We sometimes get asked if it’s possible to send custom advertising. All Bluetooth advertising is based on Bluetooth standards and our post on the Cheat Sheet shows some examples such as iBeacon and Eddystone.
The first question is why you might want to send your own advertising. Using the iBeacon or Eddystone protocol is sufficient in the majority of cases where you just want to a unique id at the Bluetooth LE receiver (usually but not always an app or gateway). The most common case of custom advertising is sensor beacons that need to send their own sensor data.
Nevertheless, some projects use custom advertising that signifies something extra other than a unique id. This is project specific and might, for example, indicate something about location, asset or person. Very few beacons support custom advertising without full re-programming (as opposed to setup). Re-programming involves replacing the SoC firmware and is a significant undertaking. Some of the MeeBlue beacons support setup of a custom channel that can contain any data.
