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Let's Talk About Beacons

nfarina.com

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Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#61

Post by ljoshua »

DannyBee wrote: post #44

Beacons. The thing where everyone has some idea of what they want people to see it as useful for (Ads, etc), but don't understand how to jive this from what consumers want from them. At this stage, it still looks like a technology solution in search of a consumer problem (it certainly solves the "how do i push indoor location based ads/etc" problem, but consumers don't care or want that). Watching most of these compa…

What would be some of the better alternatives for doing indoor location? It'd help me a bunch to see a few examples, as I was previously thinking of beacons for this purpose.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#62

Post by cwiz »

My colleagues at Shopster [http://getshopster.com/] are implementing really awesome indoor navigation project with 300+ beacons installed in largest Russian mall. See demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAM4bJst2Jw

And yes, we built custom beacons on top of OpenWRT routers & USB dongles –> hence high frequency updates, high power & no battery dependance. Also we built a mechanism that allows us to update majors/minors/uuids so that no external party can use our beacons.

Battery beacons are only usable for a couple toy usecases in my opinion.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#63

Post by mojuba »

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…

> ... then turn 180 degrees so that you are between the phone and the beacon. Apparently you've moved 45ft.

Why don't you fit the beacons on the ceiling?

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#64

Post by bennyg »

mojuba wrote: post #63
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…

> ... then turn 180 degrees so that you are between the phone and the beacon. Apparently you've moved 45ft. Why don't you fit the beacons on the ceiling?

You're right - antenna placement is super important with any real-world practical implementation. However, placing them on the ceiling/floor is not always an option.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#65

Post by alanctgardner3 »

ljoshua wrote: post #61
DannyBee wrote: post #44

Beacons. The thing where everyone has some idea of what they want people to see it as useful for (Ads, etc), but don't understand how to jive this from what consumers want from them. At this stage, it still looks like a technology solution in search of a consumer problem (it certainly solves the "how do i push indoor location based ads/etc" problem, but consumers don't care or want that). Watching most of these compa…

What would be some of the better alternatives for doing indoor location? It'd help me a bunch to see a few examples, as I was previously thinking of beacons for this purpose.

There are companies using Kinect to track users travelling through retail stores. There's also using existing WiFi recieved signal strength, which is not terribly granular but benefits from existing infrastructure.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#66

Post by orand »

It seems apps have to be built to recognize a fixed set of beacon IDs. Is it possible for apps to discover and monitor a dynamic set of beacons, including beacons intended for other purposes? I'd like to be able to tap into existing beacon networks for my own app's use, but that would require being able to detect their IDs, present them to the user in some meaningful way, and then have my app watch for them.

Another scenario where this particularly matters is allowing multiple devices (phones, tablets, PCs, watches) to "pair" and keep track of their proximity from each other.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#67

Post by anujdeshpande »

joosters wrote: post #49
nishantmodak wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree! With http://tah.io/get we have tried to make use of BLE not just as beacons but also for combining the power of your physical sensors with 'smartphone' sensors to have much more interesting use cases!

Like what, for instance?

Stuff like this: http://docs.tah.io/examples With a bunch of shields you can add more functionality

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#68

Post by nfarina »

orand wrote: post #66

It seems apps have to be built to recognize a fixed set of beacon IDs. Is it possible for apps to discover and monitor a dynamic set of beacons, including beacons intended for other purposes? I'd like to be able to tap into existing beacon networks for my own app's use, but that would require being able to detect their IDs, present them to the user in some meaningful way, and then have my app watch for them. Another…

Scanning for arbitrary beacon IDs is not possible on iOS by Apple's design. You could certainly do that on Android however.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#69

Post by orand »

nfarina wrote: post #68
orand wrote: post #66

It seems apps have to be built to recognize a fixed set of beacon IDs. Is it possible for apps to discover and monitor a dynamic set of beacons, including beacons intended for other purposes? I'd like to be able to tap into existing beacon networks for my own app's use, but that would require being able to detect their IDs, present them to the user in some meaningful way, and then have my app watch for them. Another…

Scanning for arbitrary beacon IDs is not possible on iOS by Apple's design. You could certainly do that on Android however.

Interesting. So is it possible for Apple devices to dynamically exchange their beacon IDs amongst each other (perhaps via an app's back-end service) to enable my second scenario of devices being "paired" and monitoring proximity to each other?

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#70

Post by riobard »

bennyg wrote: post #32
riobard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you tried emulating iBeacon with iDevice or a Mac? I'd consider those to have high quality Bluetooth chips and great antennae. If it is still not ideal, the blame could be on the software stack or maybe the whole idea is flawed :|
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