iBeacon, Eddystone, Bluetooth, IoT sensor beacons, apps, platforms
We have the AB BLE Gateway in stock. This improves on the original AB Wireless Gateway in that it provides double the throughput, detecting 50 beacons/sec.
Gateways are the glue that makes beacons part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and enable real time positioning and sensing.
Read more about:
Beacon Proximity and Sensing for the Internet of Things (IoT)
We now stock the BlueUp BlueBeacon Sensor. This is one of the most capable sensor beacons we know of with up to 8 advertising slots. It detects temperature, humidity and air pressure. It also supports Quuppa and Eddystone GATT Service.
The two AA batteries (included) last 3.5 years with default settings.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mr Beacon has an interesting new interview with Sam Jha, Chief Business Officer of Alpha Ori. Alpha Ori work with the shipping industry that’s still lacking the productivity gains many other industries have experienced through the use of IT. While the interview talks about shipping, it’s equally applicable to all industries.
In the shipping industry, IoT can be used to measure ships’ systems. This can produce thousands of data points per second that can be analysed using ‘big data’ techniques. The key is to identify insights that have value in that they can impact the areas where there are large costs. An example is maintaining up time and using sensing to estimate the life remaining on machinery, detect when things are starting to fail and replace preventative maintenance with predictive and prescriptive maintenance. Better maintained ships can also have the side affect of reducing other costs. Smart ships have lower insurance risk profiles and can hence save insurance costs.
The key message is one of identifying areas where there are large costs and using IT to optimise those areas. In shipping or any industry this usually involves sensing on machinery and systems to maintain optimum up time. It also involves detecting when to perform in-time maintenance to get the maximum life from expensive machinery. Beacons, particularly sensor beacons, provide the sensing part and are especially suitable for areas that don’t have power, lack cabling or are difficult to monitor manually due to accessibility.
There’s an interesting new video by Mr Beacon on the state of IoT. It’s an interview with ex-Intel Aidoo Osei with insights on the business side of IoT.
Aidoo talks of IoT being a technology searching for a meaningful problem people are willing to pay to solve. The important part is ‘pay’, as many initiatives such as smart cities require a thorough understanding of how these things might be financed. Also, for many IoT technology providers, there’s a tension between providing open, inter-operable systems and wanting to own the stack.
Aidoo provides an upbeat view of beacons. He thinks beacons are simple at the moment because phones/apps are more capable. As beacons become more used as components of IoT systems, there’s an opportunity for them to be more complex.
While Aidoo didn’t mention this, one example of beacons becoming more complex is the use of mesh networking.
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?
Read about using Beacons in Industry and the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR)
There’s a recent paper by Gonzalo Cerruela García, Irene Luque Ruiz, and Miguel Ángel Gómez-Nieto of the University of Córdoba, Spain on State of the Art, Trends and Future of Bluetooth Low Energy, Near Field Communication and Visible Light Communication in the Development of Smart Cities (pdf)
The paper explains how technologies (NFC, BLE, VLC) will be important for the Internet of Things in smart cities and how they will need to be connected via LoRaWAN, Sigfox, Weightless, LTE, and 5G. With regard to Bluetooth LE they say:
Another challenge for the attention of BLE technology is the limited range problem; the range is directly dependent on Broadcasting Signal Power. An increase in signal power makes BLE devices less energy-efficient. Moreover it is necessary to improve accuracy in determining proximity to a BLE device.
The range problem will become less of an issue once Bluetooth 5 devices become available.