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Let's Talk About Beacons

nfarina.com

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Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#31

Post by bennyg »

iamshs wrote: post #20

Beacons are being used as a micro-surveillance tool [1,2]. And that is the only prominent use they have found, among all the ones listed. Interestingly Gimbal, is a Qualcomm company or rather was a Qualcomm company as it was spun off [3]. Gimbal also had $5 beacon giveaways [4]. Gimbal had embedded its beacons in phonebooths in Chicago, LA and New York [1, 2]. [1] - http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/exclusive-h…

The Gimbal 10 beacon line blows. Battery life is around a month at best. I literally changed all of the Gimbal 10 beacons' batteries in my office two weeks ago and some are at 50% power right now. But they were free, so tradeoffs...

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#32

Post by bennyg »

riobard wrote: post #28
bennyg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh yes, I totally forgot about the phones maybe, sometimes, probably could this time work and range the beacons. Half the time my suggested method for getting the ranging to work is to delete app, restart phone, turn bluetooth on/off, redownload app, pray, sleep, buy new phone... It's unbelievable how ridiculously inaccurate the system software is using CoreLocation out of the box. I've written a wrapper for it ( ht…

I wonder whether the fault is at the iBeacon API/CoreLocation framework or the hardware beacons used? From your description above it sounds to me the hardware beacons are of questionable quality (low quality batteries and bad antenna maybe?)

I thought this too. But even with the plugged in RadBeacon (http://www.radiusnetworks.com/ibeacon/radbeacon/) and no EM interference between it and the phone, I was still getting extremely spotty results.

It's most probably a combination of all random variables (EM interference, beacon hardware, software, phone BLE antennae, etc) that makes it so frustrating and practically non-deterministic.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#33

Post by bennyg »

svarrall wrote: post #19

How do you manage 1,100 beacons at once App side? I thought Apple limited you to 20 region monitoring locations at a time, or are the beacons treated differently? Just logic around which 20 you're looking for at any one time?

You can monitor for one region per UUID, meaning that if all of your 1100 beacons share the same proximity UUID, then you should be good.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#34

Post by drewda »

"What we call a Beacon today was originally invented and popularized by Apple way back in 2013 when they introduced the iBeacon API." --> It's funny (and sad) to see how Apple is given credit for "inventing" so many different technologies.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#35

Post by xmmx »

nfarina wrote: post #12
BlackJack wrote: post #10

Really cool technology. I think the really hard part is 'What is a good interaction?' Clearly the offer isn't too useful, but the hospital one seems good. In general, I think 'help me find stuff' and 'notify on exit' will be the dominant modes of beacon interaction. What do you all think?

It was surprisingly challenging to come up with just those two examples to be honest. I don't think we really know what the killer location-based notifications are going to be yet.

museum self-guided audio tours

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#36

Post by rdrey »

iamshs wrote: post #20

Beacons are being used as a micro-surveillance tool [1,2]. And that is the only prominent use they have found, among all the ones listed. Interestingly Gimbal, is a Qualcomm company or rather was a Qualcomm company as it was spun off [3]. Gimbal also had $5 beacon giveaways [4]. Gimbal had embedded its beacons in phonebooths in Chicago, LA and New York [1, 2]. [1] - http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/exclusive-h…

They can only be used as "micro-surveillance tools" once you install an app that shares your proximity to a beacon with a remote server... and by installing a 'malicious' app you've already lost.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#37

Post by nfarina »

primitivesuave wrote: post #27

Based on several months of experimentation last year when iBeacon dropped, we concluded that Beacons will be more pervasive in personal automation rather than business automation. The author of the post talked about some great business use cases, but in general these expect the user to have the beacon's corresponding app. For any kind of app, the user has to opt-in, so the apps they are most likely to opt into are th…

These kind of experiences are entirely up to the app developer to implement properly in a way that's not annoying like you describe. It can be done in a way that is nice (i.e. not notifying over and over). Not saying they'll all do it right at first, or even for a while.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#38

Post by mojuba »

I don't know why everyone is talking about pushing ads in the first place, whenever BLE beacons come up. As if the visual clutter created by outdoor advertisement wasn't enough, now I'll get garbage on my phone? No, thanks. Really, No Thanks.

As the article mentions, it's not obvious what value iBeacons provide compared to direct audio/visual information. For the same reason QR codes never took off. Ever since QR came into existence I haven't seen a single person who'd voluntarily scan a code (or an NFC label for that matter) in the street, anywhere in the world.

Clearly iBeacons/QR/NFC are not interesting in terms of providing information "on the spot", let alone advertisement. OK, then maybe microlocation? Finding lost items? Checkin/checkout? Payments? I don't know, none of these is so unique and indispensable that it triggers the excitement light bulb in me. Most of these things can be achieved somehow else, except maybe finding items lost within 20-30m from where you are.

Maybe the problem is that iBeacons are a bit too passive/static. But even a full BLE device that can transmit a bit more complex information is still debatble in terms of value. Where are the BLE A/V remotes, why aren't they replacing the IR ones? Would you trust a BLE baby monitor? How important is BLE for fitness tracker users? (Answer: somewhat, but if BLE never existed everyone would just use the USB connection to charge and exchange information at the same time, no big loss).

Plus purely engineering problems, such as unreliability, poor battery life, etc.

So let me be that guy who turns out to be wrong some years from now, but: despite the hype BLE turns out to be a niche technology with poor capabilities and questionable benefits.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#39

Post by nishantmodak »

aflinik wrote: post #18
bennyg wrote: post #15

As an iOS developer who has spent the last 9 months making beacon enabled things for my employer, I personally think beacons are shit. Some of my findings over the last 9 months: - Estimated battery life was estimated very poorly. - Nobody likes things they didn't ask for getting sent to their phone. - Indoor navigation that relies on iBeacons only is going to shoot you in the foot. I recommend www.indoo.rs as the on…

(Disclaimer: I work for Estimote) Indoor location works much better if you utilize data from other sensors in the phone (like accelerometer etc) and apply machine learning to make better sense out of all the signals. I'd suggest you take a look at our SDK that works surprisingly well even with just 4-5 beacons. You can also map your room with our iOS app by just walking around it. You can find it here if you're inter…

(Disclaimer: Work at TAH) I totally agree to what you are saying. We have had a similar experience working with our devices and SDK.

http://tah.io/get

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#40

Post by zachdunn »

bennyg wrote: post #31
iamshs wrote: post #20

Beacons are being used as a micro-surveillance tool [1,2]. And that is the only prominent use they have found, among all the ones listed. Interestingly Gimbal, is a Qualcomm company or rather was a Qualcomm company as it was spun off [3]. Gimbal also had $5 beacon giveaways [4]. Gimbal had embedded its beacons in phonebooths in Chicago, LA and New York [1, 2]. [1] - http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/exclusive-h…

The Gimbal 10 beacon line blows. Battery life is around a month at best. I literally changed all of the Gimbal 10 beacons' batteries in my office two weeks ago and some are at 50% power right now. But they were free, so tradeoffs...

Not to mention their sales team will chastize you for using them in iBeacon mode since apparently the price is subsidized by the use of their API.

Unsubsidized price then? No response.

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