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Carry a beacon (or a bunch of them) with you into a shop and the store will recognize you the next time you enter. That's handy! It's like a cookie that you physically bring every time. ~ Or, in other words, no thanks.
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?
> * 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.
> * 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.
Absolutely ... this wasn't an entirely new "invention," although Apple's technique of cramming their metadata in the spec is definitely novel, although nonstandard.
[1] - https://www.bluetooth.org/docman/handlers/downloaddoc.ashx?d...
- 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 only solution that got close to what we needed (though it's still pretty darn immature).
- Speaking of indoor navigation, you need a ton of points to do it well (whether that's beacons or wifi routers, you decide).
- Using beacons for granular location-aware uses might as well go out the window if you're looking for accurate and precise readings around ~1-3ft.
- Did I mention power yet? All of the beacons we started with around 9 months ago have dead batteries. Even with conservative power modes set. The only beacons that don't are RadBeacons USB sticks that plug into wall outlets. And that's only because they don't have batteries.
I really, really want them to be good. But they die too quickly, and don't provide granular signal data. Hold the phone between you and the beacon and get a decent signal, then turn 180 degrees so that you are between the phone and the beacon. Apparently you've moved 45ft.
Carry a beacon (or a bunch of them) with you into a shop and the store will recognize you the next time you enter. That's handy! It's like a cookie that you physically bring every time. ~ Or, in other words, no thanks.
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…
We've also implemented some adaptive algorithms to optimize the battery life in our beacons, so with conservative settings they should work for 5+ years now.
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?
[1] -http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/exclusive-hundreds-o...
[2] - http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/hidden-beacons-were-...
[3] - http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/qualcomm-spins-gimbal-be...
[4] -https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2013/12/09/qualcomm-a...