Gartner has a recent update to their research of hype cycles that takes into account disruption caused by the Covid pandemic.
Five emerging trends have been identified:
Social Distancing Technologies
Composable Enterprise
AI-Assisted Design
Differential Privacy
Biodegradable Sensors
Social distancing technologies, related to the COVID-19 pandemic, are taking the fast track through the Hype Cycle and have high impact. Technologies rarely enter the Hype Cycle at the point where social distancing technologies has entered it
Wearable devices provide more reliable performance than smartphone apps because smartphones’ transmit and receive capabilities vary considerably across types of device. Using defined, known wristbands or lanyard devices eliminate the variances.
The use of location in museums allows personalised tour guidance and on-demand exhibit information to be provided. Location also allows analysis of visitor flows to better design spaces through the identification of choke points and redundant areas.
The system had visitors emit Eddystone beacon advertising received by ESP32-based devices acting as gateways to a server.
The research is novel in that it uses AI machine learning on the received signal strength (RSSI) to infer location. This helps overcome the problems of variable signal strength experienced in indoor locations due to reflections and obstacles. It also prevents the need for fingerprinting the entire area which is time consuming and fails when the physical situation changes.
The method achieved accuracy of the order of 2m and this improved to 1m with the use of more receivers.
There’s a new virtual Bluetooth Developer Meetup arranged for 15th October 2020. The first event will include talks from experienced Bluetooth developers from Google, Samsung, Foundries.IO and Bluetooth SIG.
It’s interesting how many of our clients come to us with a problem to solve and in talking through possible solutions they often suddenly have the thought, ‘That’s IoT isn’t it?’. They weren’t looking for an IoT or Industry 4.0 solution but they got there by a different route. Indeed, it’s always best to start by solving problems rather than trying to fit technology into existing processes.
So what are the typical problems in factories? While companies usually have systems to take orders and invoice for them, what goes on in between is often a manual paper process. Knowing where an order is physically and hence how far it has been completed often requires lots of ringing round. Similarly, there are usually problems finding parts for jobs. Parts arrive in boxes or in pallets and are stored somewhere pending jobs. Finding the right pallet or box on a large site can be a challenge. It might be in storage, already on the factory floor somewhere or in transit between areas. Sometimes, delicate parts might be left in the wrong places and spoil due to excess humidity or in some cases incorrect temperature. Expensive tools and equipment tends to be shared between work areas and this can also get mislaid, lost or stolen.
All these problems cause delays in production, reduced productivity, incur penalties or future lost orders due to delayed work and cause employee frustration.
The solution is to better track jobs, parts, sub-assemblies and shared valuable tools so that they can be located on factory plans. This tracking needs to be continuous and real-time because merely scanning things in/out using barcodes is open to human error and location is otherwise only as good as the last scan. Historical data shows where things have been in the past. Analysis of this data allows blockages to be identified so that the process as a whole can be refined to improve efficiency and production.
The result is reduced downtime, less time re-ordering or re-making things that have been lost, optimum productivity and better use of skilled staff doing their job rather than searching for things.
We recently came across a library ‘iBeacon scanner android’ for Android that allows you to scan for iBeacon and receive notifications when one or more specific beacons enter or exist range. The source code is on GitHub.
The key thing about this research is that it uses iOS rather than a beacon to advertise iBeacon. The system allows the entire team to determine the location of other members, perform location based tasks, receive announcements and communicate via instant chat.
iBeacon Team Management Screens
The paper contains some useful analysis of accuracy of distance measurement on distance, interference, measured power and obstructions:
Effect of iBeacon distance accuracy with obstructions
Effect of iBeacon distance accuracy with presence of another iBeacon
Effect of measured power variation on proximity and accuracy
Effect of obstructing objects on RSSI and Accuracy
On iOS it’s only possible to advertise iBeacon if the app is in foreground:
The major limitation of the proposed app is battery drainage while keeping the app active all the time in the foreground
A more practical system would have been implemented by having the users carry a separate wearable beacon. This would have allowed presence to be detected when the app isn’t in foreground and there wouldn’t have been a problem with excessive iOS battery use.
Current smart parking systems are very expensive as they rely on image recognition and wireless magnetometers. The image recognition isn’t perfect and sometimes fails to acquire the identity of vehicles under poor illumination or due to obstruction of vehicle registration number plates.
Instead, a system has been developed using low-cost Bluetooth beacons. Beacons are installed in the vehicles and receivers are deployed along the roadside parking spaces.
Vehicle Parking Management System
The system uses Raspberry Pi for receivers and gateways. The Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) of beacons is processed, filtered and sent to a gateway. The system detects the occupancy of parking spaces and identifies the vehicles.
Smart On-Street Parking System Using iBeacons
It’s unfortunate the researchers didn’t consider Bluetooth Mesh for the receivers and gateways. It’s ideal for situations such as this where nodes are within range of each other and the data is small in size and sporadic. The use of Bluetooth Mesh would have reduced the hardware requirement considerably.
It explains that while a battery has a fixed initial capacity, how you draw current from the battery affects how much of that capacity you get to use. At a relatively low constant current of 0.5mA you get most of the capacity while at 3mA you only get 60%.
For Bluetooth LE the current isn’t usually constant. Instead, it advertises at up to 7mA, for of the order of a milliseconds followed by a pre-set inter-advertising period between 100ms and 10 secs. This gives the battery time to recover.
The article explains how Bluetooth LE firmware should be designed to not turn everything on at initial startup so as to not stress the Battery unduly. It also mentions how it’s also wise to test the battery in the actual situation rather than relying on the battery mAh rating to calculate expected battery life.
When doing a Windows Update it’s possible Bluetooth sometimes stops working. If you go to Device Manager you will see the Bluetooth icon with or without devices.
Windows sometimes removes hardware drivers or replaces them with ones that don’t work. To fix this go to Device Manager and click on the Bluetooth icon. If there are items, right click them and select ‘Update driver’. Click on ‘Search automatically for drivers’. If it doesn’t find anything, select ‘Search for updated drivers on Windows Update’.
If no Bluetooth items are showing, right click the computer name at the top and use ‘Scan for hardware changes’. If it still doesn’t work go to the web site support for your desktop/laptop manufacturer and look for and download the Bluetooth drivers.
TRBOnet is a 2-way radio dispatch system sold and supported by Motorola. It can use iBeacons to provide for locating where the Motorola radio GPS doesn’t work. This allows radios and hence people to be located indoors or undercover areas such as trees.
TRBOnet Plus
TRBOnet Plus will work with any iBeacons. The ones with higher battery capacity tend to be used so that batteries don’t have to be replaced for years.
The i3 is popular for use with TRBOnet as it takes AA batteries that can be easily sourced and the unit has screw tags for permanent mounting. Some sites also use USB beacons that can be powered from the mains via USB power supplies.
If you use the i3, or any beacon using AA batteries, we recommend you use lithium AA batteries rather than alkaline. This will not only provide a longer battery life but will also provide better resilience at lower temperatures.
