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Google’s Eddystone – a flexible, open-source iBeacon alternative

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google’s Eddystone – a flexible, open-source iBeacon alternative

#41

Post by Oletros »

ignoramous wrote: post #32
bitmapbrother wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of Google's AOSP do you disagree with? Is it that they don't perform every single commit in public or is it that their services aren't open sourced? As for your reference to the Google Play Store - this makes no sense at all. It's a service hosted and maintained on Google servers. Did you really expect Google to give this service away to any competitor that decides to fork Android? >But you know what... if…

There's no real collaboration with external parties as far as I am aware ala the Node Foundation, the Linux Foundation etc; And even if a device passes CTS, Google would not automagically hand you the keys to the Google Play Services kingdom. As for Play Store / Play Services is concerned, they've been moving a lot of code to closed-sourced APKs. For instance, the default browser was open source, now the default brow…

> And even if a device passes CTS, Google would not automagically hand you the keys to the Google Play Services kingdom.

Why they should give it? CTS has nothing to do with Play Services

Re: Google’s Eddystone – a flexible, open-source iBeacon alternative

#42

Post by ignoramous »

Oletros wrote: post #41
ignoramous wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no real collaboration with external parties as far as I am aware ala the Node Foundation, the Linux Foundation etc; And even if a device passes CTS, Google would not automagically hand you the keys to the Google Play Services kingdom. As for Play Store / Play Services is concerned, they've been moving a lot of code to closed-sourced APKs. For instance, the default browser was open source, now the default brow…

> And even if a device passes CTS, Google would not automagically hand you the keys to the Google Play Services kingdom. Why they should give it? CTS has nothing to do with Play Services

I know. It was in response to what the other fellow HNer commented: "Why would Google support a version of Android that refuses to pass the CTS? Do you really think Google would allow a device to use their services that was incompatible with Android"

Re: Google’s Eddystone – a flexible, open-source iBeacon alternative

#43

Post by ignoramous »

Oletros wrote: post #40
ignoramous wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are countless other companies (Mozilla, Segment, Facebook, Netflix) and individual developers open sourcing their code the right way unlike Google which seems to be using that as either to gather community consensus or to attract businesses (Hey! You're not tied to us, just roll your own Google Play Store equivalent, and replicate Google Play Services, and you're done, its all too easy, and if you don't trust us,…

> if you do sign the OHA, then you must install our closed source apps This is not true

http://googleweblight.com/?lite_url=http://arstechnica.com/g...

Re: Google’s Eddystone – a flexible, open-source iBeacon alternative

#44

Post by meatysnapper »

desdiv wrote: post #35
meatysnapper wrote: post #14

The pity is that BLE on Android has sucked, horribly badly, consistently. Google needs to have their hardware have a minimum level of support for basic stuff, and then we can talk. In contrast, Apple's BLE implementation is robust and works well for since the iPhone 4S, and reliably on all the newer platforms

Could you please elaborate on where the suckiness lies? Was it particular devices, or particular phone manufacturers? Or was it something wrong with the Android BLE APIs?

Everywhere possible: 1) Different levels of support on different hardware 2) Doesn't support half the BLE spec (Peripheral) 3) Limited functionality on the Central side, only supported 4 Peripherals last time I checked 5) Buggy in general

Just like we don't trust Apple to build cloud services that don't suck, we don't trust Google to build a consistent hardware/OS experience across Android. This is stuff that is not sexy, but it has to be done, and it's exactly what you expect to be done by a company that doesn't have 30+ years in building their own hardware + OS.

Re: Google’s Eddystone – a flexible, open-source iBeacon alternative

#45

Post by guidefreitas »

jonlucc wrote: post #28
polskibus wrote: post #16

I hope I'll be able to upgrade my Texas Instruments' SensorTag to be Eddystone compatible in the future.

Yesterday, I received some HM-10 BLE boards I ordered a bit ago. I hope the firmware will be updated, but I'm not holding my breath.

Yeah, same situation here.
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