AltBeacon

#1

Post by bherrup » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

AltBeacon
altbeacon.org

Re: AltBeacon

#2

Post by brokentone » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 8:00 PM UTC

I'm not seeing anything on the community leadership, board, voting etc. The only references I see are to Radius Networks.

So, the way I read the mission statement is: We [Radius Networks] firmly believe that an open specification would help everyone, and we [Radius Networks] want to do it right. This is simply the proposal, now we [Radius Networks] would like feedback from the community.

Re: AltBeacon

#3

Post by josephlord » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 8:01 PM UTC

Does anyone know if this appears as an iBeacon to iOS devices? You can get iOS devices to listen for other BLE advertisers (or advertise their UUID) in the background (even after the app is closed due to memory pressure) but I haven't been able to make it survive a phone reboot.

If anyone can get that working please let me know.

Re: AltBeacon

#4

Post by csexton » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 8:17 PM UTC

josephlord wrote: post #3

Does anyone know if this appears as an iBeacon to iOS devices? You can get iOS devices to listen for other BLE advertisers (or advertise their UUID) in the background (even after the app is closed due to memory pressure) but I haven't been able to make it survive a phone reboot. If anyone can get that working please let me know.

AltBeacon will not register as a CoreLocation Beacon on an iOS device.

Full disclosure: I work for Radius Networks.

Re: AltBeacon

#5

Post by csexton » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 8:30 PM UTC

brokentone wrote: post #2

I'm not seeing anything on the community leadership, board, voting etc. The only references I see are to Radius Networks. So, the way I read the mission statement is: We [Radius Networks] firmly believe that an open specification would help everyone, and we [Radius Networks] want to do it right. This is simply the proposal, now we [Radius Networks] would like feedback from the community.

This is something we at Radius Networks are trying to figure out. We've been committed to open source for a while and wanted to get the proposal published -- but are actively researching how to properly establish this spec.

Do you have examples of organizations or communities that have good answers to your questions?

Re: AltBeacon

#6

Post by Timmmmbob » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 8:43 PM UTC

But how is iBeacon proprietary anyway? It's just a static BLE advertisment of a UUID. Anyone can do that.

Re: AltBeacon

#7

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 9:19 PM UTC

Timmmmbob wrote: post #6

But how is iBeacon proprietary anyway? It's just a static BLE advertisment of a UUID. Anyone can do that.

[deleted]

Re: AltBeacon

#8

Post by xur17 » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 9:19 PM UTC

It would appear that iBeacons just broadcast a uuid that clients can discover, and then clients are able to lookup the location of the device from a database. I don't have in depth knowledge of iBeacons, but after skimming the spec, it would appear that this does the same thing, so I feel like I am missing something.

How does this differ?

Re: AltBeacon

#9

Post by ChikkaChiChi » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 9:45 PM UTC

The biggest problem with Beacons is that the range is unpredictable.

Without a better handle on proximity, many of the use cases I can immediately think of are of no greater benefit than GPS or WiFi nodes.

It's a shame, because there are some amazing things you can do once you are able to start exchanging data based on passing a node by (< 3 meters)

Re: AltBeacon

#10

Post by brokentone » Mon, Jul 28, 2014, 9:50 PM UTC

csexton wrote: post #5

brokentone wrote: post #2

I'm not seeing anything on the community leadership, board, voting etc. The only references I see are to Radius Networks. So, the way I read the mission statement is: We [Radius Networks] firmly believe that an open specification would help everyone, and we [Radius Networks] want to do it right. This is simply the proposal, now we [Radius Networks] would like feedback from the community.

This is something we at Radius Networks are trying to figure out. We've been committed to open source for a while and wanted to get the proposal published -- but are actively researching how to properly establish this spec. Do you have examples of organizations or communities that have good answers to your questions?

I don't know that I'm asking questions here, but I don't really understand an "open source spec" -- public specs are public, there isn't really source to a spec.

You're asking for a community RFC on a spec, but have not specified how the good ideas will come forward, who will be voting on them, etc. If it's just your company as the "voting party," it's not very open either.

This just leaves the Radius Networks spec for beacons.