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Let's Talk About Beacons

nfarina.com

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Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#81

Post by omouse »

mojuba wrote: post #38

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 ca…

I feel like, as for QR codes, there are industrial uses for this tech. I think consumer use will be very very niche and not widespread at all. Perhaps things like beacons in a museum or archive or library to help you navigate it faster or in an exploratory way.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#82

Post by godzilla82 »

xauronx wrote: post #22
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…

I absolutely agree with this. I pushed beacons really hard internally, and got a couple projects with them. Unfortunately, they're an absolute pain in the ass as far as reliability goes. One iPhone 5 detects the beacon immediately, the other has to sit around it for 3 minutes before it's detected, one can't detect it at all. Makes life pretty difficult when my only answer is "Is your bluetooth on?". I hope that some…

We at our company also tried to develop solutions based on beacons for our customers. The major hindrance to acceptance of beacons is people here almost always switch off bluetooth in their phones. I think phone designers should give 2 different switches for switching bluetooth on/off in the UI. One for traditional bluetooth and another for BLE. That way customers can be pursuaded to keep ble on.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#83

Post by mattei »

If I had the coding ability I'd play around with these:

- home automation, get home in the dark & lights go on or other possible location based activities.

- conference badge/phone app, allows user to interact with displays or other conference attendees + more

- other ideas.

IMO advertising via bluetooth would make people turn off bluetooth, and leave it off.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#84

Post by paulftw »

While this is a very useful article, recurring attempts to convince readers that privacy is not an issue had an opposite effect on me. I didnt even know spying was a concern, but when out of the blue I'm told "dont worry about privacy", and told five times in a row - well, this makes me suspicious :) More unfortunate is the fact there is only one argument, served multiple times under different sauces: don't use the app if you think it does something creepy; vote with the delete button.

And this is actually a poor excuse:

concerned that google stores your search history and has your email? - dont use google.

Don't like Facebook sharing your friend list with advertisers? - delete your facebook profile.

Don't want your browsing history agregated and sold to the highest bidder? - stop using websites

Worried that government listens to your phone calls and reads your text messages? - move to another country.

To me these constant remarks about how you are always in control of your privacy were just annoying and not convincing at all. The article would be better without that.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#86

Post by BillinghamJ »

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…

For beacons, it does have to be a fixed list of UUIDs. The beacons also cannot detect the device which is monitoring it.

However, you could use the BTLE GATT profile. This lets you expose services & characteristics/attributes. It does allow for two way comms.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#87

Post by zamalek »

swamp40 wrote: post #2

> * In fact, referring to these devices as just “Beacons” is a bit funny, considering no one was talking about Beacons before iBeacons existed.* Well...I recall unpaired advertising events in the Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Spec back in 2010 - way before Apple ever got involved.

Around 2003/2004 a local magazine called NAG (http://www.nag.co.za/) had an opinion piece at the end in which the author theorized using beacons for an inverse purpose: attach Bluetooth fobs/beacons to your keys and then triangulate given how your phone scales the signal strength of the BT signal. IIRC it would have only worked with Nokias because no other brand implemented this Bluetooth power consumption optimization spec. I do remember the article indicating that such beacons could be found with a little bit of effort.

The only piece missing from the puzzle was that phones only have one Bluetooth aerial, so triangulation would have been impossible. It would still be possible to determine unitless distance.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#89

Post by DannyBee »

ljoshua wrote: post #74
DannyBee wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do a better job of indoor location by using tv signals, than you can with beacons. (All of the antennas are registered, along with type, propagation, etc, with the FCC, and they produce a large database) Not that TV signals are great. But even the bluetooth group itself says not to use beacons: "According to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group,[24] Bluetooth is all about proximity, not about exact location.…

Interesting thought. But I can't sample TV signals from a mobile device. I'm looking at applications that can be implemented underground as well, unique use case. And in this case, proximity might be just fine enough rather than positioning.

"Interesting thought. But I can't sample TV signals from a mobile device. "

You couldn't sample FM radio or GPS from them in the past either :)

But honestly, i don't expect this to take the world by storm either, i'm just pointing out it's a better possibility of working for the use case of "indoor mapping".

" I'm looking at applications that can be implemented underground as well, unique use case. And in this case, proximity might be just fine enough rather than positioning."

Underground is really hard, yes. If all you care about is knowing you are within 40 feet, great.

Truthfully, specialized wifi points are likely to be better for indoor positioning than bluetooth.

Re: Let's Talk About Beacons

#90

Post by dsr_ »

ljoshua wrote: post #74
DannyBee wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do a better job of indoor location by using tv signals, than you can with beacons. (All of the antennas are registered, along with type, propagation, etc, with the FCC, and they produce a large database) Not that TV signals are great. But even the bluetooth group itself says not to use beacons: "According to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group,[24] Bluetooth is all about proximity, not about exact location.…

Interesting thought. But I can't sample TV signals from a mobile device. I'm looking at applications that can be implemented underground as well, unique use case. And in this case, proximity might be just fine enough rather than positioning.

So drop the GUID in favor of a simple coordinate system -- you have enough space for a latitude-longitude-altitude triplet, with a reasonable amount of precision.

Then you need to program your beacons at the time of placement, using whatever locating system you have that works but is too bulky/expensive/power-hungry/hard for users to use.

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