright from The Shubert Organization. They are the largest theatre owner on Broadway and have beacons covering their theatres and 80% of Times Square.

Their beacons require apps and they have been experimenting with partnering with 3rd party apps from travel, airline and credit card companies as well as having their own app. Initially, their own app was a challenge because few people had spare time to download when they arrive at a theatre. However, covering such a large number of venues and Time Square, with the large footfall, has made it easier to get their beacon detection into the 3rd party apps.

This is an interesting insight in that, if you control a compelling destination, you don’t necessarily need your own app but might have the clout to piggy back another organisation’s app that’s more likely to be on peoples’ phones.

Making Sense of Indoor Location

There’s a recent research paper on Indexing for Moving Objects in Multi-Floor Indoor Spaces That Supports Complex Semantic Queries. It says humans spend 87% of their time in indoor spaces such as private residences and office buildings and it’s becoming more important to be able to derive meaning from indoor location.

The paper explains how outdoor moving object management technology, which is very mature, cannot be applied to indoor spaces. Instead you need software that not only understands floors but also multi-floors and inter-floor (elevators and stairs) cells. The paper describes an index that can store indoor moving objects in multi-floor indoor spaces that can support 3D spatial queries.

Happy Bubbles for Home Automation

If you are interested in using beacons in home automation, it’s worth looking at Happy Bubbles. It’s hardware and a server that allows you to automate things happening in response to beacons being detected.

The concept is very similar to using a gateway with our generic beacons. In fact, the Happy Bubble ethos is similar to our own:

“Happy Bubbles is a different kind of IoT company. The happiest bubbles are the ones you create for yourself, not ones that others force you into. We believe that the products you purchase are your own and should be accountable to you, not the company that made them. … They are designed to run on your own network and not rely on other people’s ‘cloud’ services unless you want them to. Know exactly what you’re getting and what it’s doing on your network.”