Category: Android

iBeacon App Development Companies

There are a large number of offshore development companies currently spamming social media, claiming to do iBeacon development. We recommend you do your due dilligence before engaging development as many like to say ‘yes’ to anything and it’s often companies such as ours that have to pick up the pieces.

Here’s are some things to consider when looking for an iBeacon app developer:

  • Can they give examples of iBeacon apps they have written?
  • Can they give you references to past work who you can talk to?
  • Do they release development versions regularly so you can test and gauge progress? If everything is released at the end, it’s likely you are going to end up disappointed.
  • Who will actually be doing the development? There can be intermediaries in the development ecosystem that confuse and compound communications problems. Right from the start, you need to be talking direct with the person who will be doing the development.
  • Do they really understand you? Many aren’t native English speakers and if you are getting misunderstandings during initial engagement, this doesn’t bode well for the development.
  • Have they provided constructive comments on your proposed app rather than just saying ‘yes’? Developers should be able to improve on your ideas so as to get the best out of iOS and Android.
  • Getting iBeacon apps through Apple approval can be difficult. Can they give you examples why and the possible mitigations?

App development is an area where cheapest isn’t usually the best. Compromised development will cost you in the longer term through late or aborted development, tricky problems, significant end user support, poor app reviews and difficulty adapting the apps in the future for future phones and new features.

Beaconzone was founded by app developers in 2015 after we had previously created several iBeacon art gallery apps. We have since written many more iBeacon and Bluetooth LE apps on iOS and Android.
Read about beaconzone solutions

nRF Connect Features

Nordic, the manufacturer of the System on a Chip (SoC) in most beacons, has a new blog post on Five Things You Didn’t Know About Nordic’s Mobile Development Apps. The post mentions less visible features of nRF Connect on iOS and Android. For example, you can get a useful RSSI graph by dragging the screen towards the right from the centre:

nRF Connect is the main app we recommend for testing beacons. iOS recently received a completely new version. nRF Connect also has macros that can speed up testing.

Android Bluetooth LE Resources

If you are considering developing Bluetooth LE on Android, you should take a look at Stuart Kent’s Android Bluetooth Low Energy Resources on GitHub. He provides lots of links to introductions, videos, libraries, guides, questions on Stack Overflow and example app source code.

If you need more information take a look at the Android section of the BluetoothLE Wiki. If you need to rely on background processing read Don’t Kill My App.

Android 10 Asking for Location Permission

If you have upgraded to Android 10 then you will find you are asked whether particular apps, especially those using maps or Bluetooth, can use Location permission (all the time, only while using the app or Deny). Something like:

You will find that this screen appears, for each app using Location, at a seemingly random time. Why is this? Why do apps you haven’t just started suddenly ask for the permission? What are they doing? How should you answer?

The change of Android location permissions to include ‘only while using the app’ is part of Android 10. For app architectural purposes, some apps get location or Bluetooth scan in an Android Service that runs in background. This Service can be started and stopped by the Android OS according to whether the OS needs resources and also when an app is upgraded. The starting of the Service might cause it to get location or do an initial Bluetooth scan, as part of startup, even though the app isn’t going to use this information. These things used to be transparent but now have the knock on affect of causing the OS to ask for the first-time permission seemingly at a random time.

If, for example in the above BBC Weather app, you need the app to show the latest weather for a location on a widget or otherwise use location-related data in background then select ‘Allow all the time’. Otherwise select ‘Allow only while using the app’. Beware of selecting ‘Deny’ as it’s likely it might cause the app to malfunction in some way.

Our empirical experiences are that Android 10 background restrictions do actually noticeably improve battery life, unlike previous Android ‘Doze’ and App Standby restrictions that seemed to create pain and no gain.

Android 10 Bluetooth Scanning Not Seeing Beacons or Devices

A large number of Bluetooth LE apps don’t work on Android 10 because of a bug in permissions in Android 10 (API 29). This affects nearly all manufacturer apps used for setting up beacons or using Bluetooth LE devices. The only apps that will work are those that have very recently been developed and target Android 10.

Android 10 introduced the requirement to have the ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission when targeting (written for) Android 10. Older apps targeting previous versions of Android should not have been affected but, due to a bug, they no longer work.

App developers can make their app work by adding the permission. Note that the permission must also also be prompted for from the user using the request permission mechanism. Alternatively the user can set manually via Settings -> Apps & Notifications -> Your App Name -> Permissions.

If you are a user and need to use a particular app then you will need to use a device having an Android version prior to Android 10. Alternatively, use the iOS app version if possible.

This issue has been has been detected by us on build QP1A.190711.020 and QP1A.191005.007.A1 and is perhaps related to issue 136774949. We expect it to be fixed in the future via an Android OS update.

Completely New nRF Connect for iOS

As we have previously mentioned, nRF Connect is the the best app for detecting if a Bluetooth LE device such as a beacon is working. The Android version has always had more features than the iOS version but that is changing. nRF Connect for iOS has been completely re-written and now has a very pretty UI.

We still recommend using the Android rather than the iOS version because iOS apps can’t see Bluetooth MAC addresses due to some peculiar decisions made by people at Apple. Scanning also can’t see an iBeacon UUID, major and minor in the advertising. It’s more difficult to uniquely identify Bluetooth devices in apps such as nRF Connect on iOS than it is on Android.

EgiGeoZone Geofence for Android

EgiGeoZone Geofence is a useful app for Android with over 10,000 users that allows you set up triggering based on location. There’s also a Bluetooth version that allows triggering in the vincinity of iBeacons.

The app is also open source on GitHub. Note that the app doesn’t yet work with the Android 8.0 background changes. The author is hoping someone else will fork the code and keep the app alive.