Beacon Compatibility

We previously wrote a lot about beacon compatibility where we concluded that phone compatibility is more of an issue than beacon compatibility and that you might choose an Apple MFi certified beacon if you wanted additional assurance. However, what does MFi mean?

Certified beacons meet Apple’s beacon specifications. There was a time that these specifications were secret and only available to MFi partners. However, these have since become available after you have ok’d an agreement. If you wish to view them, go to the iBeacon for Developers web page and click on Download Artwork and Specifications.

Google’s Proximity Beacon API

Most beacon platforms are fairly limited in that they are designed around retail marketing scenarios. If you are creating a non-retail marketing solution you might want to look into Google’s little publicised Proximity Beacon API. It allows you to register beacons and have arbitrary data, called attachments, associated with them. What’s more, it supports the registration of iBeacon as well as Eddystone beacons and you can use it free of charge.

The usual usecase is setup via Google’s console followed by update from apps detecting beacons. Android and iOS example are available.

It’s not always apps that are used to detect beacons. For example, you might have a single board computer such as the Raspberry Pi or Bluetooth-WiFi gateway detecting beacons and a web front end managing and monitoring the beacons. Google also provides example scripts that show how other entities can be used to register, list and filter beacons. Alternatively, other entities might even call these scripts.

The storing of arbitrary data allows the proximity Beacon API to be used for scenarios beyond retail marketing such as sensing with sensor beacons and real time locating (RTLS).

Beacon Locator Android App

A growing number of people are using beacons for personal use. Today, we added the Beacon Locator Android app to our Solutions Directory. It allows you to set up action types such as opening a URL, broadcasting an Android intent, starting an app, changing the sound profile and running tasks via Tasker in response to detecting or losing a beacon signal.

What’s especially interesting about this app is that it’s open source allowing you to extend it to a multitude of personal and business scenarios.

Paper on Using Eddystone Ephemeral-ID (EID)

There’s a recent paper by Debasis Bhattacharya Mario Canul and Saxon Knight of the University of Hawaii on the Impact of the Physical Web and BLE Beacons (pdf). The paper is based on a project that uses Eddystone Ephemeral-ID (EID). The paper is more a backgrounder and description rather than providing new insights. Nevertheless, it provides a useful description of some security issues with beacons that include tracking of beacon locations, forgery and showrooming.

New Real-time Locating Systems (RTLS) Article

We have a new article on Using Beacons for Real-time Locating Systems (RTLS). It explains how beacons can be used with apps or gateways to automatically identify and track the location of objects or people. It also mentions how RTLS systems can be implemented using IoT platforms.

RTLS created with an Open Source IoT Platform

Areas where organisations have used BeaconZone beacons for RTLS include manufacture, warehousing and the tracking of equipment and people. The latter segment has included people on campus, lone workers and evidence based working (e.g. evidence based policing).

BeaconZone at IoT Thames Valley Meetup

We were exhibiting at the IoT Thames Valley Meetup on Wednesday:

Our stand at IoT Thames Valley Meetup

Here’s what happened with a few insights from the presentations:

Richard Fargus, Managing Director, Voytech Systems spoke about ‘Commercial Deployment of IoT solutions in Building Monitoring
and Control’. He mentioned how, using TCPI/IP over cellular is very inefficient. For example, 2 bytes of data can balloon up to 5000 to 1000 bytes which can be costly.

Richard Kinder, VP, Head of Product Marketing, Wirepas covered ‘Industrial IoT requires fit for purpose connectivity’. He spoke about wireless mesh networking. He mentioned how increasing the Lora power in an urban environment gives negligible improvement in range.

Nick Baker, Director, Adaptive Wireless Solutions gave ‘Wireless IoT – lessons learned from industrial implementations’. He spoke about 2.4GHz mesh networks used for various clients. He emphasied the need for solutions to be reliable and easy to implement. He also mentioned (the recurring theme) that there’s no one vertical market or solution.

Richard Foggie, Executive Knowledge Transfer Network, spoke about IoT networking and funding opportunities from the Government KTN.

Mike Bartley, CEO T&VS gave a talk on ‘Avoiding the Internet of Insecure Things’ via test and certification.

Leonard Anderson, Kemuri Limited, presented his IoT Power Sockets.

Graham Kitteridge gave a lightening talk on Think Engineer, who create custom hardware prototypes.

Bluetooth at the London IoT Tech Expo

We visited the IoT Tech Expo today in London. The event seemed to be about twice the size of last year’s smaller IoT TechExpo which shows the growth in interest in IoT. Also, it’s the first time there’s a presence by one of the IT ‘heavyweights’, Microsoft. However, the large number of IoT platform providers exhibiting doesn’t bode well for that particular sector. They can’t all survive. We found the Tech Expo a bit strange in that it has some end-user, consumer IoT solutions exhibiting next door to components suppliers, industrial sensors and software suppliers. The IoT Expo doesn’t really know yet what it is or rather who it is targeted at – much like IoT we suppose.

Here’s what we saw that was Bluetooth LE specific:

  • As with last year, bean iot where showing their sensor Bluetooth LE bean. They are now showing actual working beans rather than printed circuit boards. They also have a backend showing sensor data from the beans.
  • Blue ID were promoting their secure access solutions.
  • Advantech were showing their IoT Gateway Solutions that support Bluetooth.
  • Insight SIP were exhibiting their Bluetooth LE modules.

Bluetooth Beacons in Higher Education

Sheffield Hallam University recently published a new paper by Kieran McDonald and Ian Glover on Exploring the transformative potential of Bluetooth.

The paper provides a great introduction to beacons and explores topics such as learning mediated through non-human agents and studio-based learning. It includes results of a study into how and where students prefer to work.

An ‘intervention’ as they call it, used beacons to provide more more timely information about the technical aspects of courses. This resulted in students feeling closer and more connected to tutors leading to increased efficiency and interaction.

There’s also an associated slideshare presentation by Ian Glover, one of the authors.